Gary Monro’s blog

The Conservative Party voting system is quite simple. MPs vote for their preferred candidate and the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Repeat until there are just two candidates left. At that point, all Party members vote for their preferred candidate, the winner becoming party leader.

Is it possible for the Conservative Party’s conservative wing (supporters of David Davis and Liam Fox, for example) to vote tactically so that Ken Clarke does not make it to the final two?

Maybe the excess Davis vote can ensure that Fox is never the last-placed candidate by voting for him. When we get to, say, three remaining candidates could that knock Mr Clarke out?

Could they arrange it so that the final battle is between Mr Fox and Mr Davis?

Who paid the bill?

Pensioner Sylvia Hardy has been freed less than two days into a seven-day jail term after an anonymous donor paid her £53.71 council tax arrears.

But the 73-year-old, of Exeter, Devon, said she was disappointed she had not been able to serve her full sentence.

Ms Hardy, who argues the tax is unfair on retired people, was jailed on Monday and had been due to be freed on Friday.

Her attempts to draw attention to the steep rises in Council Tax bills was thwarted last year too; another anonymous benefactor stepped in and paid her arrears:

“I don’t know what the motives of this particular person were - he might have been a person that was against the campaign and wanted to blow it up, or he may have been a person misguided who wanted to help, or thought he was helping.”

I reckon a scan of Labour Party accounts - searching particularly for the sum of £53.71 (perhaps itemised as ‘Tea and coffee’ or ‘printing costs’) - might provide the answer…