On Saturday Jason Groves in the Mail said the Conservative party is close to agreeing to bring forward the end date of the Tory leadership contest, so that a new leader is in place for the budget, which is on Wednesday 30 October. By convention, the leader of the oppositon replies to budget statements.

Groves said:

Senior Conservatives are in talks about bringing forward the announcement of the party’s new leader by a week from its current date of November 2.

This would allow the leader to take charge in time to respond to Ms Reeves’s ‘parliament-defining’ Budget on October 30 – and help prevent the climax of the contest being buried by the avalanche of news surrounding the US presidential election on November 5.

But it would cut short the time for the final two candidates to appeal to party members.

The plan was mooted in July when the date of the Budget was fixed. At that point, one of the six candidates objected to the idea of being thrust immediately into responding to the Budget, which is regarded as one of the toughest jobs an opposition leader faces.

Senior Tories now plan to push the idea again when the field of four is whittled down to two after this week’s Conservative Party conference.

Both candidates will have to agree for the plan to go ahead, but a source said they would be ‘advised they are making a big mistake if they don’t’.

In an interview with Times Radio this morning, Tom Tugendhat said he was in favour of the contest being brought forward.

He also said, if he were elected leader, he would appoint the three other candidates in the contest now to his shadow cabinet.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, defended Keir Starmer’s record on donations in his interview with Laura Kuenssberg.

He said that the clothes were campaign donations because “presentation, whether we like or not, is part of a campaign”. And he defended the right of MPs to accept tickets to events, saying people wanted to see politicians at events like this.

He also said the current rules on what MPs have to declare in the register of members’ interests were unfair, because opposition MPs and backbenchers have to declare hospitality but ministers don’t (in theory because ministerial hospitality is declared in the register of ministers’ interests). McFadden said Labour would change this rule so all hospitality has to be declared in the MPs’ register.

Turning to Labour, Kuenssberg broadcast an interview with Rosie Duffield recorded last night. In it Duffield repeated the reasons for her resignation set out in her letter to Keir Starmer.

Asked if she thought Starmer had a problem working with women, Duffield said she did. She said:

I’m afraid I do, yes [think Starmer has a problem with women]. I mean, I’ve experienced it myself.

Most backbenchers that I’m friends with are women and most of us refer to the men that [surround Starmer] as the lads, you know, and it’s very clear that the lads are in charge.

Duffield also said those “lads” were the ones would had been briefing against her.

Kuenssberg asks about the NHS, and something Badenoch said in an interview in the Times yesterday. Badenoch told the paper:

I don’t think we are ready for changing the principle of free at the point of use, certainly not immediately. If we are going to reform things like that, I think we need to have a serious cross-party, national conversation.

This implied that Badenoch would favour charging for the NHS at some point.

Q: Should the NHS be free at the point of deliver forever?

Badenoch says there is a consensus in favour of free at the point of use at the moment. But there are many ways to deliver a free at the point of use service that don’t need the government to be involved in every aspect, she says.

Q: The Times comment implies that one day you might backing charging for NHS services.

Badenoch says: “It might be that the public decide that.”

Q: But what is your view?

Badenoch says she has given her view. She is not in favour of charging now.

Q: But you might change your mind in the future?

Badenoch says she can’t say whether she will change her mind in the future. But she is saying what she thinks now, she says.

Q: Do you agree with Kemi Badenoch that some cultures are less valid than others?

Jenrick says culture matters. But he says he disagres with Badenoch on immigration numbers. He says he thinks you have to have a cap on numbers. And he also says he believes the UK has to leave the European convention on human rights. He says Badenoch is just talking about developing a plan in a few years time, and that’s “a recipe for infighting and for losing the public’s trust”.

Robert Jenrick, the current favourite in the Tory leadership contest, is being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC.

Q: Is immigration your top priority?

It is, but it is not the only thing that needs to be fixed. Jenrick says the party also failed on the economy and on the NHS. There were “multiple failures”, he says.

He says he has thought deeply about these problems. He says he has a clear plan, particularly on immigration.

Q: Would you be willing to cut immigration even if that hurt the economy?

Jenrick says he does not accept that mass immigration is good for the economy.

Most of the people coming have been low wage, low skill, he says.

Q: People want immigration to fall. But they want enough carersr in the care sectors, and people available to work in bars and restaurants. Would having jobs being vacant be a price worth paying?

Jenrick says he wants parliaement to set a legally binding target for migragtion, “in the tens of thousands, or lower”.

He does not accept that this would hurt the economy. There are millions of people on welfare, he says, implying they could fill the vacancies.

Q: Would you be willing to see jobs go unfilled?

Jenrick says he does not accept that would happen. But if she is asking if he would prioritise this, the answer is yes.

James Cleverly, the former foreign secretary, is now being interviewed by Trevor Phillips on Sky News.

Phillips starts with the same question he asked Badenoch.

Q: What would you be saying to Israel this morning?

Cleverly says he would say to them what he said to them when he was foreign secretary. He says he would say they have a right to defend themselves, but they have to obey international law.

Cleverly says, now he is no longer in government, he does not have access to the information that he used to get before he made a public judgment.

Q: Have the Israelis crossed a red line?

Cleverly says he is not in government any more, so he has not had a detailed briefing on this.

Q: But we saw what happened. You don’t need a briefing to know if they crossed a red line.

Cleverly says you do need detailed knowledge.

When you’re in a position of leadership, the kind of positions that I have held and I aspire to hold in the future, you have to make your comments based on facts, not just on TV reporting, not just on social media, not just on gut instinct. Any idiot can do that.

When you’re in a position of genuine leadership, you have to base your comments and your decisions on the actual fact.

In her Sunday Telegraph article Badenoch also said immigrants coming to the UK should love Britain. She said:

I speak as someone from an immigrant background. Being born in the UK was like Charlie Bucket finding a golden ticket in his chocolate bar. I really did win the lottery. I love Britain with the knowledge of how special this country is and how many opportunities it gave me. I also have a hard-nosed view on immigration.

The qualities which make Britain special mean that there will always be more people wanting to come to this country than we can reasonably support. Many of them have no particular interest in the future and success of the UK. It’s just a better place to be. So, as citizens and taxpayers, we must have rules.

We need to demand that those who come here love this country and will maintain and uphold its traditions, not change them. It is not enough that they work hard and avoid crime.

Q: How would you achieve this?

Badenoch replies:

You have to demand it. If you don’t ask people for something, then they’re unlikely to give it. We can’t just assume that people will come into the country and just naturally love it. Other countries demand it. When you move to other countries, they demand that you believe in the place.

In an article for the Sunday Telegraph today Badenoch complains that too many immigrants don’t like Israel. She says:

We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnichostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.

Q: Who are you talking about?

Badenoch says:

People who come from countries where Israel is seen as an enemy.

Q: You are referring to Muslims. Why don’t you say that?

Badenoch says:

It’s not all Muslim immigrants … I’m very careful when I speak. I’ve met many Muslim people who love Israel.

Kemi Badenoch is being interviewed on Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips.

Q: If you were party leader, what would you be saying to the Israelis this morning?

Badenoch says she would be congratulating them on the attack that killed Hezbollah’s veteran leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. She says:

I think what they did was extraordinary. Israel is showing that it has moral clarity in dealing with its enemies and the enemies of the west as well.

Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and I think that being able to remove the leader of Hezbollah, as they did, will create more peace in the Middle East.

Q: So you will give Israel a free pass?

Badenoch says it is not about Israel having a free pass. It has the right to defend itself.

Q: So there are no red lines?

Badenoch says there are red lines, laid down by international law. When she was trade secretary, those red lines were not crossed.

Good morning. It is the first day of the Conservative party conference, and you would expect the news to be dominated by a fierce attack on the Labour leader. It is – but it is not come from any of the four candidates left in the Tory leadership contest (who have been campaigning all summer without saying anything that has engaged the public at large – voters are still not very interested in the party they rejected comprehensively on 4 July.) Instead it has come from Rosie Duffield, who was a Labour MP until early yesterday evening when she resigned the whip via a letter to Keir Starmer published in the Sunday Times.

As resignation letters go, this one’s a belter. Often MPs resign from government, or a a party, citing one particular issue. And it is usual to express some regret, some acknowledgment that the leader/party the MP used to support had at least some redeeming features. But this one is undiluted acid. If any of the Tory leadership candidates had given a speech along these lines, commentators would have regarded it as over the top.

Duffield, who has been MP for Canterbury since 2017 (a surprise win in what had been a safe Tory seat), has been semi-detached from the Starmer leadership for years because, as a gender critical feminist, she has frequently spoken out where she feels trans rights have been taken too far (she is friends with JK Rowling) and she felt ostracised by the parliamentary Labour party, where many MPs regarded her as extreme or reactionary on this issue.

But the letter does not talk about this. Instead she attacks Starmer’s leadership style, accusing him of “heavy-handed management tactics”, ignoring the views of his MPs, cronysim and disrespecting Diane Abbott. But at the heart of the leter is a withering attack on Starmer’s record accepting freebies, which he has defended over the last fortnight whilst also maintaining the two-child benefit cap (a welfare policy that helps push people into child poverty) and the winter fuel payments cut. Duffield says:

Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.

How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate’s sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?! The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.

Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of these people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.

You can read the full letter here.

And here is Michael Savage’s overnight story, which says there is thought to be no precedent in modern times for an MP resigning the party whip like this so soon after an election.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, is doing a media interview round this morning. Speaking to Sky News this morning, he played down the significance of Duffield’s resignation, saying she had been unhappy in the party for a long time.

Pat McFadden on @SkyNews: “I regret Rosie [Duffield] has made this decision. Not a secret she’s been unhappy for a long time….I’m sorry she’s made the decision, I like Rosie,but she’s been unhappy for a long time”

Here is the agenda for the day:

8.30am: All four Conservative leadership candidates – Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – are interviewed on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.

9am: Jenrick and Badenoch are interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, is also on, representing Labour.

10am: Tugendhat, Badenoch and Jenrick are all interviewed on Times Radio.

1.30pm: Tugendhat takes part in an Q&A with the Conservative Women’s Organisation.

2pm: Jenrick takes part in a Q&A with at a Centre for Policy Studies fringe

2.30pm: Michael Winstanley, president of the National Conservative Convention (the volunteer wing of the party), opens the conference.

2.45am: Richard Fuller, the Conservative chair, speaks at the conference, opening a session featuring some candidates.

4pm: Russell Findlay, the news Scottish Conservative leader, Andrew RT Davies, the party’s leader in Wales, and Alex Burghart, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, speak in a session on the union.

5pm: Cleverly is interviewed on Times Radio.

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