Politics

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

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

Does Joe Biden know what ‘super-wealthy’ Americans pay in tax?

Joe Biden, ice cream in hand as so often, yesterday pronounced on Liz Truss’s tax reform disaster.  ‘I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,’ said Joe Biden, sounding every bit the wise old man of global politics. ‘I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super-wealthy at a time when… I disagree with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain.’ That concession at the end is the President realising he’s just breached the normal rules of diplomacy – by giving his opinion on an ally’s domestic difficulties. But he just can’t help himself. Biden has probably forgotten, but he has proposed increasing the

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Who voted for Jeremy Hunt to run Britain?

Jeremy Hunt has no mandate to lead Britain. He couldn’t muster sufficient Tory MPs behind him to properly enter the last leadership contest. He was beaten overwhelmingly in the one before that.  He was a key part of the failed Theresa May administration that lost a parliamentary majority at a general election. He played no role in the Boris Johnson administration that won it back with plenty to spare (a victory from which the Conservative mandate to govern still flows). Yet in a round of interviews this weekend, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer simply ripped up the economic agenda of Liz Truss. He mocked and then buried the PM’s

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Ben Wallace: If defence spending pledge goes, so do I

In politics, where there’s death, there’s life. And as Liz Truss’s premiership crumbles before our eyes, all attention in SW1 is which lucky legislator gets to replace her. Second time Sunak? The people’s Penny? Back again Boris? Or perhaps the man who many wanted to run this summer but ended up dropping out: Ben Wallace, the popular Defence Secretary.  The former Scots Guards officer has been a long-standing fixture at the top of the ConservativeHome Cabinet rankings but opted to back Liz Truss in July rather than run himself. Instead, he extracted a pledge from the Trussette to raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 – a

Steerpike Steerpike

Kwarteng’s allies pin the blame on Truss

Kwasi Kwarteng’s letter to Liz Truss was outwardly loyal. But he made it quite clear he had been sacked for trying to implement her ‘vision’. Friends of the former Chancellor are now suggesting that it was the Prime Minister who was the moving force behind the mini-Budget’s most disastrous measure: the abolition of the 45p rate. They tell the Mail on Sunday that he had proposed not including it, only for Truss to reply – ‘let’s go for it.’ One wonders how many more of these inconvenient details might leak out in the coming days. The problem for Kwarteng and Truss, though, is that they are neighbours in Greenwich as well

Isabel Oakeshott

The plot to put Rishi Sunak in No. 10

When Rishi Sunak resigned over Boris Johnson’s leadership, he acknowledged that it might be the end of his political career. His dreams of leading the Tory party already seemed over, thanks to his wealthy wife’s non-dom status. In a few short weeks, the Tory party did something quite extraordinary, and forgot about all that. Setting aside what would normally have been a career ending scandal, they very nearly made him prime minister. Now his supporters are trying to engineer something even more amazing: ousting the woman who beat him in the party leadership contest, and installing their man in No. 10. The first step of their plan involves market turmoil

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

The misconception about Putin’s big red nuclear button

There is a common misconception that the leaders of nuclear states have a ‘red button’ that can unleash Armageddon. As Vladimir Putin continues to hint at the use of non-strategic (‘tactical’) nuclear weapons in Ukraine, there is some comfort in the knowledge that it is not so easy. Ironically, launching the kind of strategic nuclear missiles whose use would likely spiral into global destruction is somewhat easier than deploying the smaller weapons which – however vastly unlikely – could conceivably be used in Ukraine. These lower-yield warheads would need to be reconditioned in one of the 12 ‘Object S’ arsenals across Russia holding them, and then transported to one of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How far does Jeremy Hunt’s writ run?

Jeremy Hunt is a man who thinks he is in clear charge of government fiscal policy. After Liz Truss’s press conference yesterday which abandoned the corporation tax cut and opened the way to spending cuts, there were briefings to the papers that no more U-turns were coming. But on the media round on Saturday morning, Jeremy Hunt put the whole mini-Budget under review. He was clear that taxes would rise – in direct contradiction of what Truss had said on the campaign trail, spending wouldn’t go up as much as expected and that every department will have to find savings. The Sunday Times is now reporting that the cut in income tax will

Matthew Lynn

What if Jeremy Hunt’s rebooted centrism doesn’t calm the markets?

He will control spending, reverse the few remaining tax cuts that are still in the works, and bring in every kind of official body imaginable to check over all the figures. Jeremy Hunt made the best of a very difficult hand of cards in his first outing as Chancellor on Saturday morning. He was calm, rational, sensible, and conciliatory. His strategy was clear enough. To calm the markets, and buy the government some breathing space while it figures out what to do next. There is a catch, however. What if it doesn’t work? Hunt’s real problem is that he has no plan for growth Hunt’s plans as Chancellor are clearly

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Jeremy Hunt thought he was being pranked

When Jeremy Hunt received a message early yesterday morning from a ‘Liz Truss’ wanting to talk to him, he assumed he was being pranked. He later found out it was indeed the prime minister and she wanted to make him Chancellor. He has totally reset her economic policy this morning, so maybe the prank is on her. He has totally reset her economic policy this morning, so maybe the prank is on her I have just interviewed him, and what he told me is that in what he now says will in effect be a ‘full budget’ on 31 October, he will announce public spending plans that are lower than

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The Chancellor could take the tax burden even higher

This morning on the media round, Jeremy Hunt followed in the footsteps of Tory chancellors before him warning about the ‘very difficult decisions’ that lie ahead. The new chancellor’s language and tone could easily be compared to George Osborne after the financial crisis, explaining to the country why government spending needed to be curbed. Or to Rishi Sunak, towards the end of the crisis stage of the pandemic, who was constantly reminding MPs and the public about the ‘difficult times ahead’ due to the fallout from economic shutdowns and unprecedented peacetime spending. The crucial difference, however, is that this new talk of spending cuts and higher taxes is in response

Samuel Gregg

We’re in dark days for market liberalism

If there is anything that the swift overturning of Prime Minister Liz Truss’s purported free market revolution has taught us, it is the utter lack of enthusiasm for economic liberalisation à la Reagan and Thatcher across the West right now. Yes, the lousy roll-out of the mini-budget by Truss’s now ex-Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng played a role in the prime minister’s rapid and multiple U-turns. But bad-PR is only part of the story. Many Tory MPs are plainly comfortable with the economic arrangements prevailing in Britain that successive Conservative governments have not challenged since the Tories returned to power in 2010. For despite the mythologies about nefarious ‘neoliberals’ ruling the world, the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Liz Truss failed

The markets did not crash, so there was not a Black Friday in the way some had envisaged. But this certainly was Black Friday for the Tories, a new low in the party’s history, a debacle to rival Black Wednesday but with none of the economic dividends. A new Prime Minister sacks a Chancellor for doing exactly what she told him to, then declares she will implement every single one of the corporation tax rises that she had spent the summer promising to stop. So it now emerges that Liz Truss stood for leader on a false prospectus, promising an agenda she has quickly proved unable to deliver. Her plan

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Jeremy Hunt: there are ‘very difficult decisions’ ahead

Liz Truss made two big moves on Friday in a bid to calm the markets and save her premiership. The first was to announce that she was ditching plans to cancel the scheduled corporation tax rise. The second was that she had sacked her chancellor and long standing ally Kwasi Kwarteng – bringing Jeremy Hunt in as his successor. There have been lots of problems when it comes to the fallout from the not-so-mini Budget but the thing that really focussed minds in No. 10 was a preview of the OBR forecast last Friday which pointed to a financial blackhole as a result of unfunded tax cuts and the energy

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,