Politics

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

Thursday

13 Oct 2022

Five things market-watchers should look out for tomorrow

All financial crises have their peak days, the moment of drama when everything comes to a head. Think of Black Monday – 19 October 1987 – when the bottom fell out of global stock markets, or Black Wednesday – 16 September 1992 – when the pound crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. With the Bank of England saying that it will cease emergency purchases of gilts tomorrow (although it is reported to have told pension fund managers a different thing in private) could we be facing a Black Friday? Some things to look out for tomorrow morning…. Gilts crash (ie yields rise sharply)? This afternoon, things have been going

James Forsyth

Is Truss about to U-turn on the mini-Budget?

Is Liz Truss about to U-turn? The Westminster grape vine is buzzing with informed speculation that the government is set to abandon more of the measures in the mini-Budget in an attempt to regain the confidence of the market and Tory MPs. I am told that members of Liz Truss’s political team who had previously resisted the idea that anything further needed to change are now beginning to accept that more of the mini-Budget will have to be scrapped. The problem for the government is that the markets are now pricing on the basis of a U-turn – UK gilts have rallied on the reports. So if the government doesn’t end up

James Snell

Iranians have turned against the mullahs’ empire building

Iran’s protestors are showing immense courage. That is a given. But the reasons why are worth spelling out. Not only do they have the bravery to demonstrate against a theocratic dictatorship which has veiled women against their will for over forty years; they also protest in the full knowledge that the regime has already killed many thousands of activists in Iran and across the Middle East. The protestors face a leviathan. They are up against the very heart of an expansionist empire. From the very beginning, the leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which took power in 1979, conceived of their mission as a world-wide one. It was their job to

Jake Wallis Simons

Channel 4’s Hitler art show is no laughing matter

Can Channel 4 sink any lower? The TV channel has purchased a painting by Adolf Hitler so that a studio audience may decide whether to allow comedian Jimmy Carr to destroy it with a flamethrower. In other words, popular television is trolling the Jewish community, all those around the world who suffered under Nazism and anybody who remains in possession of a moral compass. The fate of one of the world’s most problematic and disturbing artefacts will be determined by a studio audience and a comedian. As a symbol of 2022, it’s pretty good. Who thought this was a reasonable idea? Step forward Ian Katz, Channel 4’s director of programming. ‘This

Stephen Daisley

Kanye West is not OK

Ye is the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. Even more formerly, he was known as Yeezus, back when he was dropping tracks like ‘I Am A God’. But Kanye is not the messiah; he’s an extremely naughty boy. This week he appeared on US television show Tucker Carlson Tonight to attack Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s role in the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. Kanye claimed this was done ‘to make money’ and said of the Kushner family, who are Jewish: ‘I just think that’s what they’re about, is making money. I don’t think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they were

Michael Simmons

NHS waiting list exceeds record-breaking seven million

NHS waiting lists have exceeded seven million people for the first time since records began. That means nearly 12 per cent of people in England are waiting for consultant-led treatment. A&E waiting times broke records too: nearly 33,000 people waited more than 12 hours from decision to admit to admission. The target is four hours. This all adds to a difficult week for the health service. Staff shortages affecting the whole economy – a record 2.5 million people are not working due to long-term sickness – are now being felt in the NHS too. Recently some hospitals have experienced a shortage of blood because of donation centres having to close due to problems

Steerpike

Watch: King Charles says ‘Dear oh dear’ as he meets Liz Truss

Meetings between the monarch and the prime minister remain a closely-guarded secret. This means that anything that is caught on camera when King Charles and Liz Truss meet is watched closely – and the King’s choice of greeting to the PM when he hosted her at Buckingham Palace last night was, err, particularly interesting. King Charles muttered ‘Dear oh dear’ as he met the PM late last night. In a video clip released by the Palace, taken at the beginning of their weekly audience, the PM is heard to say: ‘Your Majesty, great to see you again.’ Charles, smiling, replies: ‘Back again? Dear oh dear.’ Truss adds: ‘Well, it’s a great pleasure.’ Of course,

Katy Balls

The Fiona Hill Edition

40 min listen

Fiona Hill is a seasoned political advisor, consultant and strategist. Born in Glasgow, she began her career as the first-ever female football reporter in Scotland. Then after moving into politics, she later became the first female chief of staff in No.10 under Theresa May. In her first interview since leaving Downing Street five years ago, Fiona Hill speaks to Katy Balls about how difficult she found it being attacked in the press after the Tories’ election disappointment in 2017. ‘Luckily I’m a strong person. But if I’d been a lesser person I may have thrown myself in the Thames.’ She also reveals that in the month after the election, Hill

Wednesday

12 Oct 2022

Katy Balls

‘Election campaigns are like voodoo’: Fiona Hill breaks her silence

Not so long ago, Fiona Hill was the most powerful woman in Whitehall. She ran Downing Street with an iron grip for the first year of Theresa May’s premiership alongside her co-chief of staff Nick Timothy. Ministers bowed to their authority, civil servants feared them, Tory MPs complained of a power grab by a duo of unelected officials. As the former Labour MP Frank Field put it: ‘People know that Fiona is not someone you mess around with.’ But after the Tories fell short of a majority in the 2017 snap election, she and Timothy were forced to resign. Hill flew to America and disappeared from public life. We meet

James Forsyth

Kwasi vs the markets

Warren Buffett famously said that ‘when the tide goes out, you see who is swimming naked’. Now that the tide of easy money has receded, and interest rates have risen, we can see that the UK is exposed. Higher rates are causing acute financial pain to an extent not anticipated for the government, homeowners and even pension funds. The cost to the taxpayer is going to be significant. The Bank of England is in an almost impossible position: it needs high interest rates to tackle inflation, but high rates threaten financial stability. Which is the lesser evil? The Bank has had to intervene in the gilt markets three times since

Martin Vander Weyer

A house-price crash won’t be the only effect of the Kwarteng calamity

Where next for house prices? Clearly, they’re going down as mortgage rates go up – and my forecast in May that they would shed ‘recent froth’ and then stagnate rather than plunge, has been entirely overtaken by events, or at least by Kwasi Kwarteng’s calamitous ‘fiscal event’ last month. Reverberations from the Chancellor’s debut continue apace, with more emergency bond-buying by the Bank of England despite news that the OBR-assessed forecast missing from his September speech will now be unveiled on 31 October instead of on 23 November. But even if the books can be cooked in a way that makes more sense than markets expect, hundreds of mortgage deals

Owen Matthews

Kremlin crack-up: who’s out to get Putin?

The soldier with the Kalashnikov wasn’t happy. Neither were the hundreds of comrades who had chosen him as the spokesman for their angry complaints as they milled about on a train platform somewhere in Russia. ‘There are 500 of us, we are armed, but we haven’t been assigned to any unit,’ the newly mobilised soldier complained on a video that went viral earlier this month. ‘We’ve been living worse than farm animals for a week… Nobody needs us, we’ve had absolutely no training.’ Other soldiers, most of them masked, chipped in with more grievances. ‘The officers treat us like animals,’ shouted one. ‘We’ve spent a fortune on buying food for

Katy Balls

Backbench Tories turn on Truss

Liz Truss’s appearance before MPs at the 1922 committee was meant to be part of a wider charm offensive as she tries to get MPs back on side after a tricky start. With Labour enjoying a large poll lead and market turmoil dominating the news, Truss needs to keep her party behind her. Yet that is looking rather uphill. As James Forsyth reports on Coffee House, the mood amongst backbenchers leaving the meeting was (to put it politely) mixed. ‘It was painful,’ says one attendee. Other words used to describe the session include ‘awful’, ‘funereal’ and ‘brutal’. Truss attempted to win over assembled MPs by promising further reach out and parliamentary

James Forsyth

Truss’s tricky time with Tory MPs

Liz Truss has just finished addressing the 1922 committee of Tory MPs. The mood among backbenchers afterwards was mixed. There was surprise among them that there hadn’t been more of an effort by the whips to get supportive questions placed – something which happened even at the nadir of Theresa May’s fortunes. Instead, there were a slew of direct questions about the missteps of recent weeks. Truss’s allies might be concerned that Grant Shapps had a broad grin on his face as he left the meeting. The PM promised more consultation with Tory MPs, a staple offer from a leader facing backbench discontent. Truss said MPs would be invited to

Lloyd Evans

Liz Truss’s epic blandness

Liz Truss faced her first proper grilling at PMQs. Her debut, last month, was a softball affair but today Keir Starmer went in with both fists swinging. He asked her to endorse Jacob Rees-Mogg’s view that ‘turmoil in the markets has nothing to do with the Budget’. ‘What we have done,’ said Liz, pleasantly, ‘we have taken decisive action to make sure that people are not facing energy bills of £6,000 for two years.’ Sir Keir, already hopping mad, blasted her for ignoring his specific point. ‘Avoiding the question, ducking responsibility, lost in denial,’ he said viciously. He mentioned a young couple from Wolverhampton, Zac and Rebecca, who last week

Isabel Hardman

Starmer and Truss both face problems of their own making

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions taught us two things. The first was that Keir Starmer has still got a long way to go before he is the one putting Liz Truss on the ropes. The second is that Truss has got a long way to go before she isn’t putting herself on the ropes instead. It wasn’t a high energy session from either leader: Starmer fell back into his habit of enunciating every syllable in an exasperated tone, whether he was talking about the BUSINESS. SECRETARY. or MORTGAGE. PAYMENTS. In fairness, there is a fair bit to be exasperated about, but Starmer would probably adopt the same tone about his sock

Cindy Yu

Is Truss ruling out spending cuts?

9 min listen

Did Liz Truss misspeak or did she mean it when she said that she wouldn’t go ahead with spending cuts, as promised in her leadership campaign? On the episode, Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about what the Prime Minister could have meant, given the need to balance the books to pay for her tax cuts. James suggests that there may be a question over whether she meant nominal or real spending cuts. Whatever it is, the government needs to do more to reassure the markets – the team also discuss whether or not the Bank of England’s bailout will really end in the coming days.

Kate Andrews

Truss says no to spending cuts. Here’s the caveat

The mini-Budget was a spending spree. The ‘medium-term fiscal plan’ was meant to explain the funding. But what exactly is going to be in it? Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were thought to have (finally) come to terms with the need to address the need for some restraint, after their mini-Budget led to market chaos which is yet to settle. Their fiscal statement – in other words, how they would fund their tax cuts – was moved forward by almost a month, to 31 October. Its contents were thought to include some major spending cuts, in a bid to convince markets that fiscal discipline still guides the Tory party. If there are

Christopher Snowdon

Therese Coffey should leave smokers alone

So Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary, is putting the tobacco control plan on ice. Or is she? As in many other areas of public policy these days, all we have are rumours. Someone may be flying a kite with this rumour, but it is not clear whether it is the health secretary or a disgruntled civil servant at the Department of Health holding the string. All Coffey has said officially is that she was not ‘aware’ of what’s going on with it. You may not be aware of it at all and I can hardly blame you. In the dying days of Theresa May’s administration – two prime ministers ago

Tom Slater

Just stop Just Stop Oil

Why block roads? Why make people’s lives miserable? Who do you think this is going to convince? So go the interminable TV-news debates after each disruptive piece of direct action by eco-troupe Extinction Rebellion and the various single-issue offshoots, such as Just Stop Oil, that it has inspired. These past two weeks, Just Stop Oil has been back in the spotlight. It is now into its 12th consecutive day of action in London, demanding the government stop all oil and gas production. Yesterday, its activists blocked roads in Knightsbridge, delaying an ambulance, a fire engine and cars carrying babies to hospital. Today, they’re sitting in the road outside parliament. Once