Conservative party

Tonight’s Sun debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt was far more relaxed than last week’s head-to-head clash. But it was also stuffed with news lines, as both men prepared for the final few days of voting in the Tory leadership contest. Both declared the Northern Irish backstop dead, Johnson ruled out an election before Brexit happens, and they both attacked Donald Trump for telling black and minority ethnic congresswomen to ‘go back’. On Brexit, the answer that Johnson gave about the backstop showed how likely it is that he might pursue a no-deal Brexit: he rejected a time limit or unilateral exit clause. This makes a confrontation with Conservative

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias is often taught to schoolchildren, who read it as a warning about the fragility of human power. Conservatives should study it now and ensure they take an opportunity to learn from Theresa May’s mistakes on immigration. If there was one issue that helped May become, for a short time, a figure of “cold command” over her party, it was immigration. As home secretary and then Prime Minister, she was the senior figure at the top of the Conservative party who consistently took the hardest line on the issue. By the mid-point of the 2010-2015 coalition government, David Cameron would privately concede that all of his ministerial

Sir Max Hastings, whom I engaged as editor of the Daily Telegraph in 1986 and who stayed in that role for about nine years, seems to have installed himself at the head of the rabid mob of journalistic haters of Boris Johnson. In recent pieces in The Spectator and the Guardian he has described Boris as ‘a tasteless joke’ interested only in ‘fame and gratification… a scoundrel or a mere rogue’ (a subtle distinction), and in any case a man afflicted by ‘moral bankruptcy’. Max concedes that Boris is likely to be the next prime minister and preemptively accuses him of conducting a ‘celebrity government as in Ukraine and the

When Boris Johnson was appointed editor of this magazine two decades ago, an unkind soul said it was like ‘entrusting a Ming vase in the hands of an ape’. The remark encapsulated many people’s worst fears about the man who will almost certainly be Britain’s prime minister in four weeks’ time, if not before: that Boris is an irresponsible joker. Similar warnings were made when he was elected London mayor. His refusal to conform to type encourages a constant expectation of imminent disaster. What if Boris flops in No. 10? Even his supporters can’t be sure he won’t fail: his election as leader is a gamble from a party that

The first time I felt like an outsider was when I was six years old. My cousin told me we needed to change our walking route to her school because of the ‘bad kids’ who supported the National Front. That was the first time. But not the last. When I was at secondary school, the other kids told me all about their summer holidays. I’d only ever go to Rochdale but pretended I’d been abroad like them, because they couldn’t tell if I had a tan. When I wanted to do the O-levels and A-levels I needed although I had a couple of inspiring teachers who I’ll be forever grateful to I

Boris Johnson is currently the quiet man of the Tory leadership contest, lurking in the shadows rather than courting media attention as he usually does. His campaign team has deliberately held him back from touring the studios to avoid gaffes or rows. They’re even nervous about the limited exposure he has, joking that he is ‘always one Monday column away from disaster’. Of course, it’s easier to do this when your candidate has as high a profile as Johnson: he doesn’t really need any more attention than he’s already got. It is, though, not the greatest of compliments from those members of his campaign team that they seem to feel

With just a few days to go until nominations close in the Tory leadership contest, candidates are busy trying to shore up support in the parliamentary party. There are five – Sam Gyimah, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Mark Harper and Esther McVey – who currently don’t have sufficient nominations to make it onto the ballot paper. Harper tried to get some attention by asking a question about the Peterborough by-election at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, while Gyimah has been doing the rounds in Portcullis House as MPs have trundled through. Meanwhile I understand that Rory Stewart has cancelled all his media appearances in order to hold as many meetings as

Why would you stand for the Tory leadership? If you’re someone like Dominic Raab, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, you’ve been planning this for months, with a team in place since at least the start of the year because you really think you can win this. But there are other entrants who are highly unlikely to get anywhere near the final two but are still standing. Some of these MPs may think they genuinely have an outside chance, but others have made a variety of calculations. Rory Stewart, for instance, is building a proper profile for himself as someone unafraid to walk around in public asking people what they think