Summary
The Tory leadership campaign has now officially ended as voting closed at 5pm BST. The winner of the contest – and the next prime minister of the UK – will be announced on Monday.
Here is a round-up of the day’s top headlines:
Boris Johnson has been accused of trying to “intimidate and bully” an inquiry into claims he misled MPs over Downing Street parties, after No 10 took the highly unusual step of commissioning a senior QC to scrutinise the legal basis for the process. The opinion, by the crossbench peer David Pannick, argued that the Commons committee on privileges and standards was “proposing to adopt an unfair procedure” in examining allegations that Johnson falsely told the Commons he knew nothing about lockdown-breaking gatherings.
Mark Elliot, a professor of public law at the University of Cambridge, pointed out that much of the criticism Pannick makes of the privileges committee is inapplicable because they refer to legal standards, rather than parliamentary process.
Johnson has also been criticised for appointing a “leading crony” to help oversee the appointment of new peers to the House of Lords. The writer and journalist Harry Mount, the author of The Wit And Wisdom Of Boris Johnson, will take up the role on the House of Lords Appointments Commission from 11 September.
Sadiq Khan has described an official review into the resignation of Cressida Dick as head of the Metropolitan police as “clearly biased” after it concluded the commissioner “felt intimidated” into stepping down from her post in February. The review states Khan did not follow due process in actions which prompted her departure, and tried to push Dick into firing every officer involved in the Charing Cross scandal after the police watchdog’s findings, a claim Khan denies.
Cost of living support from the government will need to extend into 2023 to help defeat the tactics used by Vladimir Putin, according to the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi. Such an approach is needed to send a “very clear message” to the Russian president that his strategy is not going to work, Zahawi added.
Extinction Rebellion said a group of about 50 people were involved in the “non-violent” action at the Palace of Westminster. They said three people booked on an official tour of the building glued themselves in a chain around the Speaker’s chair inside the Commons chamber, PA Media reported.
A cabinet minister and a high-ranking aide at 10 Downing Street continued to work in Boris Johnson’s government despite allegations of sexual misconduct against them, according to reports. Two women have given first-hand accounts of what they claim happened to them when one was assaulted and the other groped by political figures, both now in senior roles.
Neither of the candidates for leadership of the Conservative party has made a convincing pitch to rural voters, despite that demographic being one of the biggest sources of Tory power, the head of the UK’s biggest rural business organisation said. Mark Tufnell, president of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents about 30,000 landowners and rural businesses, said Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak had done too little to show how they would boost the countryside economy and deal with pressing concerns such as planning, rural broadband, and farm support.
Rishi Sunak is not “cut and dried” but probably “neck and neck” with Liz Truss in the Tory leadership race, according to one Conservative MP. Kevin Hollinrake, a supporter of the former chancellor and MP for Thirsk and Malton, told Sky News: “I’ve seen some of the polls and national polls. I think it’s quite hard for pollsters to determine who is a Conservative member and who is not because there’s not an open database.”
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for today. Thanks for following along. Goodnight.
Updated
At Conservative leadership hustings events over the summer Liz Truss supporters have waved placards and sported T-shirts emblazoned with “In Liz we Truss”.
But the faith of Tory party members in the likely next prime minister is far from being reflected across the UK more broadly.
When, as expected, Truss enters No 10 next week to find an in-tray spilling over with difficult issues, the lack of trust in her office will be among the knottiest to resolve.
In recent decades politicians, not least because of Tory sleaze in the 1990s and the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009, have enjoyed less than the full confidence of the public.
Trust in British democracy and the state has plummeted to new depths under Boris Johnson with his rejection of the normal conventions of government.
When he won a landslide victory in 2019 his relaxed relationship with the truth was already well known – but enough voters were willing to set that aside in return for his boosterism and Brexit promises, and because they didn’t like the alternative of Jeremy Corbyn.
