Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt attract early backing for new PM as Tory leadership race begins – UK politics live | Conservative leadership

Suella Braverman will be “making a statement in due course”, Sky is reporting.

The former home secretary did not confirm or deny if she will be making a run.

The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has joined calls for Liz Truss to decline the allowance of up to £115,000 a year she will be entitled to as a former prime minister.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

She should turn it down. I think that’s the right thing to do. She’s done 44 days in office, she’s not really entitled to it, she should turn it down and not take it.

He said a Labour government would not “want to cut public spending” but would make “prudent” choices on the economy. He said:

A month ago we weren’t even having a discussion about spending cuts… We’re discussing that question because this government crashed the economy with their kamikaze mini-budget.

But the contrast really is this – carry on with this utter chaos or have stability under a Labour government and I think that’s a choice that ought to be put to the British public, because they’ve been damaged by this – we’ve got this ridiculous situation now of yet another prime minister coming to try their hand.

Asked how he would fund public spending, he said:

If you take the energy price freeze, we all agree those prices have got to be frozen over the winter. What we’ve said is those oil and gas companies that have been making excess profits – profits they didn’t expect to make – should pay their fair way.

An ally of Penny Mordaunt said she is not currently working on a leadership bid but is “taking soundings” from colleagues.

A source told the PA news agency:

It’s a testament to Penny’s campaign over the summer how many colleagues have already come out asking her to stand.

At the moment there isn’t a campaign but Penny has always been the candidate that can unite the party, deliver and beat Labour.

At the moment she’s been taking soundings from her colleagues and has been busy speaking to as many as she can.

Rishi Sunak has been photographed leaving his home this morning. He did not answer questions from reporters as he walked a few yards from his front door to a waiting black Mercedes.

Boris Johnson’s father Stanley says he thinks his son is currently on a plane returning to the UK from his Caribbean holiday.

Speaking on ITV Good Morning Britain, Johnson said:

I think he’s on a plane back, as I understand it. He’s coming back.

The Conservative former education secretary Nicky Morgan said the feeling in the party is that it is “even worse than the Brexit years”.

Speaking on Times Radio, she said:

It’s one thing to be making difficult decisions that are unpopular, but you know they are right. I’ve been there ,2010, after the election and all the rest of it. But the Brexit years were pretty miserable divided party, everything else.

A very senior MP said to me earlier this week, she said it’s even worse than the Brexit years. That is not what people stand for election for, you know, you’re getting at the net, your inboxes are full of people rightly complaining, you go back to constituency, more people complaining. That’s what this new leader has got to got to get us all over.

Conservative MPs should not be thinking about “survival” and the roles they might get when they choose the next leader, she continued.

Without endorsing a specific person, she said she hoped one candidate makes it to more than 100 MPs. She added:

I would also totally disagree with the calls for a general election. I think that is the last thing that the country needs.

The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is also calling for a general election.

The Tories have caused a “huge amount of damage” and the longer they are in power, “the less fit they are to govern”, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

She urges Tory MPs to join calls for an election to prevent the UK from “looking like a laughing stock” around the world. She said:

The Conservatives have the majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons, but I know that there are many Conservative MPs who will also be desperately worried about the place we find ourselves in as a country.

The job of PM and chancellor is not “a game of pass the parcel” and No 10 and 11 are not an “Airbnb”, she continues.

We cannot go on like this, just passing around the top jobs with the idea that that might somehow change things. We need a fresh general election to give a new government a chance with a mandate from the British people.

Liz Truss has arrived at Downing Street.

The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has accused the Conservative party of playing a “game of pass the parcel” with the country’s most important political positions.

Any new Tory leader would have “no mandate” to rule, she told Sky News.

She said:

The longer the Conservatives are in power, the less fit they are to govern. They can’t just pass around being prime minister and being chancellor like it is some sort of game of pass the parcel.

They have done huge damage now to our economy, to our global standing in the world and it is time for a general election to choose a government who can provide the stability and the leadership that the country desperately needs.

Here’s more from that poll from PeoplePolling, commissioned by GB News, which showed the Conservatives falling to the lowest level of support in British history.

They’ve also published a word cloud from the survey showing people most associate the words “shambles”, “incompetent”, and “useless” with the Tories.

Tories ‘fall to lowest level of support in British polling history’

The former Tory Cabinet office minister Sir David Lidington says Boris Johnson should not be looking to make a political comeback because “he has had his chance”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

We do need competence now at a time of great economic challenge for this country.

Boris Johnson has always been somebody who has focused on the big picture, not on detail. He is not really interested in the detail of governing and nor when he was prime minister did he appoint a couple of ministers with delegated authority on his behalf to get things done, instead we had bunches of aides in Number 10 busy briefing the media and shouting at each other most of the time.

He added:

Even on top of the fact that he is still being investigated by Parliament on allegations of deliberately lying to MPs, I think he has had his chance and the Conservative parliamentary party concluded just a few months ago this could not go on and it would not be right for him to continue as prime minister – that, after all, is why he resigned.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has urged Tory MPs to do their “patriotic duty” and call for a general election so the country can have a “fresh start”.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, he said the Tories had shown they were unfit to govern. He said:

We don’t need another Conservative prime minister lurching from crisis to crisis. We need to get rid of them. That has to mean a general election.