The latest Tory advert is 2:44 of Rishi Sunak doing a flip chart lecture culminating in him drawing a sad house I swear it’s real

The spinners are doing a great job, and lazy hacks and stenographers are doing their best.

But if I was a self-styled election winning machine, who would inevitably be held aloft by his colleagues, I’d like to have persuaded more than 1 in 10 of them to come out publicly by now It’s *almost* as if it’s only been 3 months since he was told that two-thirds of his colleagues were ready to vote no confidence in him, after lying about an alleged sex pest, breaking the law and humiliating them all.

Vote winner:
66% incompetent
76% untrustworthy
54% weak

💥NOW ON @TimesRadio

Conservative MP Henry Smith tells me that the Tory Party "can't delay" in removing Liz Truss as Prime Minister.

"I think we need new leadership..." Henry Smith: "In a time of uncertainty, we need solid leadership and I'm afraid I'm very sorry to say that has been distinctly lacking from Downing Street in the last several weeks...

Tory MPs are in meltdown…

“This is terminal decay,” one tells me. One senior Tory says it was whips office pushing the “confidence vote” issue.

But says it will have been Rees-Mogg who pushed the manifesto-breaking fracking policy into the amendment.

“The chief whip has gone to protect Rees-Mogg”

PODCAST: #PMQsUnpacked

Stop sniggering at the back…

We ⏯ the Commons action live to analyse Truss vs Starmer in real time.

Including @patrickkmaguire doing impressions.

🎧LISTEN pod.fo/e/1484ce Show me another show which analyses PMQs with impressions of Alan Bennett

💥

Tory MP Steve Double tells me on @TimesRadio that Liz Truss's position is "increasingly untenable" and she will have to "consider her position" Tory MP Steve Double on @TimesRadio:

“I think her position is becoming increasingly untenable. We've seen a complete reversal of just about everything she stood for in her leadership election campaign….

💥 Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt tells me #TimesRadio benefits SHOULD rise with inflation: “I’ve always supported - whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system - keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense to do so. That’s what I voted for before.” 1/4 Mordaunt: “We want to make sure that people are looked after and that people can pay their bills. We are not about trying to help people with one hand and take away with another.”

First cabinet minister to go public to oppose the idea of not uprating benefits with inflation 2/4

Ahahaha. Liz Truss ladles on how pleased she is to be on BBC Leeds.

But is repeatedly pushed by @therimaahmed on her absence during a week of chaos.

“Where have you been?” Listening to Truss now on BBC Norfolk you can’t help thinking it might have been better if they’d just done the energy bills stuff, and not the “elements of controversy” in the mini-budget

EXC: From the cabinet down there is private unease and anger about the £45 billion package of tax cuts, and the fall-out.

One cabinet minister told me the government had got the timing and sequencing wrong by announcing it while inflation was so high

thetimes.co.uk/article/cabine… A former minister said: “It’s as bad as partygate. I’ve got members resigning telling me they’ll never vote for me again while she is prime minister. Where is she? If you are going to be Maggie at least come and front it out.“

Run for office?

They can barely stand like normal people Sunak is tieless so all eyes on Tugendhat to do a Rory Stewart

HOW TO REMOVE A PM

Tory MP Geoffrey Clifton Brown spells out to me on @timesradio what the 1922 committee will do next:

"There are there are two routes by which he could be persuaded to resign...

1/4 "One is by the whole executive of the 1922 Committee, having taken into account the wider views of the entire parliamentary party, and then decide to change the rules. That is quite difficult, I think to change the rules in mid contest." 2/4

Priti Patel tells @TimesRadio:

"Oliver is a loss, I say that a colleague but also he has worked incredibly hard in government." Patel to @TimesRadio:

"What I would say is we have gone through very publicly a very difficult period."

"It's important that we reflect on these results. We fought these against a difficult and challenging backdrop."

Business minister Paul Scully tells @timesradio: “I think the prime minister not only did he apologise, he made his statement, in his opinion at the time he was in a work setting… nonetheless he respects the decision of the police… paid fine…made apology”

Ringing endorsement? Scully: “Two years on, 120,000 have died… There is palpable anger out there.”

It sounds pompous, but it’s the total disrespect for the office. You are working in Downing St ffs. For the actual prime minister. Get dressed properly and do some bloody work.

Instead it’s all skinny jeans and trainers and shitposting and vanity photographers and piss-up. In 17 years in Westminster, I mostly had the idea that people working in government were largely trying their best (even the useless ones), were daunted by that black door, were grown ups running the country.

Now it’s all wine o’clock and who gets a spin on Carrie’s lazy susan

The war hero and the prisoner.

Family history: a thread

@hugorifkind’s brilliant show on @TimesRadio is sponsored by @AncestryUK, so they took a look at my family tree.

The genealogist Simon Pearce is a genius. Last week we looked at the war record of my great-grandfather, Edward John Mildon, serving in Gallipoli, Palestine, Balkans and the Somme, for which he received medals for gallantry from Britain and France.

Today we do the other side of genealogy...

Mood among Tory MPs is seriously bad. Even those who think this is the right thing to do now are dismayed that it’s come to this.

“Shambolic. Rudderless ramblings. constituents getting in touch furious or in tears.”

“Grim grim grim”

“I think it could be his Suez” All a bit late and cobbled too.

Cabinet ministers didn’t know that furlough was being extended or that “Stay At Home” was back until they saw it on the TV.

Just like Africa.
#Longleat 🦓

Bumper week on the award-winning Red Box podcast...

🎂 for the Commons...

https://twitter.com/timesredbox/status/1320790532914860034

Really fascinating, open interview with Paul Boateng...

https://twitter.com/timesredbox/status/1321142893860560896

This. Is. Not. Normal.

I first used this phrase to describe Jews protesting outside parliament against the leader of the opposition.

I used it too many times in the following months + years.

Today confirms that what went on under Corbyn was not only not normal but unlawful 1/5 I'm not Jewish. I don't pretend to understand any faith.

But too often I had Jewish friends and strangers message me to say thank you for speaking out.

And much too often the absurd army of Corbynista Twitter warriors roared into action to insist all was well. 2/5

THREAD

The war on Whitehall has spread to a new front: interior design. After Dominic Cummings installed his own “Mission Control” from which to run the government, cabinet ministers have designs on their departments... Priti Patel is kitting out a room at the Home Office as her own command and control centre with high-tech screens displaying real-time data. The new “ops-room” will be the hub of border preparations for the ending of the Brexit transition period in December.

Big row brewing over forcing MPs to vote in person.

As many as 250 MPs might stay away for health/age/travel/childcare reasons. So if you live in their seat, you don't get a say.

And practicalities of voting while social distancing are *crazy* 1/4

thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/m… Even with around 400 MPs, socially distancing along corridors and up stairs, the queue could stretch for a kilometre

This map is doing the rounds in parliament.

*Members disperse*

2/4

thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/m…