Rishi Sunak Just Made His Final Conference Speech To Tory Members As Party Leader

Posted on 29/09/2024 by Boris Clair

Rishi Sunak has officially made his last ever conference speech as the leader of the Conservative Party.

The party’s annual gathering usually has those at the top leading the whole event, but the former PM – who is still leader until November – has taken the almost unprecedented step of not speaking from the main stage at all this year.

Allowing the spotlight to fall on the four remaining contenders vying to replace him, Sunak just made a 15-minute “thank you” speech to party members away from the main hall.

Speaking to a room – which was not exactly packed to the brim – Sunak was quick to apologise for leading the party into its worst set of election results ever.

He said: “I am only sorry that your efforts could not deliver the results you deserved.”

But one person in the crowd heckled him, saying: “It wasn’t you!”

He received further support when he confirmed that this would be his last speech to conference as the Tory Party leader, as another mysterious attendee shouted, “We love you, Rishi!”

He did not respond.

The former PM also wasted no time in criticising Labour, whom he claimed were trying to “rewrite history”.

New PM Keir Starmer has blamed his more unpopular decisions – like restricting the winter fuel payments to those on pension credit – on the £22bn black hole Labour claim the Tories left behind in the government finances.

Sunak said conference this year was clearly such a “hot ticket” that he was surprised the prime minister “hasn’t asked someone to buy it for him”.

He added: “Socialists always run out of other people’s money, something Lord Alli is finding out as we speak.”

Lord Alli is a Labour donor who has been in the spotlight this month over the amount of freebies Starmer has declared since 2019.

Sunak concluded his speech by saying: “I do want to finish with a final ask of all of you.

“Whoever wins this contest, give them your backing.”

He continued: “We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling. We must not nurse old grudges but build new friendships.

“We must always remember what unites us rather than obsess over where we might differ, because when we turn in on ourselves we lose and the country ends up with a Labour government.”

Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick are competing to replace Sunak as the leader of the Tory Party, and will use this week’s conference to pitch themselves to the Conservative members.

The Tories Oppose Labour’s Plan To Extend The Smoking Ban – But Last Year They Wanted To Make It Completely Illegal

Posted on 29/08/2024 by Boris Clair

The Tories have criticised Labour’s plan to ban smoking outside pubs just months after saying they wanted to make it completely illegal.

The former prime minister’s decision to call an early election meant he ran out of time to turn the policy into law.

Labour have said they will introduce the legislation themselves, and today it emerged that they want to go further by banning smoking in pub gardens, outdoor restaurants and outside sports stadiums and hospitals.

The Conservatives posted on X that was “more evidence that Labour hates freedom”.

“This isn’t about people’s health. It’s about control,” they added.

But embarrassingly for the Tories, a community note was added to the post pointing out the party’s previous support for an outright smoking ban.

Other users of the social media platform were also quick to highlight the Conservatives’ apparent hypocrisy.

Most Brits Do Not Care Who The Next Tory Leader Is, Brutal New Poll Finds

Posted on 13/08/2024 by Boris Clair

Most Brits do not actually care who the next Conservative leader is, according to a new poll.

In yet another humiliating twist for the Tories – just a month after their worst ever electoral defeat, Ipsos UK has found 62% of Brits surveyed were not interested in following who would replace Rishi Sunak.

To make matters worse, that includes 36% of Conservative voters.

The pollsters found none of the candidates are very well known among the British public, despite all of them holding ministerial roles at some point.

Just 45% of the 1,091 adults surveyed said they know a great deal or a fair amount about former home secretary Priti Patel, followed by 26% for shadow home secretary James Cleverly, and 24% for shadow housing secretary Kemi Badenoch.

The polling, which took place between August 2 and 5, also found 34% of the public said they do not favour any of the current candidates.

There was a narrow preference for Cleverly among those surveyed, with 18% suggesting he would do a good job, followed by Patel (17%) and shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat (17%).

Badenoch is slightly behind on 14%, putting her on par with former migration minister Robert Jenrick.

Meanwhile, 9% thought shadow pensions secretary Mel Stride would do a good job leading the opposition – which, unfortunately, is the same percentage of respondents who backed a candidate called “Stuart Lewis”, a fake politician added to the poll by Ipsos.

But, it’s not all doom and gloom for Stride.

While a whopping 44% of respondents said they thought Patel would do a bad job, (and 22% thought the same of Badenoch, 20% of Cleverly, 15% of Jenrick, 11% of Tugendhat), just 9% said thought Stride would also perform poorly.

Trinh Tu, UK managing director, public affairs, said: “This new poll suggests high level of public apathy about the Conservative leadership race.”

She added that Patel seems to be most divisive figure at the moment, but for the most part, “Britons are unfamiliar with the main candidates and say they do not care very much about who will emerge at the winner”.

Meanwhile, 65% said a backing from ex-PM Liz Truss would give that candidate the worst chance of winning.

Far fewer (46%) said Reform leader and MP Nigel Farage would have a negative effect on a candidate’s hopes of victory, and 44% said the same for ex-PM Boris Johnson.

Only former PM and Rishi Sunak’s foreign secretary David Cameron was seen as the one who could have a positive impact overall – 31% said it would worsen a candidate’s chances with an endorsement, compared to 32% who said it would improve.

Suella Braverman Was Handed £16.8k Of Taxpayers’ Money When She Was Sacked By Rishi Sunak

Posted on 30/07/2024 by Boris Clair

Suella Braverman was paid £16,876 of taxpayers’ money when she was sacked as the home secretary under Rishi Sunak last November, new accounts reveal.

The former cabinet minister now sits as a backbencher in the Commons, but had served on the Tory frontline until she was fired for writing an article in The Times slamming the police.

She made a series of inflammatory remarks ahead of some London protests, claiming the police were guilty of having a left-wing bias, and hitting out at “pro-Palestinian mobs” ahead of a wave of right-wing violence in Whitehall.

Downing Street soon revealed she did not get the text cleared with No.10 before publication, suggesting a split between the PM and his then-home secretary.

She was promptly sacked, triggering a major cabinet reshuffle days later.

But, the Home Office published the annual report and accounts for 2023 to 2024 today, and revealed Braverman received the generous “non-taxable exit payment” at the end of last year.

That was the second time Braverman had to resign as home secretary; she was fired by Liz Truss after she breached the ministerial code by sharing an official document from her personal email address with a parliamentary colleague.

She was reappointed six days later when Sunak was in No.10, after the new PM said she had “accepted her mistake”.

A Labour source told HuffPost UK: “The fact that Suella Braverman was able to walk away with a tax-free payout of this size after being sacked for the second time in a year demonstrates how the ministerial severance system was brought into disrepute by the last Tory government, and why it will need to change under Labour.”

Braverman was expected to try and run to be the next Tory leader after Sunak announced he would be stepping down following their historic election defeat.

However, she announced she was withdrawing from it – even though she supposedly had the 10 MPs required to to enter the contest – because the “traumatised” party did not want to listen to her take on why it failed.

Many supporters expected to back her reportedly switched to fellow right-wing Tory Robert Jenrick after the election.

Robert Jenrick is standing to be the next Tory leader

Jenrick, the former immigration minister under Sunak, resigned from the government last December – but he also received a generous tax-free pay-out, according to the Home Office accounts.

He was handed £7,920 when he quit the front bench over the Rwanda deportation bill, claiming it did not go fair enough.

Cabinet Minister Accuses Rishi Sunak Of ‘Deliberately Covering Up’ Problems Within Government

Posted on 28/07/2024 by Boris Clair

A cabinet minister has accused former PM Rishi Sunak of “deliberately covering up” the country’s crises when he was in government.

Speaking on Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said the Tories had left the country in a much worse state than previously expected – and that Labour were only just discovering how bad it is.

Reed claimed the Conservatives left a “catastrophic” inheritance behind – although Phillips replied: “Is there an element of, let’s call it ‘Kabuki theatre’ here?”

He pointed out that chancellor Rachel Reeves herself said in June that, “we’ve got the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] now, we know things are in a pretty bad state, you don’t win at the election to find that out.’”

Reeves is expected to say the Tories left a £20bn black hole in a speech to parliament on Monday.

Phillips continued: “Yet now, you’re suddenly going, ‘oh my god, there’s all these things we didn’t know.’

“Was she wrong then or is she just doing theatre now?”

“Well there are things outside of what the OBR are covering,” Reed said, pointing to the overcrowding in prisons which he claimed the Tories had not been upfront about.

But Phillips recalled a previous Labour press release about the overcrowding, suggesting the party knew about the crisis ahead of the getting into government.

“There isn’t anything new that you could not have known,” the Sky News host said.

Reed hit back: “We know now the prime minister received a letter from civil servants a week before he called the election warning him about this critical failure point, and that judges would no longer be able to send convicted criminals to prison if they deserve custodial sentence.”

Phillips said: “My point is, you and your colleagues would come in here, week after week after week, saying, ‘we don’t believe them, it’s worse than they’re saying.’

“And now suddenly you’re discovering that it’s worse than they were saying!”

“It’s not only that we didn’t know – the prime minister deliberately covered it up! They covered it up!” Reed said.

He then pointed to the real cost of the Rwanda scheme.

He said the Tories said they had spent £400m to send four volunteers to Rwanda, but Labour say they have just found out they actually spent £700m.

The cabinet minister added: “We want to get away from the politics of denial and cover-up.”

Rishi Sunak Gets A Wave Of Audible Responses In PMQs After Alluding To His Historic Election Defeat

Posted on 24/07/2024 by Boris Clair

Rishi Sunak sparked a reaction from his parliamentary colleagues when he poked fun at himself in PMQs today.

The former prime minister sent good luck wishes to Team GB ahead of the Paris Olympics, saying: “I’ve no doubt that after years of training focus and dedication, they will bring back many gold medals.

“Although – to be honest, I’m probably not the first person they’ll want to hear advice from on how to win.”

A wave of laughter followed, which soon descended into a chorus of “awh”s – and yet more laughter.

The former PM led his party through a historic defeat earlier this month, returning to parliament with just 121 seats after a gaffe-ridden campaign.

Sunak is stepping down as the Tory Party leader in November, and several of the party’s big names are expected to put themselves forward.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary, has already thrown his hat into the ring.

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🚨 NEW: Rishi Sunak opens PMQs: \"Good luck olympians, although, to be honest, I’m probably not the first person they’d want to hear advice from on how to win\" pic.twitter.com/4lorkO81G7

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) July 24, 2024

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🚨 NEW: Rishi Sunak opens PMQs: “Good luck olympians, although, to be honest, I’m probably not the first person they’d want to hear advice from on how to win” pic.twitter.com/4lorkO81G7

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) July 24, 2024

Starmer also got quite the response from the Tory benches today – but his was significantly less sympathetic.

Pressed over the funds for the carer allowance, by the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, Starmer said: “We have a more severe crisis than we thought as we go through the books of the last 14 years.

“We must review the challenges –”

Starmer broke off amid a roar of disapproval from the Conservative benches, before adding: “I know they don’t like it.

“There was a reason the electorate rejected them so profoundly.”

The PM added that Labour have found “failure” everywhere since getting into government.

Even Rishi Sunak Is Mocking His Own Chaotic Time In Downing Street Now

Posted on 17/07/2024 by Boris Clair

Rishi Sunak joked “life comes at you fast” almost two weeks after he lost his job as prime minister on Wednesday.

Now the leader of the Opposition, Sunak seems to have moved away from the tetchy reputation he had and is even poking fun at himself.

In just his second speech from the despatch box on the other side of the Commons today, Sunak said: “If I may offer some words of advice to the members opposite.

“On the government benches, life comes at you fast.”

Alluding to his rapid rise to the top, Sunak – who only became an MP in 2015 – said: “Soon you might be fortunate enough to be tapped on the shoulder and offered a junior ministerial role.

“Then you’ll find yourself attending cabinet. Then, in the cabinet.

“And then, when the prime minister’s position becomes untenable” – cue a wave of laughter around the chamber as he referred to Liz Truss’ dramatic fall from grace – “you might end up being called to the highest office”.

“And before you know it, you have a bright future behind you,” Sunak paused to laugh with his fellow MPs again before adding: “And you’re left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44.”

There was more giggling at that, before Sunak – still smiling – said it was right to congratulate Starmer on his “decisive victory” in the election.

“He deserves the good will of all of us in this House as he takes on the most demanding of jobs in the increasingly uncertain world in which we all live,” Sunak said.

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Rishi Sunak offers words of wisdom to the ministers on the government benches.

He jokes that \"before you know it, you have a bright future behind you and you are left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44\".

Read more: https://t.co/PAiZ4D1jU3 pic.twitter.com/OL3kzozgwN

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 17, 2024

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Rishi Sunak offers words of wisdom to the ministers on the government benches.

He jokes that “before you know it, you have a bright future behind you and you are left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44”.

Read more: https://t.co/PAiZ4D1jU3 pic.twitter.com/OL3kzozgwN

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 17, 2024

Sunak seemed equally jovial earlier in the day when he walked alongside Starmer for the State Opening of Parliament, chatting away.

The prime minister then appeared to return the favour, beginning his speech by acknowledging Sunak’s behaviour.

He said: “In every exchange since the election, he has gone well beyond the usual standards of generosity and I thank him for that.”

But, Starmer could not help reminding Sunak of his legacy from Downing Street.

He said: “While I respect the tone of the leader of the opposition Rishi Sunak’s contribution, I can’t stop my mind wandering to nine months ago when he was at this dispatch box.”

He described the Conservatives as a party “content to let our countries’ problems fester”.

‘A Conservative Chernobyl’: Tories Begin Their Slow March Back From Election Disaster

Posted on 12/07/2024 by Boris Clair

It’s just as well Rishi Sunak and his wife are richer than the King, because his next phone bill will be enormous.

The former prime minister spent last weekend phoning round the 175 former Tory MPs who lost their seats at the election.

“He felt it was the right thing to do,” one Sunak ally told HuffPost UK. “He feels a personal responsibility for all those who lost their seats.

“They committed their lives to public service and he wants to make sure they are supported in this difficult moment.”

Sunak made clear his remorse for his party’s worst ever election result when he made his first Commons appearance as leader of the opposition on Tuesday.

“For those of us in my party, let me begin with a message for those who are no longer sitting behind me: I am sorry,” he said.

“We have lost too many diligent, community-spirited representatives whose wisdom and expertise will be missed in the debates and the discussions ahead.”

But the former PM’s warm words have cut little ice with many in the party, who blame him for the disaster which befell them on July 4 as Keir Starmer’s Labour Party secured a 174-seat landslide majority.

Some of his most trenchant critics attended the Popular Conservatism conference in Westminster earlier this week, where the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Suella Braverman set out their prognosis of where it all went wrong for their party.

“It was a terrible result,” former Tory MEP David Campbell-Bannerman, told those present. “I call it a ‘Conservative Chernobyl’, a kind of meltdown for the Conservatives.”

Criticism of the former PM is not just confined to those on the Tory right, however.

One former cabinet minister on the party’s moderate wing said Sunak’s decision to call a summer election was a mistake.

“The best time to have it would have been to coincide with the local elections in May,” the MP said. “Tying it in with that campaign would have given us a better chance of saving more MPs and councillors. Calling it when he did made no sense.”

The improving economic picture, confirmed by higher than expected growth figures on Thursday, has led some Conservatives to conclude that Sunak would have been better to wait until the end of the year to go to the country, thereby giving voters more time to feel the benefit in their pockets.

That was disputed by one Sunak adviser, who said the calculation inside No.10 was that, to paraphrase D:Ream’s New Labour anthem, things could only get worse the longer he hung on.

“All the data we were seeing showed that hundreds of thousands of people were coming off their fixed rate mortgages every month and suddenly seeing their bills go up by hundreds of pounds because interest rates are much higher than they were,” they told HuffPost UK.

“Even if the Bank of England knocked half a per cent off the base rate, it would have made no difference to them. The longer we waited, more people were becoming poorer and inevitably blaming the government. That’s why he decided to go for July.”

The Tory Party is now in a state of limbo until a new leader is found, but that may not be until the end of the year as the party picks over the bones of what happened last week.

Sunak has said he will stay on until the mechanism for choosing his successor is decided, which suggests that an interim leader may have to be appointed to mind the shop until a permanent one is elected.

However, some believe Sunak owes it to his party to hang around until his replacement is known.

“After leading us to our worst defeat ever, the least he can day is stay on as leader for a few more months to help steady the ship,” said one MP.

“All he would really need to do is ask six questions a week at PMQs. Surely that’s not too much to ask.”

Sunak faced his remaining MPs at a meeting of the party’s 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers on Wednesday, urging them to unite to ensure they hold the new Labour government to account.

It was, by all accounts, a relatively harmonious affair, with none of those present taking the opportunity to criticise the former PM to his face for the disastrous election campaign he ran.

Outside the room, however, party grandee Sir Edward Leigh – newly installed as the Father of the House of Commons as its longest-serving male MP – was clear about the direction he believed the party should be heading in.

“We have to be a proper Conservative Party,” he said. “We have to stand for something, otherwise we’re going nowhere. Because all these people who voted for Reform will simply go on voting Reform.

“If the right-wing vote is divided, we will never win again. These people are not going to go away. We need to bring back the people who voted Reform, who want a proper Conservative Party.

“We need to have a proper leadership election now, and whoever becomes leader must articulate this point of view. Unless we bring back those Reform people we are doomed to failure.”

But another Tory MP told HuffPost UK that the party’s problems could not simply be solved by a leap to the right.

“If you look at those who voted Reform, about half of them can never be won over because they’re the ones who used to vote Ukip and the Brexit Party,” he said. “We can never be right-wing enough for them.

“But the rest are traditional Tory voters who just wanted to give us a kicking this time around and are in play next time. We can get them back by being a competent, sensible Conservative Party – not by veering off to the right.”

The fallout from the Chernobyl disaster lasted for decades. The result of the fight for the soul of the Tory Party will determine how long it is before they are ready to govern again.

‘A Conservative Chernobyl’: Can The Tories Survive Their Election Disaster?

Posted on 12/07/2024 by Boris Clair