Politics

After a swift leadership race, Rishi Sunak has won the contest to take over the Tory Party and become the next prime minister of the UK. And it could be the right decision for the Conservative Party, if the most recent YouGov poll is to be believed. Released just this morning it says voters familiar

For a man who was, until recently, thousands of miles away on a Caribbean island (and has yet to put his hat in the ring) it is extraordinary that Boris Johnson’s name has dominated this leadership race. Such is the strength of feeling around the former PM: love him or loathe him, we can’t stop

Former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has said he is backing Boris Johnson to return as prime minister despite having previously called for him to resign in the summer. “I’m backing Boris. He got the big calls right, whether it was ordering more vaccines ahead of more waves of Covid, arming Ukraine early against the advice of

Boris Johnson has been pictured by Sky News making his way back to the UK. The former prime minister has been on holiday in the Dominican Republic but is set to return to London after telling an ally that he will run to lead the country again. He is flying back in economy alongside his

It could be all over on Monday or the Conservatives may be about to mesmerise the nation with another round of vicious infighting. The Conservative Party rules can’t be changed. They are that Conservative MPs draw up a shortlist of two candidates from their number. The 180,000 paid-up and unelected party members then choose between

Rishi Sunak has become the first to receive 100 public endorsements from Tory MPs – enough to meet the threshold for nominations in the leadership race. The winner of the contest will replace Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister and become the country’s third leader this year. Party rules for the leadership contest mean all

Rishi Sunak has announced his bid to become the next Conservative leader and prime minister, six weeks after Liz Truss beat him to the top job. The former chancellor has put himself forward for the second time in a matter of months after the extraordinary resignation of Ms Truss on Thursday, 44 days into her

Candidates to replace Liz Truss as Tory leader will need at least 100 nominations from Conservative MPs, 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady has said. This will rule out a number of candidates from running, and means the maximum number of people able to stand is three. During the last leadership election, Rishi Sunak won

Sir Keir Starmer has called for an immediate general election after Liz Truss announced her resignation as prime minister. The Labour leader said the Conservative Party has “shown it no longer has a mandate to govern”, adding that British people “deserve so much better than this revolving door of chaos”. “The Tories cannot respond to

After Wednesday, it’s worth asking: who is in charge? The last 12 hours suggests it’s very hard to say. Few say Liz Truss, since her word is no longer her bond, her writ limited. So what are the other possibilities? Few think it is Mark Fullbrook, the embattled chief of staff, but few believe his

Liz Truss has pulled out of a planned event this afternoon, during which she was due to take questions from journalists. Downing Street has not given any reason for the canning of the trip to an electronics manufacturer. It comes as the prime minister fights for her political survival following a torrid week in Westminster

It’s a sign of how bad things are for the new prime minister that only her third Prime Minister’s Questions is being billed as a potentially defining moment in her short premiership. MPs tell me that how Liz Truss performs at the dispatch box against Sir Keir Starmer at their weekly joust will be an

A minister has warned Liz Truss cannot afford to make any more mistakes, as the prime minister fights to save her premiership. Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said he remains supportive of Ms Truss, unlike many of his colleagues, but there was no more room for error after a day of U-turns. New chancellor Jeremy

Liz Truss has apologised for the “mistakes” she has made in her first few volatile weeks as prime minister – but insisted she will lead the Tories into the next general election. Speaking for the first time after almost all the tax cuts announced in last month’s mini-budget were scrapped, Ms Truss said: “I recognise

After allowing her chancellor to rewrite the government’s energy price plan, Liz Truss has just removed one of her biggest remaining arguments for staying in power. Yes, reversing the Kwarteng income tax cut, abolishing the dividend tax changes and the VAT-free shopping scheme are very politically painful. But abandoning the existing energy price cap scheme

Just last month Liz Truss told Britons they could “ride out the storm” in her first speech as prime minister – now she has been warned “the game is up” as rumours swirl of plots to oust her. Tory MPs have started to publicly call for Ms Truss to step down, while former chancellor George

A senior Tory has accused the government of looking “like libertarian jihadists” and treating the country as “laboratory mice” over the past few weeks. Robert Halfon, former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and an education minister under Theresa May, said he believes Liz Truss needs to apologise to the public for the economic turmoil

Labour has launched a fresh attack on the Conservative Party with a series of scathing adverts. Sir Keir Starmer’s party will be looking to capitalise on the government’s current leadership crisis and recent unpopular economic polices as it gears up for the next general election. In a set of four damning posters, Labour has taken

Jeremy Hunt has confirmed that Prime Minister Liz Truss’s economic vision is not only dead, but that the immediate actions of this administration will be to do almost exactly the opposite of what the prime minister promised during the summer leadership campaign. This was a cold, hard reality check from a chancellor who is being

Tory MPs appear to be divided over the future of Liz Truss as prime minister following her major U-turn announcement. Ms Truss reversed a key policy to scrap the planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25% after she sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor. Heated messages were shared in Conservative Party WhatsApp groups after

Labour has pledged to ban fracking “once and for all”, calling it “an unjust charter for earthquakes”. The party is working to bring forward an opposition day motion to maintain the ban on the controversial gas extraction method, after Liz Truss said she would lift it as part of her energy security plan. The moratorium

The government is set to raise corporation tax despite promising not to do so in the mini-budget, Sky News understands. Kwasi Kwarteng, who was today sacked as chancellor, promised during last month’s mini-budget to keep corporation tax at 19% instead of increasing it to 25%, as was planned. The change in direction is the second

Discussions are under way in Downing Street over whether to scrap some of the contentious proposals in the chancellor’s tax-cutting mini-budget, Sky News understands. The proposed changes to corporation tax and dividend tax are understood to be under discussion. Downing Street insisted earlier on Thursday that there will be no more U-turns on policies in

Liz Truss has pledged not to cut public spending to balance the books in her first PMQs since the chancellor’s contentious mini-budget – despite a leading economics-focused think tank warning the government is billions short of the sums needed. The prime minister insisted she was “absolutely” not planning public spending reductions, but vowed that taxpayers’

Jacob Rees-Mogg has declared his confidence in the governor of the Bank of England, but disputed that pension funds are at “systemic” risk. Speaking to Sky News, the business secretary said “of course” he has confidence in Andrew Bailey, describing him as “respected”. He questioned, however, whether there was a “systemic problem” with pensions after

Renewable energy generators and nuclear power plants face having their revenues capped as part of new government legislation. The Energy Prices Bill will be introduced in the Commons on Wednesday to bring into law its plan to help households and businesses with soaring energy costs over the winter and beyond. But late on Tuesday, the

Sir Keir Starmer has removed his chief of staff as part of a major restructuring of the Labour leader’s office as he moves the party to an “election footing”. In a statement released on Tuesday, the party said the Labour leader held a call with staff this morning alongside the general secretary and announced plans

MPs will return to Westminster on Tuesday after a chaotic conference season, with the chancellor set to face questions for the first time since the fallout from his mini-budget. Parliament has been in recess for over two weeks to allow the parties to hold their annual political gatherings, but will kick off at 2.30pm with

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s debt-cutting plan will be published on 31 October – three weeks earlier than planned – alongside an independent economic forecast, the Treasury has confirmed. Both the publication of the medium-term financial plan and the forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had been due on 23 November, but the chancellor has

Cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi has warned restive Tory MPs that “dither or delay will end in defeat” as he appealed for unity just over a month after Liz Truss took office. Speaking to Sky News, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster stressed the need for party colleagues to “focus” on delivery or face being

Four cabinet ministers have urged their colleagues to rally behind Liz Truss or risk election defeat amid infighting in the Tory party. Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Nadhim Zahawi, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt and Environment Secretary Ranil Jayawardena have all written articles calling on the party to unite around the

On Thursday, the day after the end of the conference season, YouGov hosted a focus group with seven Blue Wall voters from around the South East exclusively for Sky News. Some natural Conservatives, some former Tony Blair supporters, all with one thing in common: each voted Tory in the 2019 general election. Now their votes

Liz Truss has “showed the world she is unfit to be prime minister” and is a “symptom of the Westminster dysfunction”, SNP’s deputy leader will say in his opening speech at the party conference. Keith Brown will accuse the prime minister of delivering “more chaos and confusion than even the most pessimistic prediction” when he