Tory leadership race live: voting in second ballot closes as Liz Truss defends being loyal to Boris Johnson

Liz Truss’s launch – snap verdict

On the basis of last night’s first round results, the Liz Truss campaign is floundering. This morning she really needed something quite remarkable to give it a jump start. This launch didn’t deliver.

In presentation terms, she sounded less slick than Rishi Sunak and less personable than Penny Mordaunt. She did not tell us anything about herself that we haven’t heard before, and (like some of the other candidates) she tried to get away with taking as few questions as possible.

But the main problem was the lack of definition. Truss has the support of Boris Johnson loyalists in the party and in the media (especially the Daily Mail), but it feels as if all the candidates in this contest can’t yet work out whether they are supposed to be praising Johnson and his legacy, or rubbishing him. Rishi Sunak resigned from Johnson’s cabinet last week with a letter denouncing him, but on Tuesday was telling us what a splendid fellow he was. Truss has been running as a Johnson loyalist, but in her Q&A today it was repeatedly put to her that this was problematic. “I’m a loyal person,” she replied, half-convincingly. But she sounded less warm about him than Sunak was two days ago. If she is running as continuity Johnson, she should be willing to talk up his campaigning strengths and tie herself firmly to his 2019 red wall-focused electoral mandate.

Truss stressed her experience, particularly as international trade secretary signing post-Brexit trade deals and as foreign secretary opposing Russia. (“I would continue to lead the free world in opposing Putin,” she said, a touch hubristically.)

But, on domestic policy, her platform was threadbare. The bonanza of extravagant tax-cutting pledges that marked the opening stage of campaign seems to be over and – like Penny Mordaunt at her launch yesterday – Truss had little to say on that subject this morning. She proposed tax reforms to help parents, echoing a proposal Mordaunt made yesterday. But the main problem was that, having effectively denounced government economic policy over the past 12 years as a failure – “We cannot have business-as-usual economic management which has delivered low growth for decades” (see 10.07am) – she did not say what she was going to do about it beyond promising “bold supply side reform”, which could mean anything.

Liz Truss speaking at her campaign launch. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Updated at 06.16 EDT

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Tory leadership contest will push UK government ‘even further to right’, says Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has said the Tory leadership contest will result in the UK government shifting “even further to the right”.

Speaking at the launch of the second in what will be a series of Scottish government papers making the case for independence, she said:

The change of Tory leader seems virtually certain to be accompanied by a shift even further to the right. That means a shift even further away from the mainstream of Scottish opinion and values …

We may be just a few days into this Tory leadership contest but it is already crystal clear the issues Scotland is focused on – tackling child poverty, supporting NHS recovery, building a fairer economy and making aa just transition to net zero – will be hindered not helped by who ever becomes prime minister in the weeks ahead.

Sturgeon also said that for most of her lifetime Scotland has been under Tory prime ministers, even though the Conservatives had never won a majority, or even a plurality, of seats in Scotland during that period. “That is not democracy,” she said.

The new paper argues that independence would make Scotland more democratic. It also says that the the proportional voting systems used in Scotland for local elections and Holyrood elections are fairer than the first past the post system used to elect MPs to the House of Commons. It says:

The voting system used at Scottish local and parliamentary elections is also fairer than at UK level, with the numbers of MSPs from different parties more representative of how people actually voted.

The current governing party at Westminster has six MPs representing Scotland and has not won an election in Scotland for almost 70 years. For 39 of the 77 years since the Second World War, Scotland has been governed by UK governments that were elected by fewer than half of Scottish constituencies.

Nicola Sturgeon speaking at a press conference at Bute House in Edinburgh to launch a second independence paper Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Voting has closed in the Tory leadership ballot. The results will be announced at 3pm.

Tom Tugendhat ‘still in this fight’ for Tory leadership

Tom Tugendhat has vowed not to quit the Conservative leadership race, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.

The Penny Mordaunt campaign has decided not to hit back at Lord Frost after he gave an interview this morning saying she was not up to the job of prime minister. (See 9.20am and 11.31am.) A source in the Penny Mordaunt campaign said:

Penny has nothing but respect for Lord Frost. He did a huge amount to assist our negotiations until he resigned from government. Penny will always fight for Brexit and always has. Penny Mordaunt. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Patrick Flynn, an analyst at the betting firm Smarkets, has posted on Twitter his predictions for the results of the second round.

Flynn has a good record at making predictions in these contests and he spoke to my colleague Archie Bland, for today’s First Edition briefing, to explain how he thinks votes get redistributed.

The UK government’s decision to try deporting some asylum seekers to Rwanda seems to have led to more people seeking asylum in Ireland, Micheál Martin, the taoiseach (Irish PM), has said. He told reporters:

We will be analysing this, but something has happened in the last two to three months in terms of the surge within international protection [asylum] applicants, something has clearly happened.

Anecdotally or intuitively, one can see, and maybe sense, that that policy announcement – which I thought was a wrong policy announcement by the UK, a shocking sort of initiative in my view, to be doing some agreement with Rwanda – clearly may have motivated people utilising the common travel area to come into the Republic – yes, I think it is one of a number of factors.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, and David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, are in Berlin for the start of a two-day trip where they will hold talks on how Britain and Germany can work together to stimulate growth, what Britain can learn from the German economic model, and how a Labour government can cooperate with the EU to make Brexit work.

Tomorrow they will hold talks with the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Today they are meeting other SPD ministers, partly to talk about how as a progressive party they won against conservative opponents last year.

Starmer has posted this about his trip on Twitter.

Keir Starmer with David Lammy (right) at the Reichstag Building in Berlin today. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated at 08.00 EDT

These are from my colleague Peter Walker, who is outside the committeee room where Tory MPs are voting.

Kemi Badenoch has retweeted this morning of her alongside Suella Braverman. Badenoch, the equalities ministers, and Braverman, the attorney general, are the two most rightwing candidates still in the contest and Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister who is running Braverman’s campaign, has described them as the future of the party.

Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, who is backing Liz Truss, speaking to journalists at the end of the Truss campaign launch. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images Attorney general Suella Braverman says UK should withdraw from European convention on human rights

Suella Braverman, the attorney general and Tory leadership candidate, has sought to boost her flagging campaign by highlighting her pledge to withdraw Britain from the European convention on human rights, and from the jurisdiction of the European court of human rights. In a campaign video she says:

There’s one big reason to keep me in the race, and that is fixing small boats. Both my experience as a barrister specialising in immigration law, defending the Home Office before I was an MP, and as the attorney general, have led me to the conclusion, that if we are serious about completing the Brexit promises, if we are serious about taking back control of our borders, then there is no alternative but for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights and permanently exclude the jurisdiction of the European court of human rights.

I’m the only candidate who has pledged this unequivocally … that if I am prime minister, I will do just that.

Of the candidates still in the race, Braverman is the one with least support yesterday, and she may well be out of the contest by 5pm. But she is still in government as its most senior law officer and for her to be saying unequivocally that the UK should abandon the ECHR is quite something. It is hard to see how a government could implement Braverman’s proposal without blowing up the Good Friday agreement and the Brexit trade deal with the EU, which both an ongoing UK commitment to the ECHR.

Updated at 07.20 EDT

Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall has posted a fascinating thread on Twitter saying what Tory-inclined voters in a focus group in Rother Valley had to say about the Tory leadership contest. It starts here.

And here are two of his conclusions.

Tugendhat says he feels ‘like prom queen’ because rival candidates trying to get his support

At a briefing this morning Tom Tugendhat, the Tory leadership candidates, said that he felt “like a prom queen” because he was being wooed by rival candidates who want his support. He secured 37 votes yesterday, but is not expected to get through to the final shortlist of two.

Explaining why he was still in the race, he said:

I offered to serve, and that’s what I’ll do, and it’s up to others to decide whether or not they they wish to have me. That’s, I’m afraid, how democracy works. But I don’t quit.

This is from the FT’s Sebastian Payne, who was there.

In a video Tugendhat has also confirmed that he wanted to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP. But he did little to quash claims that the Ministry of Defence squanders resources when he revealed that, because he got issued with so many socks when he was as a soldier, he still only wears army socks. (He became an MP in 2015.)

Voting starts in second ballot for Tory leadership

Voting has just started in the second round ballot for the Tory leadership contest. It closes at 1.30pm, and the result is due at 3pm.

This is from Esther McVey, on her way to vote. She backed Jeremy Hunt in the first round, because he offered to make her deputy PM, and she does not say in her video who she is backing now.

James Heappey, the defence minister, Tom Pursglove, the Home Office minister, and Edward Argar, the former health minister, are backing the Liz Truss campaign, the Times’ Steven Swinford reports.

Frost says he has ‘grave reservations’ about whether Mordaunt up to being PM

In his Talk TV interview this morning (see 9.20am) Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, also claimed that Brexit would not be safe in Penny Mordaunt’s hands. He said:

If you are a prime minister you have got to be able to take responsibility, you have got to be able to run the machine, you have got to be able to take tough decisions, deliver tough messages.

Anybody can be photo’d in a video with I Vow To Thee My Country, but it is what you do in practice. Are you able to be tough, are you able to lead, are you able to take responsibility?

From the basis of what I saw, I’m afraid I would have grave reservations about that.

Asked whether Brexit would be safe in Mordaunt’s hands, Frost replied:

I would worry, on the basis of what I have seen, we wouldn’t necessarily get that from Penny.

Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury and a Liz Truss supported, posted this response on Twitter.

Updated at 08.32 EDT

Liz Truss’s launch – snap verdict

On the basis of last night’s first round results, the Liz Truss campaign is floundering. This morning she really needed something quite remarkable to give it a jump start. This launch didn’t deliver.

In presentation terms, she sounded less slick than Rishi Sunak and less personable than Penny Mordaunt. She did not tell us anything about herself that we haven’t heard before, and (like some of the other candidates) she tried to get away with taking as few questions as possible.

But the main problem was the lack of definition. Truss has the support of Boris Johnson loyalists in the party and in the media (especially the Daily Mail), but it feels as if all the candidates in this contest can’t yet work out whether they are supposed to be praising Johnson and his legacy, or rubbishing him. Rishi Sunak resigned from Johnson’s cabinet last week with a letter denouncing him, but on Tuesday was telling us what a splendid fellow he was. Truss has been running as a Johnson loyalist, but in her Q&A today it was repeatedly put to her that this was problematic. “I’m a loyal person,” she replied, half-convincingly. But she sounded less warm about him than Sunak was two days ago. If she is running as continuity Johnson, she should be willing to talk up his campaigning strengths and tie herself firmly to his 2019 red wall-focused electoral mandate.

Truss stressed her experience, particularly as international trade secretary signing post-Brexit trade deals and as foreign secretary opposing Russia. (“I would continue to lead the free world in opposing Putin,” she said, a touch hubristically.)

But, on domestic policy, her platform was threadbare. The bonanza of extravagant tax-cutting pledges that marked the opening stage of campaign seems to be over and – like Penny Mordaunt at her launch yesterday – Truss had little to say on that subject this morning. She proposed tax reforms to help parents, echoing a proposal Mordaunt made yesterday. But the main problem was that, having effectively denounced government economic policy over the past 12 years as a failure – “We cannot have business-as-usual economic management which has delivered low growth for decades” (see 10.07am) – she did not say what she was going to do about it beyond promising “bold supply side reform”, which could mean anything.

Liz Truss speaking at her campaign launch. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Updated at 06.16 EDT

Asked about the Rwanda policy, Truss says: “I completely agree with the Rwanda policy.” She says she has worked closely with Priti Patel, the home secretary, on this.

And that’s it. The Q&A is over.

Truss says she wants to see defence spending rise to 3% of GDP by end of decade

Truss says she wants to see defence spending rise to 3% of GDP by the end of the decade.

The free world did not spend enough money on defence, she says.

It is vital that Russia is defeated in Ukraine, she says.