Politics

It is hard to know what Liz Truss hoped to achieve by storming off stage during an event in Suffolk promoting her new memoir. The former PM did so after campaigners unfurled a banner emblazoned with the phrase: ‘I crashed the economy’ below a picture of a lettuce. All that Truss, who lasted just 49 days in office, succeeded in doing was to draw even more attention to the prank – the clip has amassed over six million views on social media. In the process she also managed to confirm what many have long suspected, which is that she really can’t take a joke, however lame.  Truss was sitting comfortably on stage, discussing

The French television personality Laurent Baffie, interviewed by Le Figaro, came up with a nice phrase for the success beyond most expectations of the Paris Olympics: it had been ‘une parenthèse enchantée’, he said, but parentheses always have to close and ‘la merde va revenir’. I’m guessing he meant France’s brief political truce will end and attention will refocus on economic woes, even after a slight fall in unemployment – to 7.3 per cent, compared with the UK rate of 4.4 per cent – that was announced as another ‘bonne surprise’. Writing from the Dordogne, where lunch is long and markets that matter are not global and financial but local

Labour backbenchers have spent years dreaming of the day they are in power and get ‘the call’ from the Prime Minister, inviting them to become ministers. But this time, a few were surprised that when the call came they heard the cut-glass accent of Sue Gray on the line. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised them. Her power over the government is hardly a secret: she helped run the country as a civil servant during the Tory years. Now she does so as a political adviser. Why disguise it? Sunak told the electorate to judge him on how well he fulfilled his five missions. In the end, they did Gray is

To the matter of ‘inappropriate’ party political tweets – from a rather unlikely culprit. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has come under fire after it took to Twitter last year with a rather odd campaign post. The charity took a fierce stance against proposals from the then-Tory government to scrap water pollution restrictions for housing sites in England – and decided to channel its fury online at Conservative ministers. In a tweet written in August 2023, the RSPB accused former prime minister Rishi Sunak, ex-housing secretary Michael Gove and former-environment secretary Therese Coffey for U-turning on environmental protections, slamming the trio as ‘liars’. Crikey. The furious

Back to the Labour government, which is under scrutiny as more questions about party donor Ian Corfield’s new job arise. The banker has a history of donating hefty sums to Sir Keir’s lefty lot, with Electoral Commission records showing Corfield gave more than £20,000 to Labour politicians (including now-Chancellor Rachel Reeves) over the last nine years. Just last month, the Labour donor landed a job as a director of investment at the Treasury – and now it has emerged that the civil service watchdog was not informed of his donation history when it approved Corfield’s appointment. How curious… While most civil service jobs are filled through ‘fair and open competition’,