Summary
We are closing this blog now. Here’s a summary of today’s events:
- Tory leadership hopeful Liz Truss was forced to U-turn on plans to cut civil service pay outside London. The announcement, made at midday, marked the first major gaffe for Truss, who is the favourite to win the race.
- Truss’s U-turn came after her plans were met with a furious outcry from Conservative MPs and the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, who said there was no way the figure could be achieved without pay cuts outside London that would hit levelling up.
- A spokesperson for Truss’s leadership campaign said there had been a “wilful misrepresentation of our campaign” – without giving specifics – but confirmed she was abandoning plans for regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.
- But sources in Rishi Sunak’s camp said Truss has previously called for lower pay outside of the south-east when she was chief secretary to the Treasury in 2018.
- The gaffe came as a new poll showed that Rishi Sunak has narrowed the gap with Truss in the Conservative party leadership race, with the foreign secretary leading by only five points.
- Truss also came under fire for describing Nicola Sturgeon as an “attention seeker” who ought to be ignored. John Swinney, the deputy first minister, said Scottish voters would be “absolutely horrified” by Truss’s “obnoxious” remarks, made during a Conservative leadership hustings in Exeter on Monday evening.
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Jeremy Corbyn has urged western countries to stop arming Ukraine, and claimed he was criticised over antisemitism because of his stance on Palestine. Corbyn made the comments in a TV interview likely to underscore Keir Starmer’s determination not to readmit him to the Labour party.
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Updated
A group of 10 Scottish Tory MPs and MSPs have announced their support for Rishi Sunak, a day after nine Tory MSPs said they would be backing his rival, Liz Truss, for the party’s leadership.
Those supporting Sunak’s leadership bid include the former Scottish Conservative leader, Jackson Carlaw, as well as MPs John Lamont and Andrew Bowie. MSPs Maurice Golden, Jeremy Balfour, Miles Briggs, Dean Lockhart, Donald Cameron, Alexander Stewart and Liz Smith also backed the former chancellor.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the group played up Sunak’s electability, which they claim would stop a deal between the SNP and Labour that would secure a second independence referendum.
Both Keir Starmer and the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, have insisted they will not form a coalition or agreement with the SNP after the next general election.
The group of Tories from Scotland said:
A Labour-SNP pact would put the future of the UK at risk and would give the nationalists licence to divide Scotland all over again with a second independence referendum.
We cannot allow that to happen, and the polls consistently show that Rishi is the candidate most likely to win the next general election and put a stop to any dodgy backroom deal.
They went on to say that Sunak has a plan to “kick the SNP government out of office”.
The article in the Telegraph came out a day after nine Tory MSPs announced their support for Truss in the Times.
Updated
