Tory leadership race

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Mo Farah’s secret, hot weather warnings and hot competition for the Tory leadership

Home The Conservatives began the process of finding a new leader, which involves balloting MPs and then sending two names for party members to choose between. Eight candidates initially qualified for the process set out by the 1922 Committee, by gaining nominations from 20 MPs: Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat and Nadhim Zahawi. Grant Shapps, Rehman Chishti and Sajid Javid withdrew before the off. Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, a fancied contender, had decided not to stand, as had Steve Baker, who was not widely fancied. Michael Gove (whom Downing Street had denounced a week earlier as a ‘snake’ when the

Toby Young Toby Young

Has identity politics had its day?

Have we reached peak woke? In Hollywood, that seems to be the emerging consensus. Thanks to the box office success of Top Gun: Maverick and the disappointing performance of Pixar’s Lightyear, in which Buzz Lightyear’s commanding officer is a black lesbian, the studios think audiences may be tiring of being lectured to. The same is true of the streaming platforms, with the biggest hits of the year being shows that take the mickey out of corporate virtue-signalling (The Boys) or just celebrate old-fashioned American heroism (The Terminal List). In this context, the reaction of Netflix when some of its employees staged a walkout over Dave Chappelle’s un-PC jokes in his