Portrait of the week: Record-breaking heat, a summer of strikes and a warning for snake-owners

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In the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party, Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi were the first of the eight contenders to be eliminated, followed by Suella Braverman, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch. After two televised debates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the frontrunners, refused to take part in a third, which was cancelled. The debates were bitter and accompanied by negative briefings. Lord Frost said he had ‘grave reservations’ about Penny Mordaunt, and had ‘had to ask the PM to move her on’ when she was his junior during Brexit negotiations. After parliament rose for the summer two names were to be put before party members in a postal ballot. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, removed the Conservative whip from Tobias Ellwood when he failed to support the government in a vote of confidence it called in itself, which it won by 349 to 238.