“Senior figures” urge removal of Boris as Foreign Secretary
“Infighting dominated the start of the Tory conference yesterday as Theresa May came under pressure to rein in Boris Johnson. Her attempt to reach out to younger voters was overshadowed by the Foreign Secretary’s second high-profile intervention on Brexit in a fortnight. Still weakened by the fallout from her election disaster, the Prime Minister was urged by some in her party yesterday to silence Mr Johnson, or remove him from her Cabinet.” – Daily Mail
- Boris accused of “posturing” by setting out “red lines” on Brexit – Daily Telegraph
- May swerves question of whether he is unsackable – The Sun
- Foreign Secretary’s Conference speech expected to be loyal – The Times
- Cabinet split is harming business says the British Chamber of Commerce – BBC
- Foreign Office in “power grab” to take control of Aid budget – The Sun
- Ruth backs Boris – The Sun
- Trade talks to begin by Christmas – Daily Express
>Today: ToryDiary: He’s back! From his lowest total ever, Johnson springs to the top of our Next Tory Leader survey
>Yesterday: ToryDiary: Help to Buy, and unruly ministers, leave the Tory conference underwhelmed on Day One
Hammond to announce £300 million for rail links to boost Northern Powerhouse
“Chancellor Philip Hammond is to announce an extra £300m to improve rail links in northern England, in a speech to the Conservative party conference. Plans to electrify the whole Trans-Pennine route had previously been axed. But the new money will be used to ensure HS2 will link to faster trains between Liverpool and Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and York – so-called Northern Powerhouse rail. Mr Hammond will also allocate £100m for 33 road schemes, from existing budgets.” – BBC
- Conservatives “must not be afraid” to back the free market Hammond to declare – Financial Times
Gauke is pressing ahead with Universal Credit roll out
“Ministers will today face down Tory rebels and announce that they will push ahead with the continued rollout of Universal Credit. David Gauke, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is expected to assure rebels that claimants will not lose out despite warnings by 12 Tory MPs. It comes as Theresa May is determined to ensure that domestic announcements are at the heart of this year’s annual conference in Manchester in the wake of damaging splits over Brexit.” – Daily Telegraph
May stops short of apology for calling the election
“Theresa May has stopped short of apologising for calling the general election which lost her party seats in the House of Commons at a speech to activists at the annual Tory conference in Manchester. Addressing an audience of supporters and campaigners the Prime Minister said she was sorry that the result was poor and that “good” MPs lost their seats, but she failed to hold her hands up for calling the vote in the first place.” – Daily Telegraph
- Get on with governing – The Sun Says
Rees-Mogg says Tory election manifesto appeared to be “mainly about being horrible to older people”
“Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg tonight said he is not sure Theresa May will lead the Tory Party into the next election – as he left the door open to run for leader in the future. The backbencher – who is tipped as a possible candidate – pointed out that the PM’s popularity nosedived in a way no one foresaw. He hit out at the Tory Party’s election campaign and manifesto, which he said appeared to be mainly about ‘being horrible to older people’….Speaking at a Conservative Home fringe event at the Tory Party conference, Mr Rees-Mogg hesitated when asked if Mrs May will lead the party to the next election.” – Daily Mail
- Demonstrators wave placard showing Rees-Mogg with an arrow through his head – The Sun
>Today: ToryDiary: Sketch – Rees-Mogg says if there is no Brexit deal “we pay them not a brass farthing”
Davidson: Corbyn will come crashing down just as SNP did
“Ruth Davidson delivered a rousing speech at the Tory conference yesterday, as Theresa May declared the two of them had ‘saved the Union’. In her barnstorming speech – for which she received two standing ovations – the Scottish Tory leader said Jeremy Corbyn will come ‘crashing down to Earth’ just like the Scottish National Party. And she warned that the party must ‘unite and fight’ behind Mrs May in order to burst Mr Corbyn’s bubble, as the Tories had done to the SNP in Scotland.” – Daily Mail
- Ruth awakening for dozy delegates – Patrick Kidd, The Times
- Tories can burst Corbyn’s bubble – Leader, Daily Telegraph
>Today: MPsETC: Iain Dale’s 100 most influential people on the Right 2017. May tops it. Davis is second. And Davidson third.
>Yesterday: MPsETC: “We need to get to work right now”: Davidson’s conference speech in full
Be prepared for another snap election warns Pickles
“The Conservatives must be prepared for “sudden elections” at any time by creating a manifesto committee to vet policies and establishing a new youth wing, an internal review has found. The inquest into the result of the 8 June election, drawn up by former cabinet minister Sir Eric Pickles, made 126 recommendations to make sure the party is better prepared for any future snap elections at a time of political volatility. Pickles, a former party chairman, said there was a “clear campaigning deficiency” in the party and called for a “fundamental re-evaluation” of the way it runs elections.” – The Guardian
- Conservatives should negotiate services discounts for Party members says Halfon – The Sun
- The Conservative Party needs a grassroots revolution – Ben Harris-Quinney, Daily Express
- We need to win in Welsh cities says Andrew RT Davies – Wales Online
>Today: Lord Ashcroft’s conference diary: A snap election should be snap for them – not for us
>Yesterday: Eric Pickles on Comment: My general election review is a blueprint for a stronger party
Javid promises action on rogue landlords
“Tenants will have a legal right to demand landlords fix broken pipes and holes in the wall under Tory plans to win back ‘Generation Rent’. Sajid Javid has laid out a host of new Tory policies to win back Generation Rent from Labour by tightening regulation. In sweeping reforms unveiled yesterday, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said it was time to “level the playing field” for Brits trapped in squalid housing. He said all landlords will have to become members of a redress scheme – to give tenants “quick and easy” access to essential repairs. The Local Government secretary said the Government will require all letting agents to be regulated and look at giving tenants a “Housing Court” to take on rogue landlords.” – The Sun
Freeman: How we Tories can turn things around
“We need to champion the creative, empowering anti-establishment spirit of entrepreneurialism – in the private and public sectors, in commercial and social enterprise. We need to celebrate the ‘spirit’, values and character of inspired compassionate conservatism: the monopoly-busting, growth-enhancing, job-creating power of enterprise. Voters want to know whose side we are on. We need to show them.” – George Freeman, Daily Telegraph
Perrier: More pizzazz is needed
“It is not what anyone could describe as a good start to a conference. Stories of cabinet splits; the prime minister needing two lots of make-up and a pep talk from the SAS after the election; and problems with universal credit dominated the Sunday media. No 10 will not be happy. In her interview on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One the prime minister looked grey and tired. In the Florence speech, against a white backdrop, the same. If pictures tell a thousand words then it is time someone gave her some colour. If we are looking for a bit of pizzazz in the words instead we are going to be disappointed.” – Katie Perrior, The Times
- A robust performance – Trevor Kavanagh, The Sun
Abandon plans for a second independence referendum, Mundell tells SNP
“First Minister Nicola Sturgeon must take a second independence referendum off the table once and for all, David Mundell will say today. The Scottish Secretary will tell the Conservative Party conference in Manchester that unless the SNP abandon plans for a re-run of the 2014 vote, the only way to keep the UK together will be to put Ruth Davidson into Bute House. Mr Mundell, who was joined by 12 Scottish Conservative MPs after 12 years as the only Tory north of the Border in Westminster, is expected to say: “The arrival of a dozen new Scottish Conservative MPs at Westminster in June confirmed something Ruth Davidson has been saying for a long time now: Scotland is not the SNP.” – The Scotsman
d’Ancona: May has identified the challenge
“The identity of May’s successor is a secondary issue compared with the greater crisis that she and her party face – and which, unhappily for her, she understands more clearly than she is able to articulate to the public. It is a crisis of collective identity and purpose, a challenge to the very idea of conservatism. Labour’s electoral rise has spooked the Tories because it challenges every preconception that most of them share about the world, its rule book and its ideological contours. It is a rich irony that the passage of May’s manifesto that most annoyed her party was also the most acute and prescient. “We do not believe in untrammelled free markets,” that much-maligned document declared.” – Matthew d’Ancona, The Guardian
Ridley: Case for free trade has never been stronger
“Somehow in recent years we have let the authoritarians redefine free commerce as a regressive step, oppressive on the workers, yet free trade creates jobs and raises wages. It is the most radical and liberating idea ever conceived: that people should be free to exchange goods and services with each other as they please, whether they live in different villages, cities or countries, and without governments being able to stop them. The Conservatives cannot compete with Labour by offering pale imitations of its patronising paternalism. They should offer the young something more revolutionary, liberating, egalitarian, disruptive, co-operative and democratic than stale statism. It’s called freedom.” – Matt Ridley, The Times
Hammond: We make progress by embracing the market
“It frees people and businesses, encourages them to create, take risks, give good ideas a go because they can see the results and benefit from their success. This makes all of our lives better in a way no amount of state control can ever do. Profits being reinvested in research to generate new products. Supermarkets providing more choice and better quality at lower prices, delivering to your home at the click of a button. Or digital businesses giving the world the smart phone and dreaming up services to transform lives by using it. None of this would have come about if they had been run by some government commission.” Philip Hammond, City AM
>Yesterday: Charlotte Black on Comment: Reconnecting stakeholders with capitalism
Stranded passengers on Monarch flights will be brought home says Grayling
“Monarch Airlines has ceased trading and its 300,000 future bookings for flights and holidays have been cancelled, the Civil Aviation Authority has said. About 110,000 customers are currently overseas and the government has asked the CAA to charter more than 30 planes to bring them back to the UK. The process is the UK’s “biggest ever peacetime repatriation”, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said.” – BBC
Huge majority of Catalans vote for independence in “illegal” poll
“Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont says the Spanish region has won the right to statehood following a contentious referendum that was marred by violence. He said the door had been opened to a unilateral declaration of independence. Catalan officials later said 90% of those who voted backed independence in Sunday’s vote. The turnout was 42.3%. Spain’s constitutional court had declared the poll illegal and hundreds of people were injured as police used force to try to block voting. Officers seized ballot papers and boxes at polling stations.” – BBC
- 850 hurt as police fire rubber bullets at voters – The Times
Trump rejects diplomatic solution for North Korea
“President Trump suggested Sunday that he wasn’t interested in a diplomatic solution in North Korea by speaking to Pyongyang. ‘I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man…,’ Trump tweeted first. ‘Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!’ Trump’s tweets come just as Tillerson has been urging a calming of tensions between North Korea and the United States, as the secretary of state acknowledged yesterday that the two countries have been in contact. ‘Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail,’ Trump boasted in another tweet Sunday afternoon. ” – Daily Mail
News in brief
- Moggmentum comes to Tory Conference – Spectator Coffee House
- Global businesses increasingly see Britain as an integral trading partner – Mark Garnier, Brexit Central
- I’m not afraid of chlorinated chicken says Rees-Mogg – Independent
- Philip Hammond – not Theresa May – holds the keys to defeat Corbynism – George Trefgarne, Unherd
- Repressive Madrid has made the Catalan crisis even worse – Walter Ellis, Reaction