Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Saturday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is facing a perfect storm

Contrary to popular myth, on the English side of the Channel, at least, the French can queue. Across the country thousands of men and women have for days sat patiently in their vehicles waiting their turn to fill up their tanks with petrol. Tempers have frayed on occasion, which is no surprise given what is at stake. An opinion poll on Wednesday stated that two in three French people’s livelihoods have taken a hit because of the petrol shortage, a consequence of strike action at four refineries and a storage facility because of a wage dispute. Nonetheless, the same poll disclosed that 42 per cent of people support the strike action,

Robin Ashenden

‘In Russia, there’s just emptiness’: An interview with a Putin draft dodger

Thousands of Russians are fleeing from Putin’s forced mobilisation. To escape from a call-up – and probable death sentence – on the frontlines of Ukraine, men and women are leaving behind their friends, families and possessions. They must dodge patrols and mobile check points at the borders to catch those trying to evade the call up. The lucky ones make it out. But even once these people have escaped Putin’s clutches, the terror and fear endures. I met one of these men, Maxim, in a bar in Tbilisi, Georgia. He and his wife had just fled from Russia, after Putin’s ‘partial mobilisation’ order of 21 September. Though it is now well into October,

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Can Putin successfully drag Belarus into war with Ukraine?

Putin’s war in Ukraine is not going his way. As the screw tightens on him, what options does he have left up his sleeve? There remains, of course, the possibility that Putin could, at some point, choose to deploy nuclear weapons – he himself has threatened this enough times. But there is also Belarus. Controlled by Alexandr Lukashenko, currently in his sixth term as president thanks to an election in 2020 rigged in his favour with Putin’s help, the country has sat on the fringes of the war since it began. On Monday, as Putin launched his latest attack on Ukraine, Belarus announced that, together with Russia, it was deploying a joint regional

Friday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Is there anything left of Trussonomics?

After two major U-turns over last month’s mini-Budget and the sacking of a chancellor, what’s left of Liz Truss’s economic agenda? Parts of it remain intact. But it’s now shaping up to be significantly different from what the Prime Minister intended when she entered Downing Street. The key assumption behind Trussonomics as it was developed during the leadership race was that the markets would be delighted to lend to the government, on the cheap, to see through its tax-cutting, growth-stimulating agenda. That assumption was quickly killed off after former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng sat down from presenting his mini-Budget, and the cost paid by governments to borrow began to soar. It

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Can America save capitalism?

33 min listen

Freddy Gray talks to Dr Samuel Gregg, a scholar at the Acton Institute and Distinguished Fellow of the American Institute for Economic Research, about his new book The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Five ways the Liz Truss saga could end

How does this end? That’s the question being asked by Tory MPs as Liz Truss’s government finds itself in turmoil once again. The Prime Minister’s decision to axe her chancellor and U-turn on a plan to ditch the corporation tax has only added to nerves in the Conservative party as to how sustainable the current situation is in. It’s clear that different wings of the party are incredibly unhappy with the current leadership. Yet Truss is technically safe from challenge for another year. What’s more, it’s not clear who exactly the party could agree on. Earlier this month, I wrote for the magazine on the scenarios being war-gamed by ministers,

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

How to stop Just Stop Oil

The National Gallery is home to Van Gogh’s still life Sunflowers. It’s an oil on canvas that, according to the Times, has been valued at £75 million. It is a cherished work of modern European art and one of the most important to come from the post-impressionist movement. This morning, two activists from Just Stop Oil went into Room 43 of the National Gallery and drenched Sunflowers in Heinz cream of tomato soup, before glueing themselves to the wall. One of the young women said:  Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice? The cost of living crisis is driven by fossil fuels. Everyday life has become

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Can Truss calm the markets?

12 min listen

Liz Truss has delivered an 8-minute long press conference confirming the latest corporation tax U-turn and insisting she will stay on as Prime Minister. Did it do enough to reassure voters and calm the markets? Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Cindy Yu and Natasha Feroze.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘She’s just so bad at everything’: Tory MPs turn on Truss

Liz Truss’s Downing Street press conference has made everything worse, as far as Tory MPs are concerned. As soon as it was over, a number of backbenchers who had supported Truss for leader were locked into a call with Thérèse Coffey, the PM’s closest friend in Parliament and the Deputy Prime Minister. Those on the call said it was ‘like a wake,’ with even Coffey sounding ‘broken.’ ‘You could see the loss in her eyes,’ said one. Coffey reiterated the points the Prime Minister had made in No. 10, before taking questions. The ‘wake’ line is one you hear a lot at the moment. A number of MPs who went

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The spectacular fall of Liz Truss

Is Liz Truss the new Theresa May? A fortnight ago that question seemed unduly insulting to the Prime Minister. Now it seems unduly insulting to the Maybot, whose stage-dancing at Tory conference appears a triumph of liquid movement when compared to the curtsying of the Trussborg at royal audiences. Clumsy is as clumsy does, and Truss is now in a class of her own when it comes to political miscalculation. At least it took May a year to get fully found out in that catastrophic general election campaign of 2017. Truss has managed it in little more than a month. Seeking to impose the agenda of Gladstonian liberalism on the 21st century

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Liz Truss’s painful press conference fails to calm Tory nerves

Liz Truss has just confirmed that she is U-turning on another part of her government’s not-so-mini Budget. After sacking her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng this morning, the Prime Minister used a Downing Street press conference to say that she will now keep the increase in corporation tax, despite promising to ditch it. This ought to raise £18 billion in tax. Explaining her decision, Truss said that while she still stuck to her vision for the country of a pro-growth government, it had become clear that her government’s fiscal event – which saw a range of unfunded tax cuts announced – ‘went further and faster than the markets were expecting’.  The PM

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The real damage caused by eco-protestors

A pair of Just Stop Oil activists walked into the National Gallery this morning and threw tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. ‘What is worth more? Art or life?’, one of the demonstrators yelled as she glued herself to the wall. This isn’t the first time a work of art has been targeted by environmentalists. In July, eco-protesters glued themselves to the frame of Constable’s painting The Hay Wain and covered it with an altered version of their own, doing minor damage in the process. A few days before, eco-protesters rushed onto the track at Silverstone. Eco-protesters also glued themselves to a Turner painting in Manchester. In June, eco-protesters…  you get the idea. For all

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine braces itself for Russia’s cold war

So far this week, 128 Russian missiles have been fired at Ukraine. Half were intercepted by air defences, according to figures from Ukrainian authorities, but all too many of the others hit their target: power stations. This is a new phase in war, an anti-humanitarian campaign to cut supplies of water, electricity and leave the notoriously cold Ukrainian winter to do its worst.  ‘Ukraine is about to face the hardest winter in all the years of independence,’ said Volodymyr Zelensky in one of his nightly addresses to the nation. About a third of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been hit by Russian missiles and Iranian kamikaze drones. Kyiv had expected Russia

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Truss sacks Kwarteng. What next?

13 min listen

Prime Minister Liz Truss has sacked her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and replaced him with Jeremy Hunt. By removing her closest ideological ally. Can she save herself? Kate Andrews speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Liz Truss is still at the mercy of the Bank of England

Last week, I wrote here that 14 October was the key date in British politics, because the expiry of the Bank of England’s gilt-buying programme would force the Government to act to lower gilt yields. Be in no doubt: the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng today is a consequence of the Bank’s refusal to go on supporting bond prices and artificially shielding the Government from the credibility-shredding consequences of the September fiscal statement. That’s not to say the Bank planned or engineered this. I don’t think Andrew Bailey, the Governor, is a Machiavellian political strategist. It’s just to say that the nature of the UK’s economic and financial position is that

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why Truss picked Hunt for Chancellor

A day is a long time in politics. Just this morning, a No. 10 source told the BBC the Prime Minister believed Kwasi Kwarteng was doing ‘an excellent job’ as chancellor and the pair were ‘in lockstep.’ Only just a few hours on, Liz Truss has sacked her close ally and friend in a bid to salvage her premiership. Now, Truss has appointed Jeremy Hunt to replace Kwarteng. It’s not even 2 p.m. The view in Downing Street is that Hunt is ultimately a low-tax Tory As soon as rumours started to circulate that Hunt was the preferred pick, there were raised eyebrows among Tory MPs. Nadhim Zahawi and Sajid

Steerpike Steerpike

Flashback: Hunt demands 15p corporation tax

Kwasi Kwarteng, we hardly knew ye. After 38 days, the Chancellor was unceremoniously axed from his post today as Liz Truss desperately tries to rescue her crumbling premiership. Memorable highlights of his five-week stint include the mini-Budget, firing Tom Scholar and being mistaken for Bernard Mensah. Indeed, the official mourning period appears in retrospect to have been the honeymoon of his tenure. Kwarteng and Truss were elected to parliament on the same day and have been close friends for more than a decade. They were co-authors, co-founders and successive leaders of the Free Enterprise Group, allies through the long years of May and Johnson. And yet that didn’t stop her

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Kwarteng’s sacking is a warning to his successor

Kwasi Kwarteng’s sacking is brutal – and he was sacked as his letter makes clear. He was a chancellor who wanted to say yes to the Prime Minister, he deliberately did not try and build a power base for himself. But he has now been removed without ceremony, sacked even before he had returned to Downing Street. He will feel bruised, and understandably so. Whoever succeeds Kwarteng is going to take a very different approach. They are going to demand control over economic policy and they are going to install their own people in the Treasury and try and build up their own position. They will be acutely aware that if

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will sacking Kwarteng be enough to save Truss’s premiership?

Can sacking Kwasi Kwarteng really save Liz Truss’s premiership? In the past few minutes, the chancellor has had a meeting with the Prime Minister – and he has now left the government. Tory MPs have spent the past week doing a lot of writing. The first thing many of them have been writing is a letter to Sir Graham Brady calling for a vote of no confidence. Even though the rules currently don’t allow one for a year after the election of a new leader, those who’ve sent their missives expect that he will reach a point where he has to tell the Prime Minister there would be a vote

George Brandis

Removing PMs hardly ever ends well

As Tory MPs appear to descend into a panic of buyers’ remorse over the election of Liz Truss, they would be well advised to take a deep breath and reflect upon the absurdity of removing a leader after six weeks. As they do so, they might find it instructive to look across the sea to Australia to see the folly of constant leadership turmoil and the ever more lethal poison it injects into the bloodstream of political parties.    Over the past decade and a half, Canberra – whose politics are famously robust – earned the unenviable taunt of having become the ‘coup capital of the South Pacific,’ as both sides