Parliament’s fusty old procedures badly need updating. The PM should start with a spectacle that serves no benefit

Boring. That was the universal response to Wednesday’s first prime minister’s questions of the new parliament. Where was the screaming, yelling, insulting and air punching? This is supposed to be Strictly Come Politicking. Get off stage, the two of you. Zero points.

The Telegraph condemned the new PMQs as a “love-in”. The prime minister was like a teenager “ breaking the news he had lost his virginity ”, according to one headline. For an Independent columnist it was intolerably tame, just “ good-natured joshing ”. The Times’s sketch writer concluded that the new horses “ will need time to learn to bray ”, noting that it was so dull some MPs walked out before the curtain.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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Discussions took place in June 2023 but aides thought backbenchers would reject proposal to ease overcrowding

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Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street team rejected advice a year ago that they should consider the early release of prisoners who had served less than half of their sentences to relieve prison overcrowding, the Guardian has been told by multiple sources.

Discussions took place inside No 10 in June 2023 over the proposals, a version of which was adopted two weeks ago by Keir Starmer’s government.

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The UK needs a robust, competent centre-right party to stave off the threat of the populist right

The contest to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader may seem like an argument between corpses in a tomb. The candidates are yesterday’s rejects. Not even the hysterical headline-writers of the Tory press can bring themselves to hype the race as they would in the triumphalist years. The infantile tabloid screams of “Boris this” or “Suella that” seem to have gone quiet, though probably only briefly.

After the babel of those years, a period of relative Tory silence will be welcome to many. But the future of the Conservative party is a genuinely important matter – not just to Tories themselves, but also to the workings of parliamentary democracy and to the dynamics of British politics. The election to succeed Sunak, the preliminaries of which began this week , should not be scorned as an irrelevant event.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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Since 1900, only four Tory leaders have not gone on to become prime minister. Rishi Sunak’s successor is likely to become the fifth

By stepping down as Conservative party leader, Rishi Sunak fired the starting gun on the race to replace him. It’s likely to be a long slog for the winner. The contest will run until 2 November, when a new leader will be unveiled just before the US election.

Those applying for the top job must submit their applications by Wednesday evening. Then will come months of campaigning, speechifying and, if fate allows, a star turn at the party conference. MPs will decide who will be the two final candidates. Members will have until Halloween to choose between them. Whoever wins faces a herculean task of reviving the Tories. The party’s general election defeat was the worst in its parliamentary history.

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It’s likely to be a gruelling few months for former PM but his party hopes it buys them time to find a future winner

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Little over a year ago, when Sky News’s Beth Rigby asked Rishi Sunak what it felt like to lose, he didn’t know what to say.

It’s a question he will have the chance to ponder as the leader of the opposition over the next three months. Day in, day out, Sunak will be tasked with holding accountable a party and prime minister who defeated him resoundingly in July’s election.

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Four MPs will be shortlisted before party conference, with Badenoch, Cleverly, Tugendhat and Patel current favourites

The Conservatives will elect their new leader in November after the party agreed to an extended timetable to replace Rishi Sunak.

Four Conservative MPs will be shortlisted by the parliamentary party to make their pitch to colleagues and members at party conference in October. Sunak will remain acting leader until his successor is agreed.

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If things don’t work out for the PM in No 10, he has a glorious alternative career ahead of him delivering heartfelt eulogies

Think of it as more a lap of honour. We’d all seen the pictures. A grateful world receives Keir Starmer at the Nato summit in Washington . A saviour in their midst. A week later European leaders bask in the summer heat at Blenheim. An early evening tryst with Emmanuel Macron on a bed of rose petals. All was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. More or less.

But needs must. Call it a formality. Call it a courtesy. Either way on Monday afternoon the prime minister was in the House of Commons to tell MPs all about how brilliant he had been at Nato and the European Political Community. How it had been very heaven to be alive in that moment. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. It was days like these that made the job all worthwhile. Shooting the breeze with the great and the good.

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Chancellor understood to believe £2.6bn of public money lost to fraudsters during pandemic could be recouped

Rachel Reeves will appoint a commissioner within weeks tasked with recouping billions from Covid contract fraud, in an initiative that will turn the spotlight on to government waste.

The chancellor is understood to believe the Treasury can recoup £2.6bn from waste, fraud and flawed contracts signed during the pandemic.

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The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey discuss Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the US presidential race and whether the honeymoon period that Keir Starmer is enjoying will last. Plus, are the Tories really going to wait until next April to elect a new leader?

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