The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Iran fires missiles into Israel, Rosie Duffield resigns and Mount Everest gets taller

issue 05 October 2024

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The Conservatives at their party conference examined the four surviving candidates for leader – Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – with the prospect of two being thrown out of the ballot by MPs next week and the other two being put to the party membership on 2 November. Rishi Sunak, the last Conservative prime minister, urged the conference optimistically: ‘We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling.’ Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, said: ‘One of the biggest lies we’ve had since Labour came to office is this nonsense about having the worst economic inheritance since the second world war.’ Treasury officials said that Labour plans to abolish two concessions made by the previous government to non-doms might not raise the forecast £1 billion, or any money at all. Michael Ancram, the Conservative politician who became the Marquess of Lothian, died aged 79. Dame Maggie Smith, the actress, died aged 89.

Rosie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, resigned the Labour whip, saying in a letter to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, that since the election ‘the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous’, citing his ‘inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts’ while holding down social benefits.

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