The Conservative leadership race is gathering pace after former home secretary Priti Patel was knocked out of the contest this week in the first round of voting. Polling continues in the coming weeks until the field is reduced to two candidates, who will then be put to party members to choose the winner.

Following the crushing general election result, understanding what members want next for the party is key to the leadership hopefuls' chances. But there's a problem, said Ben Walker in The New Statesman. "I don't think Tory members themselves know what they want."

What did the commentators say?
The leadership race "requires appealing to three tribes", wrote Dr Patrick English, director of political analytics at YouGov, for Conservative Home. The five remaining MPs vying to replace Rishi Sunak need to win over their fellow MPs, prospective Tory voters and also party members, and "these audiences are very different".

Many in the third tribe appear keen to "shift their party to the right and to appeal to Reform UK voters", but a "lurch to the right" may not be helpful in building support with the wider electorate.

In the leadership races of recent years, party members have "tended to pick the more right-wing candidate of the final two", said the BBC's political reporter Sam Francis. Latest polls suggest the trend may continue.

A survey of Tory members will "make happy reading" for supporters of Kemi Badenoch, said Guido Fawkes. The poll, conducted by ConservativeHome just before Wednesday's first-round vote, put the hardliner on 34%, with Robert Jenrick trailing in second place with 18%.  Jenrick and Badenoch's other remaining rivals – Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Mel Strike – "may want to take a page out of" Keir Starmer's playbook", said Sky News' Beth Rigby. The Labour leader "engaged with the left" during his party's leadership race, only to "reset in the centre group".

What next?
The five remaining candidates will be whittled down to four by Tory MPs in a vote next week. After the party conference at the end of this month,  MPs will again narrow the field, to two, before members have the final say. The winner will be announced on 2 November.

Customer complaints about fraud and scams hit a record high of 8,734 in the first quarter of this financial year – up from 6,094 between April and June last year and the highest total since the Financial Ombudsman Service began tracking the data in 2018. Nearly half of this year's claims – 44% – were upheld by the watchdog, which "deals with unresolved disputes between providers and their customers", said the BBC.

"Being a victim of a fraud and scam is a horrendous experience, not just financially, but emotionally, too," said Abby Thomas, chief executive of the ombudsman service. "That's why it's disappointing to see complaint levels rising to even higher levels."

How are people being scammed?
More than half of the complaints were about authorised push payment (APP) frauds – when customers are "tricked into approving an online bank transfer to a fraudster", Sky News said. According to the Financial Times, £459.7 million was lost through such fraud in 2023.

Other methods used include getting victims to pay for goods or services that don't exist, and romance scams in which the con artist strikes up a relationship with their victim before asking for money.

Multiple claims have also been made about sophisticated "multistage frauds", which involve a number of firms.

Can scam victims get their money back?
There is currently no requirement for banks and financial providers to refund customers hit by APP scams. Many banks do so "voluntarily", said the BBC, while others are "more reluctant".

Plans were introduced last year to make such reimbursements mandatory, allowing victims to claim back up to £415,000 from 7 October this year. However, the FT reported that the regulator was set to "dramatically scale back" the scheme to only £85,000 "after strong pressure from ministers and fintech firms".

How can you avoid scams?
The BBC warned there was a risk of more people being scammed while distracted by "post-summer life admin" during the return to work and school after holidays. So "step back to consider requests for money or personal details before being tricked".

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East Sussex: Lewes Crescent, Brighton
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North Yorkshire: 9 Park Street, Ripon
A handsome Grade II detached Georgian property within a stone’s throw of the city centre. Main suite, 6 further beds (2 en suite), 2 baths, 1 shower, kitchen/ breakfast room, 3 receps, study, garage, garden. OIEO £800,000; Carter Jonas

Worcestershire: Edgar Street, Worcester
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These 21st-century demagogues aren't mavericks – they've repeated on us throughout history
George Monbiot in The Guardian
From Donald Trump to the "satsuma-tinged" Silvio Berlusconi, right-wing "demagogues" share similarities beyond a fondness for orange foundation, says George Monbiot. Populist right-wingers "overstate the cracks in a crisis-torn society", while their reliance on "patronage" means they "direct popular anger away from genuine elites and towards fictional conspiracies and minorities". These patterns "repeat themselves with remarkable fidelity", but "by learning and understanding them, we can better defend ourselves" and "develop a more effective response to them".

I'm a teacher and believe that homework should be banned
Nadeine Asbali on the i news site
"Parents are fed up with the amount of homework their children are expected to do every day after school," writes Nadeine Asbali. As a secondary school teacher, "I'm no fan of homework either". In fact, "many of us teachers" agree that homework "should be banned". The best learning "happens in a classroom". By contrast, homework has an "emotional toll on children" and a "catastrophic impact on the households that are already struggling".

'Paddy-bashing' and the blind spot of progressives
Brendan O'Neill in The Spectator
A school textbook that portrays the Irish as "gurning ginger-haired imbeciles who do Irish jigs in the garden and eat bacon and cabbage" has been produced by a "leading Irish publisher", writes Brendan O'Neill. The message is "traditional white Irish family, bad; socially aware mixed-race family, good". It used to be "stuffy posh Brits" who looked down on my native country, but now it seems "some in Ireland's own elite" take a "dim, haughty view".