The Slow Newsletter

Good afternoon. Welcome back to Tortoise’s weekly Slow Newsletter.

Who gets to choose?

Next month Conservative Party members will choose the UK’s next prime minister. By 5 September they will have cast perhaps 160,000 ballots but the party reveals nothing else about them – and, as far as we can tell, makes little effort to vet new members.?

We have registered as new Tory members:

• a pet tortoise
• two foreign nationals
• a fictional Margaret Roberts (Margaret Thatcher’s maiden name)

A ￡25 membership fee was accepted in each case, a membership number issued and all have been invited to introductory meetings and election hustings. To be clear, these new ‘members’ will not be able to vote in this leadership contest, as they needed to have registered three months before the ballot closes on 2 September.??

Tortoise has sought legal advice and sent a letter to the Conservative Party seeking to address three issues:

• the integrity and security of the leadership election given there is no public assurance of independent oversight of compliance with party rules or validation of voters;
• the bizarre anomalies by which under-age voters and non-UK citizens can vote for the next prime minister but not for an MP; and
• the public interest in knowing more about the people who have given the new prime minister her or his mandate.

Read the full letter on the Tortoise website.

Hostile environment

While the Tory leadership contest fills the airwaves, the business of government continues – or at least it should be. This week, in the Slow Newscast, Jack Shenker asks: what happened to the Home Office? For months, he has been talking to officials and ministers, past and present, asking how the Home Office became so suspicious of foreigners and so obsessed with “getting a grip” on immigration.

We have told the stories of migrants many times at Tortoise, (for example, Hashi Mohamed’s excellent investigation Visit Rwanda: Britain’s Harsh Welcome for Refugees) but at the back of them all is the Home Office, a monument to intransigence.?

Hostile Environment is a piece of work about that department. We wanted to know how it became like this: a response to public opinion, to media intolerance or to political manipulation? How was the modern Home Office made – and what is its culture today?

Autumn ThinkIns

You’ll be glad to hear that we’ve started booking autumn ThinkIns. We’ll be asking what can we expect from the next PM? We’ll be interviewing Matt Hancock. We’ll be taking a closer look at the ￡1 billion Greensill Swindle and many more.

And stay posted for a very special new kind of Tortoise event; inspired by our success at KITE we’re going to bring some of that feel-good festival experience right into our newsroom. I hope you’ll join us.

That’s all for this week, have a great weekend.

Katie