Politics

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

Tuesday

18 Oct 2022

Support the strikes!

There are no two groups more different than climate protesters and striking workers. The former are mostly plummy layabouts, posh road-blockers whose chief aim seems to be to inconvenience working people. The latter are working people. Their concern is not with the fantasy eco-apocalypse that so bothers the pretty heads of Extinction Rebellion agitators but rather with how to ensure that wages are good and working conditions are top-notch. The climate change alarmists live in a land of make-believe, in which an Armageddon of man’s own making is just around the corner and the only way to hold it at bay is by stopping oil, stopping coal, stopping everything basically. Striking

James Kirkup

Spare a thought for Liz Truss’s comms advisers

Spare a thought for Liz Truss’s communications advisers. They’re following the unwritten rules of crisis management to a tee, but it’s only making things worse. They find themselves in this quandary partly because the government’s situation is uniquely bad – and partly because the Prime Minister is so bad at communicating. Watching Truss’s interview with the BBC’s Chris Mason last night, many viewers will have had thoughts such as ‘please make it stop’. Others might ask: why is she doing this? Going on TV to confirm that you’ve failed – but still think you can lead your party into the next general election – really doesn’t make things better. Likewise the frozen gaze,

Steerpike

Wallace and Heappey go on the defensive

What do you do when a country is in crisis? You send in the army. And that’s exactly what two of the finest representatives of HM Armed Forces in parliament have taken it upon themselves to do, in light of the Tory party going a bit JG Ballard. Captain Ben Wallace of the Scots Guards was out on manoeuvres last night, insisting to the Times that he absolutely, definitely, 100 per cent wants to remain Defence Secretary. This is despite well-sourced reports popping up two days ago in the Mail on Sunday quoting ‘friends’ of Wallace which suggested he could become a unity candidate if Liz Truss quits, voluntarily or

Nigel Jones

Rishi Sunak lost. Get over it

The WhatsApp message doing the rounds in Westminster yesterday was succinct: ‘Rishi PM. Hunt CX. Penny FS. And it’s a done deal’. Except that the only thing that’s ‘done’ is the Conservatives as a credible party of government. If there is indeed a stitch-up, one that sees the installation of the beaten leadership candidates as prime minister, chancellor, and foreign secretary, then the Tories can kiss goodbye not only to the next few general elections but also to their very existence as the most successful governing party in the democratic world. How has the party that swept back into power just three years ago with a massive 80-seat majority so comprehensively trashed

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Stop blaming Tory members

With Jeremy Hunt installed as the representative Sensible and Penny Mordaunt answering questions in the House, Liz Truss has been reduced to politely cheering on the people actually in charge. Those in Westminster seem to think that her chances of leading the Conservatives into the next election are comparable to the chances of discovering Lord Lucan and Elvis in a service station off the M25. Truss will be replaced, many expect, once the party can work out who to appoint. In the meantime, with fox hunting off the menu, the Conservative party is left with little choice but to while away the winter with its second favourite bloodsport: leadership plots and recriminations. A

Ross Clark

Britain needs more honesty about unemployment

Is low unemployment causing us more problems than we realise? The suggestion might seem absurd, offensive even. It’s reminiscent of the days of Mrs Thatcher’s supposedly ‘cruel’ monetarism, when we had three million unemployed. Some on the fringes liked to argue that unemployment was good for the economy because it made people work harder, being fearful for their jobs. Mass redundancies would not, of course, help the economy now or at any other time. If a million people were to lose their jobs, as happened in the early 1980s, that would be a million households suffering a collapse in the spending power. As well as a human tragedy, it would

Gavin Mortimer

Samuel Paty’s murder has still not been reckoned with

Two years ago on Sunday Samuel Paty was brutally murdered by an 18-year-old outside his school in a Parisian suburb. The teacher’s crime was to have shown an image of the prophet Mohammed during a class discussion on the freedom of expression. Paty’s killer was a Chechen, and it’s noteworthy that the two other major Islamist terror attacks in France in recent years – the murder of three worshippers in a Nice church and the killing of a policewoman in Rambouillet – were also the work of foreign-born terrorists. Homegrown Islamic terrorists are now a rarity in France. They were responsible for most of the horrific attacks that

Gareth Roberts

Why does anyone bother making political predictions?

The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius had the Delphic Oracle smashed up in 390 AD, but the gifts of the old gods were already well on the way out. The Sibylline Books were burned shortly after. Scrying glasses across the ancient world had misted over. The prophets fell silent. Well, they hadn’t seen that coming. It was now impossible to foresee what was going to happen next, let alone any further down the line. You can see where I’m going with this. Who will be prime minister at the end of the week? What brave new policies, set in stone days ago, will be forgotten like waking dreams? Suella Braverman sent

Monday

17 Oct 2022

Isabel Hardman

Liz Truss apologises for the chaos. What next?

Finally, we hear from the Prime Minister. Liz Truss has given an interview to the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason. It comes at the end of a day in which she was accused of ‘hiding under a desk’ and emerged in the Commons only for a silent half an hour of blinking occasionally. She apologised, saying: ‘Firstly I want to accept responsibility and say sorry, for the mistakes that have been made.’ Truss did not appear comfortable this evening. It would have been weird if she did The Prime Minister has left others to argue that the government is still functioning. What she hasn’t done, until now, is offer any

Isabel Hardman

The effective PM has some difficult choices to make

Jeremy Hunt’s statement to the Commons underlined that he is now running the government. This wasn’t just evident from what he said, but from what was happening as he said it. The Chancellor spoke with the Prime Minister sitting behind him in silence, barely moving save to blink. Liz Truss had belatedly entered the chamber at the end of the Urgent Question that she had refused to answer herself, and then left half an hour later. But the statement also showed us quite how hard it is going to be for any caretaker leader, de facto prime minister or other figure to take the party back into a place where

James Heale

Was Truss hiding under a desk?

14 min listen

This afternoon Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt stepped in for Liz Truss to field an urgent questions called by the Leader of the Opposition. What could the Prime Minister have been doing which was so urgent that she couldn’t attend? Also on the podcast, after Jeremy Hunt reverses nearly all of Trussonomics, will there be a raft of departmental cuts? Could we be looking at a number of Cabinet resignations? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Kate Andrews

Has Hunt restored the government’s fiscal credibility?

Jeremy Hunt set out at the start of the weekend with one goal in mind: that when the gilt markets reopened on Monday, the cost of government borrowing would not surge further. Ideally, it would start to fall. In this sense, it’s been a successful day for the new Chancellor. The Treasury’s early morning update that a major fiscal announcement was about to be announced saw gilt yields start to drop when markets opened at 8 a.m. After Hunt’s overhaul of the mini-Budget – including the surprising decision to suspend the 1p cut to the basic rate of tax ‘indefinitely’ – they fell even further. After starting the day at

Steerpike

Cancelled Kanye West buys cancelled free speech platform Parler

Hear Ye Hear Ye! The news today has broken that Kanye West – who calls himself Ye – has bought Parler, the Trumpist social media platform. The news was announced earlier by Parler CEO George Farmer, the son of Lord Farmer, the Conservative peer. ‘This deal will change the world and change the way the world thinks about free speech,’ said George. Farmer is also the husband of Candace Owens, the American MAGA celebrity, who appears to have been an important influence – is muse the right word? – in Ye’s conversion away from Hollywood La La Land and towards Trump-infused right-nationalist populism. Candace and Kanye both recently appeared together wearing ‘White

Katy Balls

Mordaunt faces the music as Truss’s understudy

When the phrases ‘the Prime Minister is not under a desk’ and ‘I don’t think there has been a coup’ are put forward by a minister tasked with defending their boss, it’s a sign that the parliamentary session has not gone to plan. This was the case this afternoon when Penny Mordaunt was sent to face the music on behalf of the Prime Minister. After Liz Truss U-turned on close to the entirety of her not-so-mini Budget this morning, Labour tabled an Urgent Question summoning Truss to explain herself. The Prime Minister declined – and sent the Leader of the House in her place. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the session

Steerpike

Hunt’s henchmen return to power

Every revolution has its victims and Jeremy Hunt’s counter-coup is no exception. The new Chancellor’s return to office has meant a clear out of Kwasi Kwarteng’s aides as the special adviser merry go-round continues at pace. The age of ministers being told to hire from a No 10 approved-list of nominees is over: Hunt instead prefers to rely for counsel on several long-time advisers. One of his new spads is Christina Robinson, his press officer who ran his media communications when he was in the Cabinet. She has been papped by the press in recent days, escorting her boss around as he desperately tries to reassure the markets. Robinson previously

Steerpike

Mordaunt: Truss isn’t ‘hiding’ under a desk

Oh dear. Liz Truss ducked the opportunity to come to the House to explain Jeremy Hunt’s U-turn earlier today. So instead it was the turn of Penny Mordaunt – ‘the real PM’, her supporters jibe – to come to the Commons and defend the shambles of the past fortnight. Mordaunt, in her capacity as the Leader of the House, did her best to mount a defence of her crumbling leader, though she herself did stumble on occasion. Labour MP Stella Creasy – the embodiment of progressive orthodoxy – rose to castigate her opposite number. She suggested instead that political attention should on Ebola in Africa rather than Tory domestic woes

Isabel Hardman

Is Jeremy Hunt now in charge?

After trying to reassure the markets by junking almost everything Liz Truss announced in her mini-Budget, Jeremy Hunt briefed Tory MPs about his premiership – sorry, plans as chancellor. The mood of those emerging from the briefing was probably the best Tory MPs have been in since the government U-turned on the 45p rate at the start of the Tory conference. ‘He was superb and emollient,’ says one MP, while another describes the briefing as ‘really good’. Both of these MPs, by the way, have told me in the past few days that their party is in the worst position it’s ever been. That’s not to say it was a

Steerpike

Watch: Tory Muppets show

Spiraling markets and grim-faced MPs don’t always make for the best of television viewing. Indeed, given the ongoing case in Westminster and Whitehall, farce seems much more appropriate. So Mr S was delighted to stumble across a well-crafted animation from Colin McQuaid which reimagines the Muppet Show intro but with the Tory government instead. Forget Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog, Liz Truss, Therese Coffey, Suella Braverman and Penny Mordaunt feature instead. You can watch it below…

James Forsyth

Where is Liz Truss?

The safest place for a minister to be in a crisis is at the despatch box of the House of Commons, one old hand used to say. His argument was that at the despatch box you at least had a modicum of control, you could respond to events in your own words. But Liz Truss has taken the opposite view, she is dodging Keir Starmer’s urgent question in the House of Commons. Instead, the woman she pipped to the members’ round of the Tory leadership contest, Penny Mordaunt, will take her place. One expects that Mordaunt, a strong Commons performer, might rather enjoy the chance to show Tory MPs how

Kate Andrews

Trussonomics is dead

18 min listen

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave a statement this morning in which he outlined plans to scrap ‘almost all’ the tax measures announced by his predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng just four weeks ago. In one of the largest U-turns in history, the markets have become the most important force in British politics. James Forsyth, Katy Balls, Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson discuss what may happen over the next few weeks. Produced by Max Jeffery and Natasha Feroze.