Inside Politics: Knocked for six

Hello there, I’m Matt Mathers and welcome to The Independent’s Inside Politics newsletter.

Has Jacob Rees-Mogg gone bat crazy? The Brexit opportunities minister replied “test cricket” when asked yesterday which public services are actually working well in the UK at the moment. Perhaps all the warm weather has gone to his head. Back in the Tory Party leadership contest, a new poll out this morning knocks Rishi Sunak for six.

Parliament is not sitting.

David Davis, Sunak supporter, is on Sky News Breakfast at 8.05am.

Brandon Lewis, Truss supporter, is also on Sky News Breakfast 8.30am.

For politicians, the problem with attacking your opponent over a U-turn is that you’re likely to have made – or will make – one yourself. And that’s exactly what happened to Liz Truss yesterday as she binned her “war on Whitehall waste” campaign, after pummelling Sunak on his VAT tax pledges.

It was the first major gaffe by Truss in what had been up until that point a pretty flawless run for the Tory crown. In fairness to her the U-turn was swift and made within 12 hours. Team Sunak, aware of their advantage among general voters, claimed that the slip-up would have cost the Conservatives dearly at a future general election. They continue to pitch their man as the one with the best chance of beating Labour: but the party membership is apparently unable to look beyond what is in front of their noses.

A new YouGov poll for The Times, out this morning, says Truss has extended her lead over Sunak to 34 points. Some 60 per cent of party members now say they will vote for the foreign secretary rather than the former chancellor, who was on 26 per cent. The poll blows out of the water a survey by Italian firm Techne reported on Monday which showed a much closer contest than previously thought.

It remains to be seen how much of an impact Truss’s policy fluff, which left Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen “speechless”, could have in the race to replace Boris Johnson. But ominously for Sunak, the YouGov poll, carried out before the Truss U-turn, found that nine in 10 Tory voters said they had already made up their minds. After a slight bounce yesterday, the writing is on the wall once again for Sunak. It is going to take more than a U-turn to claw back a gap as big as 34 points.

In another major campaign update, the Tory Party has announced that the delivery of ballot papers will be delayed after GCHQ – not CCHQ – warned that hackers could meddle with members’ votes. The National Cyber Security Centre – the listening post of GCHQ and one of the government’s three intelligence organisations alongside MI5 and MI6 – said there were vulnerabilities in the party system.

Both candidates face off in another round of hustings in Cardiff tonight. Expect Sunak to go after Truss on her grip on policy, judgement and number-crunching skills following yesterday’s gaffe.

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With parliament not sitting, and the Tory leadership contest the only story in town, there is not a whole lot of other domestic politics news to report on, and so Inside Politics takes a brief foray across the Atlantic to the US, which is embroiled in a major row with China after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

The top Democrat and House speaker met with Taiwan’s president Tsao Ing-wen in Taipei – despite warnings from Beijing not to do so and with no backing from her boss, Joe Biden. It is the first major visit to Taiwan – which China sees as a breakaway region that it wants to recover – by a senior US official in a quarter of a century.

China, as you might expect, has reacted furiously to the visit by announcing that it will hold a series of over the top live-fire military drills in the air and sea around Taiwan, which officials there say amounts to an effective blockade of the island in the South China Sea – a major transit route for trade where Beijing has been building up its presence in recent years.

Pelosi gave a punchy and defiant speech on her visit: “Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy. America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad.”

See all of The Independent’s daily cartoons here

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Tory Party spokesperson on move to delay ballots.

“We have consulted with the NCSC [part of GCHQ] throughout this process and have decided to enhance security around the ballot process. Eligible members will start receiving ballot packs this week.”

i chief politics commentator Paul Waugh on Truss’s campaign gaffe.

“Some on Sunak campaign think this is the day Truss confirmed herself as the ‘copy-and-paste’ candidate for PM.”

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V of EU Japan trade deal

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V of policies like regional pay rates

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V of Margaret Thatcher’s image.”

Inside Politics first appeared in our daily morning email. You can sign up via this link.