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A summary of today's developments
- Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are in the final ballot of Tory members to choose the next the next prime minister. Sunak got 137 votes, Truss got 113 with Penny Mordaunt eliminated after getting 105. Labour said Sunak and Truss are both “continuity candidates” and Boris Johnson stooges in a statement on behalf of the party by Conor McGinn, a shadow Cabinet Office minister.
- Boris Johnson declared “Mission largely accomplished, for now,” as he signed off his last Prime Minister’s Questions. His final words before departing were “hasta la vista baby” from the Terminator films. He left the House of Commons chamber to applause and a standing ovation from his own MPs, although his predecessor Theresa May did not join in with the clapping.
- A third cabinet minister pulled out of an appearance before a House of Commons committee at short notice. Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng had been due to answer questions this afternoon from the environmental audit committee on accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels and securing energy supplies.But Kwarteng wrote to the committee’s chairman, Philip Dunne, this morning to say he could no longer attend and offered to rearrange for a date in September after MPs return from their summer recess.
- Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, has agreed to launch a leak inquiry into the leak of government documents to the Sunday Times that were used to as the basis for a story undermining Penny Mordaunt’s claim that she never backed self-identification for trans people when she was equalities minister. The revelations were damaging to Mordaunt’s campaign for the Tory leadership.
- Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, described Rishi Sunak’s promise to maintain the ban on new onshore windfarms as “economic illiteracy”.
