Tory leadership ballot result - snap verdict Rishi Sunak is almost certain to be on the final ballot for party members, and he is more likely to be facing Liz Truss than Penny Mordaunt, these results suggest. (See 3.03pm.) But nothing is certain from these numbers – other than the fact that Kemi Badenoch, the former equalities minister, is now out of the contest. Sunak is now only one vote away from the point where he is guaranteed a slot on the final ballot. Previously 120 (just over a third of the total electorate, 357 MPs) was the point where it became mathematically impossible for both other candidates to get more votes, but, with Tobias Ellwood now banned from taking part, 119 is the benchmark. Sunak is on 118. It is almost impossible to believe he will not get there tomorrow. But he has been finding it increasingly hard to pick up votes. In the second ballot he was up 13 votes, and in the third he was up 14 votes. Today he is up just three. Mordaunt is up 10 votes on yesterday. But she was expected to do quite well with the 31 Tom Tugendhat votes released last night, but instead more of them may have gone to Truss, who is up by 15 votes. It is never quite that simple, because it’s a secret ballot and the votes that change are not just those released by a candidate who has fallen out, but this does suggest Truss has momentum. And it also suggests that “Stop Mordaunt” may be a more powerful voting incentive than “Stop Truss”. The “Stop Mordaunt” vote might also be a “Stop Sunak” vote, if MPs are assuming that Truss would beat Sunak, but Sunak would beat Mordaunt. No one can be sure that this assessment is true, but Truss is a more experienced campaigner than Mordaunt, with stronger convictions. She seems to have impressed Tory members more than Mordaunt in the past week. (See 2pm.) Truss is now only six votes behind Mordaunt. But Badenoch’s supporters are mostly rightwingers, and rightwingers identify with Truss but not Mordaunt. (Both started off as Cameron centrists, but Truss has done a better job of reinventing herself.) And even if the Badenoch votes break in favour of Truss rather than Mordaunt by just 60%/40% (as they may have done today), that would still be enough to allow Truss to overtake Mordaunt. Afternoon summary Kemi Badenoch has been eliminated from the Conservative leadership race, setting up a battle between Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss to join Rishi Sunak in the last round. Some bookmakers are now giving odds making Truss the new favourite in the contest. These are the implied odds of winning from Smarkets, the betting exchange company. Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was riven by bitter infighting, with his supporters and opponents using the issue of antisemitism within the party “as a factional weapon”, a long-awaited report has said. In his response to the report, published in full on his Facebook page, Corbyn says the report should trigger a debate about whether or not the Labour party is there to serve its members. He says: The appalling behaviour that Forde calls out, including the repulsive racism and sexism shown to Diane Abbott and others, should have no place in a progressive party. Toxic factionalism is far from over - nor are persistent problems of racism and sexism - and action must be taken, as Forde makes clear. Most of all, the party needs to decide what it is for and who decides that. Are we a democratic socialist party, run by members and affiliated unions, that aims for a fundamental transfer of wealth and power from the few to the many? Or are we something else? Millions of public sector workers including teachers, doctors, nurses, and police officers are to receive a below-inflation pay rises this year, raising the prospect of industrial action. Government releases further details of public sector pay awards The government has now published various written ministerial statements with details of pay awards. Priti Patel, the home secretary, has published details of the pay award for police officers. She says: The review body recommends a consolidated increase of £1,900 to all police officer pay points for all ranks from 1 September 2022, equivalent to 5% overall. It is targeted at those on the lowest pay points to provide an uplift of up to 8.8%, and between 0.6% and 1.8% for those on the highest pay points. The government recognises that increases in the cost of living are having a significant impact on the lower paid. It is within this context and after careful consideration that we have chosen to accept this recommendation in full. As at March 2022 there are 142,526 police officers who will receive this consolidated increase. Patel has also published details of the pay awards for police and crime commissioners. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has said members of armed forces will get a 3.75% pay rise. The full details are here. Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has released full details of the award for NHS staff. (See 4.31pm.) James Cleverly, the education secretary, has released full details of the award for teachers. (See 5.16pm.) Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, says he has decided judges should get a 3% pay rise, instead of the 3.5% recommended by the senior salaries review body. And Raab says prison officers will get a pay rise of at least 4%, with more for lower paid staff. Heather Wheeler, the Cabinet Office minister, says senior civil servants should get an across the board increase of 2%, instead of the 3% recommended by the senior salaries review body. But pay band minimums will increase too. Experienced teachers in England to get 5% pay rise, government announces Experienced teachers in England will get a 5% pay rise for the next academic year, the government has announced after recommendations from the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB). PA Media says: Both the NASUWT and NEU teaching unions, which have threatened strikes in autumn over pay, have said the proposed increase of 5% for more experienced staff is too low. The NEU has said it will now consult its members on strike action in the autumn. NASUWT previously said it would hold a national strike ballot if the government fails to “deliver pay restoration for teachers”. And Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, previously said a 5% rise for more experienced staff would be “unacceptable”. The government announced the starting salary for teachers outside London will rise by 8.9%, with salaries reaching £28,000 for the 2022/23 academic year. It said this meant it had made “good progress” towards a manifesto commitment for starting salaries rising to £30,000. “Those in the early stages of their careers will also benefit from significant increases, ranging from 5% to 8% depending on experience,” the government said. Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said the government had been “forced” by members to drop a previous proposal of 3% for experienced teachers, but added it had not “moved far enough”. He said a 5% increase would mean “yet another huge cut” to the real value of pay against inflation, and that this would mean members were consulted over strike action in autumn. “With RPI inflation at 11.7% according to the latest figures, experienced teachers would see a bigger pay cut than the one inflicted by last year’s pay freeze and even the increase to starting pay is below inflation so is a real-terms pay cut,” he said. Corbyn"s supporters welcome Forde report as showing they were right about some party staff undermining his leadership Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters in the Labour party have welcomed the findings of the Forde report (see 2.29pm and 4.17pm), saying it vindicates claims they made at the time about how some staffers at party HQ were obstructive or hostile to the leadership. Here are some of their responses. From Len McCluskey, the former Unite general secretary From John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor From Momentum, the pro-Corbyn Labour organisation From Alex Nunns, the journalist and former Corbyn speechwriter Andrew Fisher, Corbyn’s former head of policy, has criticised the Labour party’s response to the report. And my colleague Owen Jones, who was one of Corbyn’s most prominent media supporters, has posted a long Twitter thread on the report. It starts here. Police pay is going to go up by an average of 5%, with low earners getting more and high earners getting less, the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar reports. Department of Health announces NHS pay awards, with eligible doctors getting 4.5% The government is starting to release details of public sector pay awards. The Department of Health and Social Care says all NHS staff will get a pay rise of at least £1,400, with the lowest earners receiving up to 9.3%. Eligible dentists and doctors will receive a 4.5% pay rise, it says. DHSC says: All NHS staff under the remit of this year’s pay review will receive a pay rise. Over 1 million staff under the Agenda for Change contract, including nurses, paramedics and midwives, will benefit from a pay rise of at least £1,400 this year backdated to April 2022. This is on top of the 3% pay rise they received last year, despite a wider public sector pay pause. This means that the lowest earners such as porters and cleaners will see a 9.3% increase in their basic pay this year, compared to last year. The average basic pay for nurses will increase from around £35,600 as of March 2022 to around £37,000 and the basic pay for newly qualified nurses will increase by 5.5%, from £25,655 last year to £27,055. Dentists and doctors within the Doctors and Dentists’ Remuneration Body (DDRB) remit this year will receive a 4.5% pay rise as the government accepts the recommendations of the independent NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB) and the DDRB in full. Across the public sector, these are the highest uplifts in nearly 20 years, reflecting the vital contributions public sector workers make to the country and the cost of living pressures facing households. Back to the Tories, and the Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt campaigns are both trying to win over Kemi Badenoch’s supporters. A Truss campaign spokesperson said: Kemi Badenoch has run a fantastic campaign and contributed enormously to the battle of ideas throughout this contest. Now is the time for the party to unite behind a candidate who will govern in a Conservative way and who has shown she can deliver time and again. Liz has a bold new economic agenda that will immediately tackle the cost of living crisis, boost economic growth and continue leading the global fight for freedom in Ukraine. And Mordaunt said: This afternoon colleagues once again put their trust in me and I cannot thank them enough. We are so nearly across the finish line. I am raring to go and excited to put my case to members across the country and win. I want to pay tribute to my friend Kemi Badenoch who electrified the leadership contest with her fresh thinking and bold policies. She and I both know that the old way of government isn’t working as it should. Voters want change and we owe it to them to offer a bold new vision for this country. Kemi’s passion for this showed and I’m glad she put herself forward to be heard. 10 takeaways from the Forde report into factionalism in Labour party The Forde report into factionalism in the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, and specifically into a leaked report exposing anti-Corbyn staffers making racist and sexist comments, is available online in full here. Here are 10 takeaways from what it says. 1) Supporters AND opponents of Corbyn using the issue of antisemitism within the party “as a factional weapon”. Both “sides” were thus “weaponising the issue and failing to recognise the seriousness of antisemitism”. 2) Factional warfare undermined the party’s ability to function. Under Corbyn, the party was “spending more time occupied by factional differences than working collaboratively to demonstrate that the party is an effective opposition”. Both sides blamed one another for this inability to properly function. The report says: Both genuinely believed that the other side was trying to sabotage their work in this period – sometimes with a degree of justification, and sometimes not. On the 2017 election, Forde concludes it was “highly unlikely” that the parallel campaign run by anti-Corbyn staffers cost the party the election by, for example, funnelling support elsewhere. He says: “The two sides were trying to win in different ways.” 3) There is not clear evidence that Corbyn’s team or others overtly interfered in investigations about alleged antisemitism. The report finds most of the problems were created by a lack of clarity on procedures, aggravated by factionalism. 4) The report dismissed the complaint by Labour staffers that derogatory messages were “cherrypicked and selectively edited” in the leaked report. It says they were “deplorably factional and insensitive, and at times discriminatory, attitudes”. 5) Corbyn himself declined to be interviewed for the report, though signed a joint submission to the inquiry. Forde described the Labour leader as “notably silent”. 6) Forde also finds there is a “vociferous faction in the party sees any issues regarding antisemitism as exaggerated by the right to embarrass the left”. 7) He also finds that the leaked report itself – authored at Unite’s headquarters – was “a factional document with an agenda to advance, and that the quoted messages were selected pursuant to that agenda”. 8) There is significant work still to be done to combat racism in the party, Forde finds. Authors of the WhatsApp messages “should have considered … the fact that Diane Abbott is a black woman, and has been vilified on that basis over several decades”. 9) But Forde also finds the messages’ authors “were not given a right of reply before their messages were included in the leaked report; that was a clear breach of natural justice”. He says some were reported in a “selective way”. 10) Forde praises the changes under Keir Starmer to the disciplinary process. He says; We must commend the party for its efforts more recently to achieve a greater degree of independence in its system of regulation, with notable reforms approved at the party conference in 2021. This is from Kemi Badenoch. Candidates often enter a leadership contest not really expecting to win, but hoping to raise their profile in the party. Badenoch has achieved that more successfully than most fourth-placed candidates, and, whoever wins, she can expect a promotion in the reshuffle. Tory leadership ballot result - snap verdict Rishi Sunak is almost certain to be on the final ballot for party members, and he is more likely to be facing Liz Truss than Penny Mordaunt, these results suggest. (See 3.03pm.) But nothing is certain from these numbers – other than the fact that Kemi Badenoch, the former equalities minister, is now out of the contest. Sunak is now only one vote away from the point where he is guaranteed a slot on the final ballot. Previously 120 (just over a third of the total electorate, 357 MPs) was the point where it became mathematically impossible for both other candidates to get more votes, but, with Tobias Ellwood now banned from taking part, 119 is the benchmark. Sunak is on 118. It is almost impossible to believe he will not get there tomorrow. But he has been finding it increasingly hard to pick up votes. In the second ballot he was up 13 votes, and in the third he was up 14 votes. Today he is up just three. Mordaunt is up 10 votes on yesterday. But she was expected to do quite well with the 31 Tom Tugendhat votes released last night, but instead more of them may have gone to Truss, who is up by 15 votes. It is never quite that simple, because it’s a secret ballot and the votes that change are not just those released by a candidate who has fallen out, but this does suggest Truss has momentum. And it also suggests that “Stop Mordaunt” may be a more powerful voting incentive than “Stop Truss”. The “Stop Mordaunt” vote might also be a “Stop Sunak” vote, if MPs are assuming that Truss would beat Sunak, but Sunak would beat Mordaunt. No one can be sure that this assessment is true, but Truss is a more experienced campaigner than Mordaunt, with stronger convictions. She seems to have impressed Tory members more than Mordaunt in the past week. (See 2pm.) Truss is now only six votes behind Mordaunt. But Badenoch’s supporters are mostly rightwingers, and rightwingers identify with Truss but not Mordaunt. (Both started off as Cameron centrists, but Truss has done a better job of reinventing herself.) And even if the Badenoch votes break in favour of Truss rather than Mordaunt by just 60%/40% (as they may have done today), that would still be enough to allow Truss to overtake Mordaunt. Badenoch out of Tory leadership contest, as Truss gets closer to Mordaunt, with Sunak still leading Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, reads out the result. He starts: “Nearly there.” The last ballot is tomorrow Rishi Sunak - 118 (up 3) Penny Mordaunt - 92 (up 10) Liz Truss - 86 (up 15) Kemi Badenoch - 59 (up 1) The 1922 Committee is about to announce the results of the fourth ballot for the Tory leadership. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss pulled out of a planned TV debate, leading to it being cancelled, after senior Tories took the view that the ITV debate on Sunday night was a PR disaster for the party. Quite how right they were is shown by this Labour party video, which is little more than a round-up of edited highlights from the debate. Given what is happening in the Conservative party, producing Labour party campaign adverts must be one of the easier jobs in politics at the moment. Michael Gove has just scripted another advert-in-waiting for the party only this lunchtime. (See 2.47pm.) Government failing to deliver "certain essential functions" for voters, says Gove Michael Gove, the former levelling up secretary, has said the government is failing to deliver “certain essential functions” like swiftly providing driving licences and passports. Speaking at a Policy Exchange event, he said the state should “do fewer things” but be “strong and effective”. He said: I believe that there are certain essential functions that the state needs to do better, and which we fail to deliver at the moment. There are some core functions, giving you your passport, giving your driving licence, which is simply at the moment not functioning ... We are no longer providing people, either with the efficient delivery of services or the effective focus on what the state should do. I think that’s because we have become a government and an administration that is knocked off course by powerful stories that are told by people with a mission - and our own sense of mission has not been strong enough to resist that. At the same event Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, blamed the civil service for government failings. He said: We’re always told that we have a Rolls-Royce [civil service] and the problem is that ministers don’t make their will clear. Well, ministers made their will clear about coming back into the office several months ago and yet it is still not happening. So I believe there is something very fundamentally wrong in the way the civil service and the state is working. But Camilla Cavendish, who was head of David Cameron’s policy unit when he was PM, criticised Frost for blaming civil servants. She said: There are people on this panel who have been in government for the past few years and under you guys this stuff has fallen apart - so why haven’t you done anything about it? Government criticised for increasing school funding in England by 1.9% per pupil The government has announced that schools in England will get a 1.9% increase in per-pupil funding next year, prompting fury from teaching unions who described it as “a big real-terms cut for education spending” and warned of a return “to the bad days of austerity.” With inflation predicted to soar into double digits by the autumn, Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said the government’s latest funding award would end up “damaging” children’s education, rather than improving it. There was also criticism of a 2.1% increase in funding for free school meals which will amount to an additional £10 a head. Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Munira Wilson said: With food and energy prices spiralling, schools too are suffering from the cost-of-living crisis. Increasing free school meals funding by just £10 per head a year will not stop schools from choosing between cutting quality or putting up prices for other struggling families. Boris Johnson’s parting gift to schools is a slap in the face. As our teachers deal with sweltering classrooms and squeezed salaries, this Conservative government has handed mainstream schools a real terms pay cut worth almost £2.5bn. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that school funding per pupil in 2024 will be at about the same level in real terms as in 2010. He said: The government has short-changed education for many years and, unfortunately, that has left the sector in a very difficult financial situation. Antisemitism was used as ‘factional weapon’ in Labour party, Forde report finds Labour, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, was riven with bitter factional infighting, with both supporters and opponents of Corbyn using the issue of antisemitism within the party “as a factional weapon”, a long-awaited report has said. My colleague Peter Walker has the story here. This is from William Wragg, a vice chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, with a picture from the room whre the Tory ballots are being counted.