Kwasi Kwarteng quits the Commons

Happy PopCon day! Liz Truss will this morning launch her ‘Popular Conservatism’ movement in Westminster. The 49-day premier will be speaking alongside the likes of fellow Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lee Anderson – though, sadly, not Simon Clarke nor Ranil Jayawardena, both of whom dropped out after the former’s ill-fated call for Rishi Sunak to quit.

And one Conservative who certainly won’t be at Truss’s launch is Kwasi Kwarteng, her Chancellor of the Exchequer for 38 of the 49 days she spent in office. In September, he revealed that the formerly close allies had not spoken about his sacking since the day she ignominiously fired him, eleven months prior. And the Old Etonian today announced that he will be standing down at the next election from his Spelthorne seat. With a Tory majority of 18,393, Electoral Calculus gives it a 52 per cent chance of staying blue next time around.