Tories would do better with Jenrick as leader than Badenoch, poll suggests ahead of leadership hustings – UK politics live

Good morning. Members of the Conservative party have started getting their ballot papers for the leadership election, and this evening Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick will take part in what may be the only TV event of this stage of the contest – a hustings on GB News starting at 7pm. They won’t go head to head, but they each take questions for an hour. We will be covering it live (although a colleague will be at the helm, not me).

Badenoch remains the bookmakers’ favourite, but Jenrick gets a boost today from Electoral Calculus polling, reported in the Telegraph, suggesting that the Tories would do better with him as leader. In his write-up, Charles Hymas says:

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.

Under Mrs Badenoch, the Conservatives would increase their number of seats from 121 to 151, while Labour would fall from 412 to 332, the Lib Dems would dip from 72 to 63 and Reform rise from five to 25. That would see Labour in government with a 14-seat majority.

This is interesting, but only up to a point, for two reasons. First, the performance gap between Jenrick and Badenoch, according to these figures, and in truth no one can be sure who would be best for the Tories because voters don’t know a huge amount about either of them, and it is impossible to know for sure how they would perform as leaders. And, second, Conservative members aren’t always very interested in picking the candidate most popular with the electorate at large (which is partly why things started going wrong for them).

I will post more on the Tories as the day goes on. Apart from the GB News hustings, the diary is relatively light today, but there is still a lot of talk about the budget. As Eleni Courea reports, some cabinet ministers have been writing to Keir Starmer complaining about the cuts they are being asked to implment.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: John Healey, the defence secretary, attends a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels.

9.30am: Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes figures on the disability pay gap.

9.30am: The Department for Education publishes figures on pupil absences in England.

10.30am: Lucy Powell, leader of the Commons, takes questions on next week’s Commons business.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

7pm: Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick take part in a leadership hustings on GB News. They will be questioned by party members, separately, with Christopher Hope, the GB News political editor, presenting.

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