With the Tory Party leadership race officially underway after Theresa May stepped down on Friday, candidates vying to replace the PM in Number 10 were out in force on the Sunday shows.
Former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey appeared on the Andrew Marr to suggest that she would shut down parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit if she needed to.
Pressed on the issue after fellow leadership contender Dominic Raab came under fire for claims he could ‘prorogue’ parliament, McVey said it wouldn’t be her first choice – but refused to rule it out.
“I would use every tool at my disposal, so it would include that,” the pro-Brexiteer MP said. “I’m saying it wouldn’t be my priority and I wouldn’t be looking to do that.”
However, McVey said it would be a move in defence of democracy after the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016.
Meanwhile, home secretary Sajid Javid revealed a “multi-year multi-billion pound” investment plan for education if he becomes the next prime minister.
He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday he would slow down the rate of debt reduction in order to pump more money into schools.
“I think it’s important that we head in the right direction [in reducing the deficit], but by slowing that down it could free £15 to £25 billion a year of spending,” Javid said, adding that not all of that money would be spent on education.
Javid – who attended a comprehensive school in Bristol – called the power of his own education “transformative”.
Next up was Michael Gove talking to Marr about the biggest story of the weekend – his use of cocaine 20 years ago.
It was revealed yesterday that the environment secretary – who was then a journalist – had taken drugs “on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago”
However, Gove denied hypocrisy claims after an article he wrote in 1999 slamming middle-class drug use came to light.
In the article in The Times, Gove criticised “middle-class professionals” for taking drugs and calling for legalisation, arguing that while it may be easy for them to control drug use, “it is a little less easy to cope with the consequences of illegal drug use, or family breakdown, in South Shields than it is in south Hampstead”.
When asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr whether that made him a hypocrite, Gove denied the claim.
“No, I think anyone can read the article and make their minds up,” he said.
“The point I made in the article is if any of us lapse sometimes from standards we uphold, that is human. The thing to do then is not necessarily to say that standards should be lowered, it should be to reflect on the lapse and to seek to do better in future.”
Away from drug use, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that if there was a general election before the Conservative Party had delivered Brexit, it could risk putting Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10.
Calling a Brexit deal the “only way” to avoid a general election, he told Ridge: “If we repeat going to the country on a national scale, then we will see what happened at Peterborough happening on a national scale.
“Which is the right-wing vote split, the centre-right vote split and Labour coming through the middle. That would be an absolute catastrophe.”
Meanwhile, the former health secretary said he still stood by his belief that the legal limit for abortion in the UK should be reduced from 24 weeks to 12 weeks, saying: “My view hasn’t changed on that.”
However, he said it would not be government policy to have a vote on it if he became prime minister.
Away from the Tory leadership race, Labour MPs were asked to give their views on Peterborough’s newly-elected MP after the party scraped a victory in this week’s by-election.
Lisa Forbes, who was elected with a majority of 683 votes, caused controversy after it emerged she had liked a Facebook post saying Theresa May had a “Zionist slave masters agenda”.
Speaking after her election, Forbes denied being anti-Semitic, saying she had liked a video of children praying about what had happened in New Zealand and “hadn’t paid much attention to the text above”.
“I apologised for that and I’m really sorry. I just hope that people will understand that I don’t have a bad bone in my body towards any race of people and anti-Semitism is just something I condemn completely,” she told Sky News.
Her election caused concern among some Labour MPs, including Jess Phillips and Margaret Hodge.
But Barry Gardiner – Labour’s international development secretary – said she should be forgiven.
He told Marr: “On a day when you’re interviewing Michael Gove whose asking to be forgiven for Class A drug use, I think if he can be forgiven for that, then Lisa Forbes can be forgiven for like a tweet she didn’t bother to read.”
Meanwhile, shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told Ridge he did not believe Forbes was anti-Semitic – but that she must now work with the Jewish community.