Andrew Gimson’s leadership sketch: Black arts, FSBs and as they come to the last it’s still neck and neck

Jokes continue to be told, but it would be wrong to suggest the contest has been fought in a spirit of unwearying amity.

Which MP is backing which candidate. Our named estimates. Johnson 131, Hunt 48, Gove 36, Javid 22

Here’s our best stab at who is voting for whom, and this list will be updated each morning, as the contest continues.

Andrew Gimson’s leadership sketch: Javid takes on the old school tie

Davidson introduced the Home Secretary, who does not yet shine as brightly as his talents should enable him to do.

The ten candidates who will contest the Conservative Party’s leadership election

So no more dropouts after Sam Gyimah’s departure earlier this afternoon. The first ballot will be held on Thursday.

This week’s winner in the Tory leadership election is…Johnson

The vocation of the front-runner is not to mess up. And he hasn’t. Indeed, he has picked up support – and upped the pace.

The Johnson hype is here. Don’t fall for it.

In a field this crowded and with an electorate so, er, sophisticated, make no assumptions about which names will be forwarded to Party members.

Why the ’22 Executive must tell May to go this week

The unrebuttable fact is that the Prime Minister is in breach of her word, and that the collapse of trust in the Party threatens to be terminal.

Punishing schools for excluding disruptive pupils is the wrong approach

The Gove reforms are being undermined. Headteachers need to have autonomy.

Chris White: Brexit. May’s Commons options after Bercow’s ruling.

There’s little that Conservative MPs can do to stop the Speaker – they don’t have the votes to depose him.

Enter – or rather exit – the Spartans

A dedicated band of Conservative pro-Brexit holdouts stands ready to perish rather than let May’s deal pass.

The 16 Tory MPs who broke the whip to back Powell’s cut-off amendment

Halfon and Stevenson join the Europhile ultras in a very near miss for the Government.

The 39 Conservative MPs who switched from opposing the Withdrawal Agreement to supporting it

Philip Davies, a famously long-standing and committed Brexiteer, is among their number.

The defectors are wrong. The Conservatives aren’t shifting to the right. They are mired in the mixed middle.

No less than the ERG, the group of three sees everything through the prism of Brexit – which, let it not be forgotten, they voted to support themselves.

Conservative education policy is up for grabs

We trail a mini-series on what might happen next amidst a sense of uncertainty about will follow the Gove reforms.

Mark Lehain: Gove was right to support headteachers over excluded pupils

Halfon is wrong to attribute the rise in school exclusion rates to any disregard for those affected.