Miscellaneous

And then there were five. Suella Braverman has been knocked out of the Tory leadership contest after only receiving 27 votes in the second round ballot. She has now backed Truss. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat remain in the contest. Sunak came top in the second round ballot with 101 votes, an increase of 13 since the first round. Penny Mordaunt is closing in on 83, followed by Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch. Tom Tugendhat only managed to achieve 32 votes in this round. The next vote takes place on Monday evening, when another candidate will be removed from the contest. 8.32pm Braverman backs Truss James Forsyth writes… Suella

Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi are out of the leadership contest after failing to get 30 votes from Tory MPs on Wednesday. Six candidates are now left in the race: Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Penny Mordaunt, Tom Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman. Another round of voting takes place tomorrow, with the candidate with the fewest votes knocked out of the contest. Follow the latest updates from the race here: 9.50pm – Hunt backs Sunak James Forsyth writes… Jeremy Hunt, who was eliminated from the Tory leadership race earlier today, has announced that he is backing Rishi Sunak. Several candidates might have hoped for the former Foreign Secretary’s backing. Mordaunt supported him in 2019, introducing

Michael Gove has been sacked from the cabinet, as Boris Johnson attempts to reassert control after today’s 41 ministerial resignations. The Levelling-Up secretary had urged the Prime Minister to quit, a message later reinforced by a delegation of cabinet ministers who gathered in Downing Street earlier this evening. Nadhim Zahawi, the newly-appointed Chancellor, Michelle Donelan, the newly-appointed Education Secretary, Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, and Simon Hart, the Welsh Secretary, who has since resigned, are among those who told the PM to go. But Johnson has refused to do so and is now willing to risk a confidence vote which may come on Tuesday.  Follow the latest developments on Thursday’s

Brand Boris is in trouble. It wasn’t long ago that Boris Johnson could do no wrong, having won his party a thumping majority at the last election. Even when some mishap played out in public – like being stranded on a zip wire or falling in a stream – the public still seemed to love this irrepressible japester. Now Brits are more likely to boo than cheer him. Despite winning a Tory vote of confidence this week, he looks like a bruised and battered boxer who’s just struggled to a narrow points victory. Is there any way for him to rebuild his brand? The advertising industry has involved itself successfully

Something strange is happening in Russia. Protest is banned, referring to ‘a war’ is punishable by up to 15 years in jail – but there are increasing signs of pushback. At least 12 military conscription offices appear to have been vandalised – some set on fire – since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. That’s according to the Ukrainian army, so we might take that with a pinch of salt. But there has been enough corroboration of this on Telegram (one of the few social media firms not blocked by the Kremlin) to take this seriously. A look around Telegram shows buildings with varying degrees of damage, some having clearly

The Libyan Civil War of 2011, culminating in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, was the bloodiest of the uprisings across North Africa forming part of the so-called Arab Spring. Western leaders, including David Cameron, backed the rebel forces for a myriad of reasons, not least in response to the brutality shown by Gaddafi in bombing his own people. But there was also an expectation that a Libya free of Gaddafi would be a more prosperous and peaceful country. The reality has been very different. For a decade now, Libya has been beset by chaos. A chaos that has seen the country riven by regional rivalries, divided by political figures from

White to play. Duda-Anton Guijarro, Charity Cup, March 2022. Black’s last move, 21…Qe7-b4 was an unforced error. Which move did White play to exploit it? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 11 April. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Rd2! e.g. 1…Bxd2 2 Qa7#, 1…Kc5 2 Qd4#, 1…Kc7 2 Qxa5#, 1…Ka6 2 Rd6# Last week’s winner Paul Heaton, Theydon Bois, Essex

The UK magazine industry releases figures today and we’re delighted to announce that The Spectator sold a weekly average of 106,905 copies last year, up 16 per cent on 2020 and — yet again — our best year ever. The Spectator has now almost doubled our sales over a decade where sales of consumer magazines fell by two-thirds. We can also announce: Our ABC certificate, released today, shows a total figure of 112,040 — so that includes those who first sign up on a free trial. But we judge ourselves on full-price sales: up 16 per cent year-on-year as we built on the base readers we recruited in the pandemic.

The ugly spectacle of Boris Johnson’s self-destruction will reach a new climax at the end of this week. Many think that only a miracle can save the great escapologist from the official Partygate inquiry. The Gambler himself is convinced that his determination will crush his enemies and once again he will survive to fight and win his next challenge – the local elections in May. Even Johnson’s closest admirers are baffled how an experienced politician could have orchestrated such an extraordinary succession of self-inflicted wounds. Just what went wrong in Johnson’s life since he won a stunning 80 seat majority just over two years ago? All the qualities which won

The buy now pay later industry has exploded in recent years, with the industry now worth $100 billion (circa £70 billion). Also known as BNPL, it is used by shoppers to delay payments on any kind of product from champagne to clothes and kitchens, and the option to pay nothing today and repay over 12 months in instalments or one lump sum, either interest-free or a little interest on top. While the Financial Conduct Authority requires anyone offering consumer credit to be authorised, this is not currently the case with BNPL. The industry remains unregulated if customers make no more than 12 payments within 12 months or less and many

Amanda Pritchard, the new NHS England chief executive, has had quite a week. She wrote an article for the Health Service Journal about the pressures on the NHS and followed up with a Sky News interview where she had this to say: Where did she get that 14 times figure from? By using statistics in a strange way, highlighted by Kate Andrews fairly shortly afterwards. By ‘have had’ she was technically correct insofar as this was the peak ratio. But comparing a wave to a non-wave, and presenting a peak value as somehow representing the current situation is fundamentally misleading. The actual picture for Covid hospitalisations is here. I won’t