The case for talking to Brussels and seeking improvements is undeniable – except to those like Johnson, in a world of their own

We are seeing a Conservative movement so bereft, so out of ideas, that it’s replaying its old hits. At the end of their reign, with Britain poorer, sicker and less free, it is unclear where the Tories go now. Still, idiocy does adore a vacuum, and so it’s time to talk about Boris Johnson again.

On Sunday, the disgraced former occupant of No 10 suggested Keir Starmer would be putting Britain “on the road to serfdom” if he sought improvements to the shambolic Brexit deal that Johnson struck. Even now, he and those who still laud him seem incapable of understanding the damage they have done. Where once we could travel, live and work freely across the continent, Britons now face time limits, visa fees and roaming charges. Where once our businesses could sell as easily to someone in Berlin as someone in Birmingham, they now get red tape, delays and additional charges. And pertinent to the allegation levelled by Johnson, where once the British people had a say in the rules that govern our trade with our largest market, we now have none.

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In speech condemned by LGBTQ Tories, ex-home secretary says party failed to ‘stop the lunatic woke virus’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Suella Braverman has attacked “liberal Conservatives”, saying she was angered by the flying of the Pride flag in her department as home secretary calling it a “monstrous thing”.

In comments during a speech on Monday night that brought a backlash from LGBTQ Conservatives, Braverman said the party had failed to “stop the lunatic woke virus” and had been dumped out of office on a failure to keep its promises.

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Prime minister says forum will allow ministers to regularly meet metro mayors around the country

Andy Burnham , the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has said setting up a “council for regions and nations” will be a very positive change. Speaking to the BBC after the meeting with Keir Starmer in Downing Street, he said:

That, honestl, is music to my ears. People may remember some of the interactions I had with previous governments. It was always struggling to get heard and struggling to get our perspective, from the north, under stood in Whitehall.

To have a council of the regions and nations, meeting regularly, just means we can be sure that the voice of Greater Manchester, of the north of England, is heard at the heart of Whitehall on an ongoing basis.

I’m a great believer in devolution, I’m a great believer in the idea that those with skin in the game – those that know their communities – make much better decisions than people sitting in Westminster and Whitehall.

We will do regular meetings, probably around the country, because I think it’d be good to do it in different areas.

We will set up a council for regions and nations.

Now I don’t want to overly formalise it, but I do want a degree of formality so that it’s a meeting that everybody knows is a meeting where business is done, where decisions are properly recorded and actioned.

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New members surpass 1945 figure, while record number of women are elected into parliament

The House of Commons will induct a record 335 new MPs this week, the largest number in modern history.

The number of newcomers to parliament surpasses the previous record of 327 in the 1945 election, which was held in the aftermath of the second world war and was the first election to take place in 10 years.F

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Andrew Mitchell becomes shadow foreign secretary and Kemi Badenoch moves to communities in new lineup

David Cameron has left Rishi Sunak’s frontbench as the Conservatives unveiled an interim shadow ministerial team ahead of a party leadership race.

The party said Lord Cameron, the former foreign secretary, and Richard Holden, who chaired the Tories through the disastrous election campaign, had resigned from Sunak’s top team. Andrew Mitchell, who had the largely honorary title of deputy foreign secretary in government, becomes shadow foreign secretary.

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Conservatives face prospect of appointing interim leader, as Sunak is said to be unwilling to stay beyond summer

• UK politics live – latest updates

Rishi Sunak does not intend to stay as Conservative leader beyond the summer, allies have said, amid a split in the party over how long it should take to elect a new leader.

The party now faces the prospect of having to appoint an interim leader if the contest goes on for several more months, and several senior figures fear the hard-right populist Nigel Farage could position himself as de facto leader of the opposition if the battle drags on.

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Neonicotinoid pesticide was given emergency authorisation under previous government in 2023 and 2024

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is being investigated by the environmental watchdog after Conservative ministers authorised a bee-killing pesticide that was banned by the EU.

The investigation into Defra was launched after the campaign group ClientEarth submitted a complaint to the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), which was set up after Brexit to replace the EU’s framework for punishing environmental offences by governments in the bloc. On Monday the OEP announced it would be investigating the emergency authorisation of a neonicotinoid pesticide in 2023 and 2024.

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Prof Helen Smith , David Rennie and Prof John Denham on the dire state of university funding

William Davies’ article on the plight of universities struck a chord ( How the Tories pushed universities to the brink of disaster, 2 July ). But he underplays how culpable the last decade of university managers have been, and how damaging and dated their response is now.

Universities and their staff face the same problems, derived from the same causes, but – as Davies points out – university management embraced tuition fees and the marketisation of higher education while staff protested against them. Now universities have at last recognised that the funding system is beyond repair. Faced with a sector meltdown that should see unions, staff and management collectively embracing a new hymn sheet, universities are falling back on the same old, same old: redundancy schemes accompanied by restructurings and efficiency drives that have a whiff of rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

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The Tories were once the ‘natural party of government’. Now they’re not even the natural party of opposition

• Justine Greening was the Conservative MP for Putney from 2005 to 2019

It’s impossible not to congratulate the Labour party on its historic victory. Keir Starmer has taken his party on a journey back into government. He has brought Labour back from the fringes of British politics and made it a mainstream party that has gained a huge electoral majority from all parts of our country. When I was appointed education secretary in 2016, I was the first person in the job to have been educated at a comprehensive school. It is welcome to see a cabinet where state-educated ministers are finally the norm, not the exception. When the nation’s decision-makers have shared the lived experience of the vast majority of the population, this surely makes for a stronger, better and fairer government. Everyone in the country should wish Labour well with their mission to break down barriers to opportunity.

As for the Conservative party? It would be naive for anyone to think that things can only get better. The last few days have been marked by the depressingly predictable appearances of Suella Braverman and David Frost , in a political equivalent of Return of the Living Dead. Frost, a man who may well have never won a raffle let alone an election, and Braverman, a politician so inept she thought it was a good idea to write an article attacking her own party in the final 48 hours before voters went to the polls, are among those vying to determine the future of the Conservatives.

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