Conor Burns sacked as trade minister over misconduct allegations – UK politics live

The former culture secretary Nadine Dorries should “settle down a little while”, the climate minister has said, amid an increasingly bitter row among Conservative MPs.

Senior Tories have been divided recently over what should happen to benefits payments amid the cost of living crisis. The government has not ruled out a real-terms cut. But some MPs, even cabinet ministers, have publicly expressed serious concern.

And new polling suggests half of 2019 Conservative voters – and a majority of the public – back the idea of raising benefits in line with inflation over No 10’s preferred option: a rise in line with the average increase in workers’ pay.

Dorries has said the new prime minister, Liz Truss, has made some “big mistakes” in her first few weeks in office and suggested the government is “lurching to the right” and risks losing the next election.

Speaking to the Times, she described the prospect of a real-terms cut to benefits this year as “cruel, unjust and fundamentally unconservative”. That came after she publicly questioned Truss’s mandate for a new government direction.

Asked about Dorries’ comments on Sky News, Graham Stuart said:

We’ve just done, with this energy support package, one of the biggest interventions by the state to help people we’ve ever seen. The commitment to net zero is there.

I know how bruising it can be when you leave government, and, you know, I think what I did and I would certainly advise Nadine to … is just to settle down a little while and let the new team get on with the job, and that’s what we’re doing.