The Latest Breaking News from Ben Houchen

Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor says there will ‘have to be a coming together’ of the two rightwing parties

Exclusive: The latest tracker poll from Techne UK has seen the Conservatives drop another point in a week where Kemi Badenoch was strongly criticised for her performance in PMQs

Exclusive: Ben Houchen, Britain’s only senior Tory left in power, says his party can turn things around in five years but should have listened to Rishi Sunak to avoid calamity

It came after the former home secretary said the party could do better than being ‘a collection of fanatical, irrelevant, centrist cranks’.

Shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell said it is important to ‘run the leadership contest long’ to ensure leadership candidates ‘come under scrutiny’

In today’s newsletter: On Saturday, the former president was shot at during a campaign rally leaving two dead, and two others with serious injuries – here’s what we know about that day and what might happen next

Houchen says party must avoid seeming self-indulgent as other Conservatives attack Liz Truss over new intervention

In the UK, devolved authorities operate in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales as well as in other areas including London, Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Tees Valley

One of the least spoken about shifts in English politics over the last decade is the move towards mayors. Starting with the establishment of the Mayor of London by Tony Blair in 2000, successive Conservative governments have created 11 mayoral combined authorities, each with its own directly elected mayor, since…