Politics

Rishi Sunak has appointed his cabinet after being asked by the King to form a new government. The new prime minister promised to form a government of “all the talents” amid calls from senior Tories to appoint the best ministers available – rather than focusing on those who are loyal to him, as his two

Rishi Sunak will become the UK’s prime minister after meeting King Charles at Buckingham Palace this morning. At the start of the day, outgoing PM Liz Truss will hold her last cabinet meeting before she is expected to make a departing statement outside Number 10 at 10.15am. Ms Truss, who became the shortest-serving leader in

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

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 Conservative 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

Penny Mordaunt has become the first MP to enter the race to replace Liz Truss as prime minister after her dramatic resignation yesterday. The leader of the Commons announced her candidacy in a tweet on Friday afternoon, saying fellow Conservatives had urged her to stand. Ms Mordaunt, who came third in the last leadership race

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

Liz Truss has resigned as prime minister just 44 days after taking over from Boris Johnson. She will be the shortest-serving PM in British history. A new Conservative leader, who will get the keys to Number 10, is set to be elected next Friday. In a statement read outside Downing Street, Ms Truss admitted she

It was one of those days “you think has been made up”, a former Conservative adviser told Sky News last night. As MPs voted on a Labour motion to ban fracking, reports began to emerge of “bullying” and “manhandling” outside the no lobby. Tory MPs “went to bed crying”, Labour MP Chris Bryant told Sky

Suella Braverman has resigned from Liz Truss’s government after sending an official document from her personal email – and has taken aim at the prime minister as she departed the Home Office. In her resignation letter sent to the PM on Wednesday, the now former home secretary acknowledged she had breached government security rules, stating:

Liz Truss has said she is “completely committed” to the pensions triple lock at a make-or-break PMQs in the Commons on Wednesday. That means state pensions should rise in line with inflation – currently running at a rate of 10.1%. Ms Truss made the commitment in the Commons despite new chancellor Jeremy Hunt explicitly ruling

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is on a hastily-arranged visit to Washington to talk with his counterpart and White House officials about “shared security concerns” including Ukraine and Russia, a source and an official said. The secretive, last-minute nature of the trip and a comment by a second defence minister, James Heappey – who said the

The majority of Conservative Party members want Liz Truss to resign now – just six weeks after voting her in – and their preferred replacement is Boris Johnson, a new poll has found. A YouGov poll of Tory members found 55% would now vote for Rishi Sunak, who lost out to Ms Truss, if they

It looks to be over. Jeremy Hunt’s decision to not just junk most of Liz Truss’s tax-cutting plan but go further and ditch much of her flagship energy policy signalled the end of not only “Trussonomics”, but potentially the prime minister herself. When the end comes is unclear: Ms Truss may have been bought some

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

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

The new chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said there “were mistakes” in Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. Speaking to Sky News on Saturday, Mr Hunt said: “It was a mistake when we were going to be asking for difficult decisions across the board on tax and spending to cut the rate of tax paid by