SHOCK AS CLEVERLY FALLS

After storming into an impressive lead in yesterday's ballot of Tory MPs, James Cleverly has today been sensationally knocked out of the leadership contest.

Following yesterday's ballot, in which he surged from third to first place with a lead of eight, Cleverly was installed as the new bookie's favourite.  This was also in light of a membership poll, which favoured Cleverly over the remaining candidates.  However, in today's vote he actually lost a couple of backers, while all of Tom Tugendhat's 20 votes went to Badenoch and Jenrick.

It was Badenoch who surged from third to first today, and she will now face Robert Jenrick in the final round.  The party membership finally get to have their say at the end of the month, with the result announced on November 2.  The bookies now have Kemi odds on to win.

TOON TUESDAY #26

The Tory leadership hopefuls will be whittled down to two over the next couple of days, so this week we're featuring a selection of toons from the course of the campaign so far...

Steve Bright for The Sun

Morten Morland for The Times

Steve Bright for The Sun

Graeme Bandeira for The Yorkshire Post

Dave Brown for The Independent

Chris Riddell for The Guardian

Peter Brookes for The Times

BOZZA TAKES DOWN JEZZA

As Boris Johnson made his debut as PM in the Commons, as predicted it was a car crash for Corbyn.  Johnson ridiculed Jezza over his flip-flopping Brexit stance and also took a swipe at his support for Iran.  Corbyn came back labelling Boris 'Britain's Trump', presumably an insult he'd read in this morning's Guardian.  Pathetic.

New Conservative Chairman James Cleverly summed up the faces on the opposition benches by way of emojis...

INDY RACE BACKFIRE

The Independent made a huge balls-up yesterday with the following tweet (now deleted).  See if you spot it...

One of the 'white men' featured spotted it...

Er.....hello? pic.twitter.com/u6PXSxxAgL

— Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) May 31, 2019

The race-baiting article attached to the Independent tweet is based on some bizarre notion that the Tory leadership race is dominated by white males.  Any wanky liberal reading the article could hardly fail to agree seeing as it conveniently fails to mention Andrea Leadsom, James Cleverly or Sajid Javid (despite his picture being in the disastrous tweet).  There is a brief mention of Esther McVey, but the bulk of the article is dedicated to painting Gove, Johnson, Hunt and Raab as racists.  Oh, the irony.  The title for this disgusting piece of work is more or less:  "Mature white males can't be allowed to govern our country".  We've got news for you Jenna Norman - that discounts both Jeremy Corbyn and Vince Cable - for starters!

Ian Blackford - white, getting on a bit, and definitely male
Nicola Sturgeon - female, check.  But she's white, oh bother
Green Party (two leaders) - both white, fuck off
Adam Price - yeah, fuck off whitey
Nigel F.... UCK OFF!!!!!!!!

How is this acceptable?  Imagine for one second she was arguing against a black leadership candidate, purely because he/she were black?

It's hard to know which it is that this anti-white feminist finds more offensive - the ethnicity, age or gender of those contesting the Tory leadership, but one thing is for sure - this Tory leadership contest is actually the most diverse leadership battle there has ever been in any of the major parties.  James Cleverly, Sajid Javid, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey have seen to that.

The 2015 Labour leadership contest was 50% female, but 100% white

LAMMY'S OUTBURST FALLS ON DEAF EARS

Daft Dave Lammy's rant on Marr yesterday has largely been ignored by the ERG.  This probably wasn't the response that a narcissist attention seeker like Lammy was looking for.  Three MPs tweeted their disgust - Mogg, Cleverly and Braverman.