Suella Braverman backs Rishi Sunak for Tory leader as James Cleverly declares support for Boris Johnson – UK politics live | Conservative leadership

Vice chair of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers Nusrat Ghani has said she is backing Rishi Sunak in the leadership race, saying she had considered supported Penny Mordaunt.

Ghani has held ministerial positions for Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Theresa May.

The wording of her tweet implicitly suggests that she does not think Johnson is a credible candidate.

If you’re just catching up with who has backed who in the leadership contest, you can find the live list of MPs who have publicly declared who they will be supporting below.

Rishi Sunak is ahead with nearly 140 MPs. The vote will take place at 2pm on Monday.

My colleague Mark Brown has also laid out which of the “big beasts” are backing who, from Dominic Raab and Suella Braverman backing Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and James Cleverly for Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom and Damien Green supporting Penny Mordaunt.

New polling from Opinium that has been published in the last few minutes shows that the public prefer Rishi Sunak over Boris Johnson to be the next prime minister.

The numbers have further shifted in favour of Sunak compared to the last time the company surveyed people.

The former chancellor has a narrow lead over people who have said they wouldn’t vote Conservative but did so in 2019.

David Lidington, who was effectively deputy prime minister under Theresa May, has written an opinion piece for the Guardian on the current image problem of the Conservative party.

Lidington, who stepped down from parliament in 2019, said the Tories looked “incompetent, tin-eared and obsessed with our party’s prospects” during the cost of living crisis.

He writes:

This week will be the 13th time since I joined the Conservative party back in 1975 that a new leader has been elected or an incumbent faced a leadership challenge. Six of those occasions have been in the past six years alone.

We all know that this cannot go on. Our country is facing economic and strategic threats as great as any I have seen in my lifetime. Our party is in peril of being branded for a generation as divided, self-indulgent and indifferent to the nation’s needs.

Please, when you make your choice, put the country first. Every single one of us went into politics because we wanted to make the United Kingdom more prosperous and secure, to make life better for our fellow citizens. Yet in the past few weeks we have appeared incompetent, tin-eared and obsessed with our party’s prospects at the very time millions of households are worried sick about how to meet their bills for food, fuel and housing. Even those lucky enough to have a decent income and paid-off mortgage worry about those who do not. After all, they include our own children and grandchildren.

The full piece can be read here:

A big declaration of support for Boris Johnson from foreign secretary James Cleverly, as he said he will vote for him if he stands in Monday’s vote.

Cleverly, who was education secretary for a month under Johnson, and a minister previous to that, said that he thinks Johnson has “learned his lessons from his time” in Downing Street.

“[He] will ensure the focus is on the needs of the country from day 1,” he said.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman, who resigned on Wednesday, has said that she is supporting Rishi Sunak’s bid to become prime minister.

Braverman, who served as attorney general under Boris Johnson, is a big figure on the right of the party and it was thought that she may have launched a leadership bid herself. Her support for Sunak will count as a big blow to Johnson’s campaign.

Her resignation letter to Liz Truss on Wednesday criticised breaking manifesto pledges. She is an MP who has engaged most readily with “culture war issues” and said it would be her “dream” to see refugees deported to Rwanda.

Writing in the Telegraph (paywall), she said Johnson is “one of our most significant prime ministers in history”.

But she pivots to say:

Things need to change. We, as a party, need to change. We need to provide leadership, stability and confidence to the British people. We cannot indulge in parochial or nativist fantasies. Yes, I want a leader of our Party and our country to inspire hope for a better future and raise our spirits. And I need a leader who will put our house in order and apply a steady, careful hand on the tiller. That person, for me, is Rishi Sunak.

She ends by saying that Britain is in “dire straits” and Sunak is the candidate that “fits the bill.”

I have backed Boris from the start. From running alongside him in London in 2012, to supporting him to be our leader in 2019 and willing him to succeed throughout the travails of this year. His resignation in July was a loss for our country.

But we are in dire straits now. We need unity, stability and efficiency. Rishi is the only candidate that fits the bill and I am proud to support him.

This is interesting from political analyst Patrick Flynn, again, tapping into the shift in support from Boris Johnson to Rishi Sunak.

Flynn says that Sunak has attracted more Johnson supporters from 2019 than Johnson has retained.

He predicts that Sunak is on course to get more than 200 nominations, which would be well over half the parliamentary party.

Another for Sunak from Neil O’Brien who is a junior minister and served at a similar level for Boris Johnson.

The Harborough MP, who resigned from Johnson’s government in the summer in a joint letter with Kemi Badenoch said he was “sad” Badenoch decided not to stand, adding that he had “respect for Johnson [but] … now is not the time”.

Will Quince becomes the latest MP to declare for Rishi Sunak. Back in July he resigned from Boris Johnson’s government, where he was children’s minister, having been sent out on a media round to defend the government’s position on Chris Pincher – a position which was reversed within hours.

The Times’ political editor Simon Swinford reports that Boris Johnson has reportedly snubbed the chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s approaches to talk as he considers who to support.

Two more in the bag for Rishi Sunak, as backbencher Peter Gibson and Stuart Andrew have tweeted their intention to vote for him on Monday.

Gibson, part of the 2019 “red wall” group of MPs that were elected, said he was “grateful to [Johnson] for all he has done”, and Andrew said Sunak would offer “a detailed focus on the economy”.

Their announcements mean 214 of the party’s 357 MPs have now declared who they are supporting.

More support for Rishi Sunak, whose campaign seems to be gathering momentum on Sunday, this time from one of the party’s London MPs whose seat will be in grave danger at the next general election.

Theresa Villiers, who represents Chipping Barnet in north London, has said she will vote for Sunak. She supported him in the last leadership election, but with current polling figures would be out of a job at the next general election. She has a majority of 1,212.

In a statement on her website Villiers said: “We can’t afford to go back. We have to look to the future. Rishi is our best chance of rebuilding support for the Conservatives and our best chance of winning the next election.”

Another cabinet minister coming out this morning in support of Rishi Sunak, as work and pensions secretary Chloe Smith said that she will vote for him.

Smith said she had spoken to Sunak and “listened to views of local members”, adding: “I intend to back Rishi to be prime minister, acting in the national interest and achieving the stability and opportunity that our nation needs.”

She voted for Truss in this summer’s leadership election, and her majority in Norwich North is just under 5,000.

She follows fellow cabinet member Grant Shapps in announcing her backing for the former chancellor on Sunday.

More of the comments made by Lord Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England to Laura Kuenssberg earlier on BBC One. The economy is unsurprisingly a focal point of the Conservative party leadership contest.

He said that significantly higher taxes on the average person would be needed to finance higher public spending in the UK.

Lord King said there “isn’t enough money there amongst the rich to get it back” when it comes to meeting the “strong case” for extra spending in certain areas to help recover from the lockdown.

Asked if cuts will feel similar to the recent era of austerity instigated by former Conservative chancellor George Osborne, Lord King said:

In some ways it could be more difficult.

I think everyone can see there is a strong case for higher public spending in certain areas as we recover from the lockdown period and in many ways people are very good at identifying areas where public spending should be higher in the longer term.

The challenge is if we want European levels of welfare payments and public spending, you cannot finance that with American levels of tax rates.

So we may need to confront the need to have significantly higher taxes on the average person.

Lord King noted public expenditure is likely to increase.

Therefore taxes will have to rise to fill the gap which is there at present.

That doesn’t make a very happy picture for the next few years but what we need is a government that will tell us honestly there is a reduction in our national standard of living because we’ve decided to help Ukraine and confront Russia, and that means all of us are going to have to share the burden – we can’t just put all of it on our children and grandchildren.

He said mortgage rates are “clearly going to go up” but noted this was also happening elsewhere in the world.

Another backbencher, Mark Pawsey, has come out in support of Rishi Sunak, taking him to 130 MPs who have publicly declared they will vote for him on Monday.

Pawsey tweeted saying he will vote for Sunak, after he confirmed his candidacy earlier on Sunday morning.

According to the Guardian’s count, it means that Sunak has the support of 130 MPs who have publicly announced their support for him.