Politics

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

Wednesday

The Spectator

Divided they fall: can the Tories save themselves?

Seldom has support for a government fallen so far, so fast. Polls show that 24 per cent of the public would vote for the Conservatives if there was an election now, vs 52 per cent for Labour: figures that make 1997 look like a good result for the Tories. This is not just a one-off rogue poll, but the sustained average of six. It reflects what Tory MPs hear from voters appalled at the disgraceful shambles of the past few weeks. It won’t be forgotten in a hurry. This magazine gave its verdict on the Liz Truss agenda in August: ‘To attempt reform without a proper plan is to guarantee

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The lady vanishes: the Truss agenda is dead

‘Governments don’t control markets,’ the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, likes to say. But there are times when markets control governments. The market, or the fear of how the market might react, is now the driving force in British politics. It explains the dramatic developments of the past week and will determine the new Prime Minister’s fate. Last month’s ‘mini-Budget’ was doomed because it required that the government borrow £70 billion more than had been planned. This money would have to be raised in the gilts market, and Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng assumed that the markets would be happy to continue to lend so much at such low rates. But

Peter Jones

Liz Truss and the art of rhetoric

Liz Truss was spot-on in arguing that the only way in which a state can flourish is by combining low taxes with economic growth. But she failed to persuade her audience that she knew how this could be achieved. If only Dr Kwarteng, a classicist, had drawn her attention to Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric (4th century bc), the first full analysis of the means of persuasion, the day and her career would have been saved. First, Aristotle defined two general types of persuasive proof. One he called ‘artistic’, because it depended upon human ingenuity, the other ‘non-artistic’, because it derived from pre-existing evidence, e.g. witness statements, written contracts, etc. Then

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Nobody wanted Liz Truss

One of the most important ingredients in the oil used to anoint King Charles during his coronation is becoming a bit of an issue – and it may give us a signal as to what sort of monarchy lies in wait for us. Aside from cinnamon and ambergris, the oil also includes musk from the Ethiopian civet cat, obtained through what protestors suggest is a cruel process. The oversized weasel is constrained in a tight cage made of twigs and its bum is forced out of a hole at the back of a cage, whereupon skilled Ethiopian musk gatherers squeeze the animal’s perineal glands, reaping a rich harvest of noisome

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Has a Conservative government got any power at all?

In the House of Commons on Monday, someone accused Liz Truss’s government of being ‘in office but not in power’. By chance, I was sitting in the peers’ gallery immediately behind the author of that famous phrase, Norman Lamont, who applied it to John Major’s administration in his resignation statement as chancellor in 1993. It grows ever more apt. I sometimes wonder if modern politicians positively welcome this situation. It is a general feature of the structures of the EU, where no elected politician has real power, but none seems to mind. Much of the joy of ‘compassionate’ Conservatives at the trouncing of Truss appears to derive from the proof

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Liz Truss survival plan

At the first stage of the Conservative leadership race, when Liz Truss was trying to win MPs’ support, her message was that she was the one who could ‘unite the right’. Now, her plan to survive in No. 10 relies on dividing the Tory left. Regicide is a messy business. ‘It’s very hard to push her out,’ says a former cabinet minister. ‘We would need to change the rules. It could be seen as an establishment stitch-up. I think she needs to do the right thing and resign.’ Everyone in the Tory party agrees that there needs to be a unity candidate when Truss goes, but there is absolutely no

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What will the Halloween Budget bring?

Liz Truss did not think that spending cuts would be a major part of her agenda. She and her first chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, were confident that markets, having lent Britain billions of pounds to cover the cost of the lockdowns, would be more than happy to do the same to transform the economy. Their argument was, as it turned out, calamitously wrong. The miscalculation cost Kwarteng his job and the Prime Minister her power. Truss’s new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has dismantled almost all of her plans. ‘Trussonomics’ has been snuffed out. This temporarily calmed the markets. But abandoning tax cuts – as painful as it was – will soon prove

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Whips stay in post after a night of chaos

In a sign of how chaotic tonight has been for the Conservative party, I have now been told that the Chief Whip Wendy Morton and her deputy Craig Whittaker have not left the government after all. I have spoken to Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, who says: ‘I have just seen the deputy and he is categorical that neither he nor the chief have resigned.’ No. 10 has belatedly confirmed this too. Steve Baker seems to be the only minister trying to offer some kind of government line What seems to have happened is this. The whips instructed the party that the fracking vote would be a confidence issue this morning.

Sir Charles Walker

Read: Tory MP blasts his colleagues

The backbencher Sir Charles Walker told BBC News the following: As a Tory MP for 17 years, who’s never been a minister, who’s got on with it loyally most of the time, I think it’s a shambles and a disgrace. I think it is utterly appalling. I’m livid and, you know, I really shouldn’t say this but I hope all those people that put Liz Truss in No. 10 – I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it for the ministerial red box. I hope it was worth it to sit around the cabinet table, because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary. I’ve

Coffee House

List of Tory fracking abstentions

The government won tonight’s opposition day debate on shale gas extraction, but only after confusion around whether it amounted to a vote of confidence or not. Amid scenes of carnage in the Commons, no Tory MPs defied the three-line whip to vote against Labour’s motion but some 40 did abstain. A full list of those who did is below. Some, like Ben Wallace, will have been ‘paired’ as they were away on government business, others were not: Nigel Adams Stuart Andrew Gareth Bacon Siobhan Baillie Greg Clark Geoffrey Cox Tracey Crouch David Davis Caroline Dinenage Nadine Dorries Iain Duncan Smith Phillip Dunne Mark Fletcher Vicky Ford Paul Holmes Alastair Jack

James Heale James Heale

Government wins fracking vote amid chaos

The government won tonight’s vote on fracking but it truly was a Pyrrhic victory. On paper, the numbers involved – 315 ‘noes’ to ban fracking for shale gas versus 228 ‘ayes’ – might suggest a well-oiled whipping machine. But it was the carnage within the House of Commons that everyone was talking about tonight. Opposition MPs are full of indignation at the scenes they claim to have seen in the voting lobbies tonight. Labour’s Chris Bryant told Sky that he saw four Tory MPs, including Deputy PM Thérèse Coffey and her colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg, physically man-handle a colleague of their party into their voting lobby. He added that he has

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Chief Whip out as government folds on fracking revolt

Yet another moment of high drama in the Commons. Wendy Morton has now left the post of chief whip after the government folded on the opposition day fracking vote being treated as a ‘confidence issue’. MPs were warned they would lose the Tory whip if they didn’t vote with the government. One MP who witnessed Morton walking past with the Prime Minister’s PPS, tells me: ‘She’s as mad as thunder and is saying ‘unbelievable’.’ Craig Whittaker has just come out of the lobby and said ‘I am fucking furious and I don’t give a fuck anymore.’ Chris Bryant has just alleged that he witnessed ‘bullying’ of MPs in the voting lobbies.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why is Grant Shapps replacing Suella Braverman?

Grant Shapps is the new Home Secretary. This takes the government into strange territory, to put it mildly. Shapps was openly campaigning against Liz Truss as Prime Minister just days ago, boasting happily about the spreadsheet he had set up with hundreds of data points about where Tory MPs stood on her leadership, and saying she had ten days to get her premiership back on track. It is quite hard to see how the time that has elapsed since he made that challenge has seen the Prime Minister meet it. Braverman was notionally loyal to Truss, but hardly helpful: she caused trouble by talking about there being a ‘coup’ against

Suella Braverman

Why I had to resign

Dear Prime Minister, It is with the greatest regret that I am choosing to tender my resignation. Earlier today, I sent an official document from my personal email to a trusted parliamentary colleague as part of policy engagement, and with the aim of garnering support for government policy on migration. This constitutes a technical infringement of the rules. As you know, the document was a draft Written Ministerial Statement about migration, due for publication imminently. Much of it had already been briefed to MPs. Nevertheless it is right for me to go. I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility; I resign As soon as I realised my mistake, I

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Tsar Vladimir brings in martial law

Martial law can arrive with a bang: tanks on the streets, Swan Lake on the TV. It can also creep up on a country in the guise of a presidential edict with the title ‘The Decree On Measures taken in the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation in Connection with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of October 19, 2022 No. 756’. Either way, Vladimir Putin has just moved Russia one step closer to totalitarianism. What is interesting is just how long and half-hearted a process this has been. When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, the sharpest-beaked hawks in his entourage were urging total war, and with

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Suella Braverman out as Home Secretary

Just as it seemed a brief calm was emerging in the Tory party, the Prime Minister has lost her Home Secretary. Suella Braverman has left her role with Grant Shapps brought in to replace her. The circumstances of her departure are shrouded in mystery for now – but government sources suggest this is not a simple resignation. There has been friction between Braverman and No. 10 in recent weeks: at Tory conference, Braverman said a ‘coup’ had taken place when Truss was forced to abandon her 45p tax cut – and she is understood to have felt that Jeremy Hunt’s appointment proved she was right in her controversial choice of word.

Douglas Murray

How to protest the protestors

These are bleak times in our land, and we must take our pleasures where we can. Personally I have been able to find a great deal of consolation over recent days in watching members of the public confronting protestors from the Just Stop Oil movement. There is some especially pleasing footage of van drivers in south London hauling protestors off the roads by the scruff of their necks. The colourful language which accompanies these acts is an additional delight, for the irate British public is not always immune to using words that polite people might deplore. All the videos bring some satisfaction. This week a strange-looking man-child with a comb-over

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The gripping spectacle of Truss’s fight for survival

A week of sheer hell for the Tory leader. Plots and rumours have swirled around Westminster. Rebels are said to be roaming the corridors and gathering support for an anti-Liz putsch. And yet she’s still here. Our death-row Prime Minister strode into the chamber apparently dressed for her own funeral. Black trouser suit, white cotton blouse. She got into trouble as soon as she opened her mouth. Her ritual answer, ‘I will be meeting ministerial colleagues and others’ brought howls of laughter from the Labour benches. Sir Keir Starmer stood up to deliver a brief and fatal inquisition. He began with a pun about a book covering her career which