Conservative leader candidates will take part in GB News hustings at 7pm
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was on the media round on behalf of No 10 this morning. In an interview on the Today programme, asked if she was one of the cabinet ministers who have written to the PM complaining about their departmental spending allocation in the budget, she refused to say. She replied:
There are lots of conversations happening right now across government, between the chancellor, with members of the cabinet, as you would expect in the usual way as part of the budget process.
Education is always a priority for Labour governments.
What I’d say to you is you don’t have too long to wait to hear the chancellor announce her budget in just under a fortnight, so I’m afraid everyone’s going to have to wait until 30 October to see exactly what’s in the budget.
Sources said there was concern “right across the cabinet”, and particularly in departments whose spending was “unprotected” …
A senior Treasury source said that ministers had not understood the scale of the challenge facing Reeves. “They’re using a classic trade union negotiating tactic,” the source said. “But we don’t have any spare cash lying around to give them. This is only phase one of the spending review — as soon as the budget is over, we’re going to have to do this all over again.”
Mr Jenrick, the former immigration minister, would win 50 extra seats if he was leader of the Tories compared with 30 seats that would be gained if Kemi Badenoch, his rival for the top job, was in charge of the party, according to the poll of nearly 6,300 people by Electoral Calculus …
Under Mr Jenrick, the Conservatives would increase their number of seats from 121 to 178, with Labour falling from 412 to 311, the Liberal Democrats dropping from 72 to 58 and Reform rising from five to 24. That would place Labour 14 seats short of a majority.
Continue reading… World news | The Guardian
