Politics

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

Monday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

This week will define Liz Truss’s premiership

This lunchtime Liz Truss has been announced as the new leader of the Conservative party. After a contest that spanned the summer, the chair of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady announced the result, with Truss winning 81,326 votes to Rishi Sunak’s 60,339. Some 654 votes were rejected, suggesting spoiled ballots. This means Truss won with 57 per cent of the vote – a narrower margin of victory than her predecessor Boris Johnson who beat Jeremy Hunt with 66 per cent of the vote in 2019. This means her lead over Sunak was smaller than several of the membership polls suggested – and the contest was tighter than expected. Unlike Theresa

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Joe Lycett isn’t funny – or brave

Can we all take a moment to marvel at the courage of Joe Lycett? Imagine the cojones it must take to go on the BBC and make fun of the Tories. How truly stunning and brave. Roll over Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks – there’s a new comedy insurgent in town. I’m being sarcastic, clearly. And sarcasm, as we know, is the lowest form of wit. Apart, perhaps, from going on the BBC to make fun of the Tories. I honestly cannot think of anything more pedestrian and less amusing than that. Witness the way Lycett kept looking over at Emily Thornberry, the doyenne of bourgeois London leftism Lycett is

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Ten graphs that Liz Truss can’t ignore

The new Prime Minister’s honeymoon starts and ends today. Once Liz Truss formally enters Downing Street tomorrow she will be under pressure to tackle the enormous economic crises facing the country, with very little time to announce her policy plans. Truss herself has pledged to reveal her plan for rising energy bills within the first week of her premiership, and her plans to slash tax within the first month. While at the forefront of political discussion, these are but a few of the emergencies that the government must grapple with in the weeks and months ahead. Below are ten graphs that the Truss administration can’t ignore if she and her government

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Liz Truss wins. What next?

Liz Truss’s victory in the Tory leadership race was based on her ability to portray herself as the candidate for both continuity and change. She stressed her loyalty to Boris Johnson; and emphasised that her administration would continue his policies in various key areas. Yet she also depicted herself as a change candidate on the economy, promising to reverse the National Insurance increase and cancel the corporation tax increase. Truss will need much more of the political adroitness that she demonstrated in this contest if she is to handle the problems of the coming months. The fact her team is now openly considering a freeze in energy prices for at least some

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Liz Truss triumphs in Tory leadership race

Liz Truss has won the race to become Tory leader and Britain’s new Prime Minister. Truss, who was the runaway favourite to win, defeated her rival Rishi Sunak by 81,326 votes to 60,399 – a margin of 57 per cent to 43 per cent. She will take over from Boris Johnson tomorrow, after flying to Balmoral to see the Queen. Her new cabinet is expected to be in place by tomorrow night, with Kwasi Kwarteng the firm favourite to be appointed chancellor. Truss is likely to appoint James Cleverly as foreign secretary and Suella Braverman, the current attorney-general and former leadership contender, as home secretary. During her acceptance speech, Truss paid tribute to Rishi Sunak

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Liz Truss doesn’t frighten Labour

Labour will attack the new prime minister from the left and the right. From Liz Truss’ exposed left flank, Labour and the majority of the electorate will hammer her for not extending the windfall tax to cover the estimated £170 billion in profits Vladimir Putin has gifted gas and electricity generators. Do not imagine for a moment that it won’t be effective. The attack from the right is less obvious but gets to the heart of the risk Liz Truss is running with the UK economy. ‘We need to paint her as fiscally irresponsible,’ one adviser to Labour’s Treasury team told me. ‘That’s as important as showing she has the wrong

Frank Young

As children go back to school it’s parents who need lessons

Britain’s children go back to school this week. But after months of chatter about grade inflation and the harmful effects of lockdown on learning, is it parenting, rather than schooling, that actually needs attention? New polling reveals that one in ten younger parents think it’s down to someone else to teach their pre-school children to speak. Dig a little deeper and this number doubles to almost a fifth for the very poorest parents. Getting the basics right is seen as someone else’s job. Too many children fall behind before they have even started school. Many never catch up. By the time they leave school, children from the poorest backgrounds are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Liz Truss kill levelling up?

Levelling up is probably not even in the top tier of Liz Truss’s intray for this week, given the pressure to do something big on energy bills, and then to address the multiple other crises including the NHS, the Northern Ireland Protocol and Ukraine. But what she does with her predecessor’s flagship policy is a matter of great anxiety for MPs and activists in Red Wall seats. I spent some time over the weekend with Conservative councillors, MPs and Tory members in Greater Manchester. Unsurprisingly, most of them had supported Truss as be party leader. But most of them were also anxious about the future of levelling up, or whatever

Matthew Lynn

How Liz Truss can solve the energy crisis

It will be expensive. It will last far longer than anyone expects. And it will distort the market even more than it already is. Barring a major upset, Liz Truss will move into No. 10 Downing Street later today. Once she’s there, Britain’s new prime minister will have little choice but to take control of soaring energy prices. How she does that will be the first big test of her premiership. If Truss can do it in a way that boosts output, and encourages investment, it will be worthwhile. But if she opts for just another bail-out she will get stuck in the same dismal groove as Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.  If

Steerpike Steerpike

Who will lead for Liz in the Lords?

The Westminster WhatsApps are ablaze this morning with the age old question: who is up and who is down? With Liz Truss’s coronation expected just before lunchtime, attention has turned to the identity of her new cabinet. The dynamics and timing of the contest have meant the last few weeks of this election has become something of a protracted transition, with half the top jobs already divvied up. But one role over which there are question marks is the leadership of the House of Lords. In recent years, relations between the Upper House and No. 10 have deteriorated somewhat, in light of rows over Brexit and parliamentary procedure. For six

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Is Liz Truss a Tory Jeremy Corbyn?

Many years ago, when the earth was young and leaving the European Union was a position espoused only by those trying to stay on the right side of Bill Cash at a drinks party, Ken Clarke stood for the Tory leadership against Iain Duncan Smith. He said one memorable thing while making his doomed bid for the captaincy – which was that the Tories needed to decide whether they were going to be a political party or a debating society. What I understand him to have meant by that was that ideological purity buttered no parsnips in politics. For most of its history, its friends and its enemies alike would

Jack Smith

Putin’s energy war has changed German-Russian relations for good

After months of speculation and handwringing, it has finally happened: Germany and the rest of Europe are now receiving no natural gas through Nord Stream 1. Aside from how the continent manages to survive this winter, Russia’s moves to shut off supply through its pipeline will have serious long-term ramifications. One of the most significant strategic relationships in the last half-century of European politics has been that between Germany and Russia over energy. That now looks to be over, with no clear prospect of it ever returning. As with before, Gazprom made technical excuses. This time, they claimed that an oil leak had led to Rostekhnadzor, the Russian state network

Debbie Hayton

Liz Truss will come to regret her ‘bonfire’ of workers’ rights

Liz Truss is right about sex and gender. But if she is to get the country through the next winter she needs to think again about her ‘bonfire’ of workers’ rights. ‘I’m a plain talking Yorkshire woman,’ Truss said at a hustings in Cardiff, before announcing, ‘I know that a woman is a woman.’ Circular reasoning perhaps, but the audience knew exactly what she meant. There was not only applause, but a sense of relief, even laughter. She took a poke at certain sectors of society – ‘parts of Whitehall’ and ‘parts of the public sector’ – who didn’t seem to get it before making her point: ‘I will make

Andrew Tettenborn

The EU is hoping to catch Liz Truss on the backfoot over Brexit

A vital part of gamesmanship, according to the British author Stephen Potter, is to disconcert your opponent before they have joined the game. True to form, gamesmanship has already begun in earnest on one matter likely to be high up in Liz Truss’s pending in-tray: the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiations. It comes both from the EU and from Irish nationalists. The Protocol is that part of the EU withdrawal arrangement aimed at preserving the integrity of the EU single market, despite the existence of open borders between the UK and Ulster and Ulster and the Republic. It provides two things: limits on state aid to Ulster enterprises, and administrative checks on

Sunday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The key difference between Liz Truss and Boris Johnson

‘It’s fair to give wealthiest more money back – Truss’. That’s the headline on a BBC News story following Liz Truss’ interview with Laura Kuenssberg today, where she was asked about the merits of cutting National Insurance. Don’t worry if you missed the headline though. You’ll get plenty more chances to see it when Labour MPs repeat it over and over again, offering it as proof that the Tories are the party of the rich, a tag that Conservative leaders have sought to drop for the last two decades. So striking is the prospect of a would-be Tory leader clearly defending a policy that benefits the rich more than the poor,

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

A referendum act won’t thwart the Scottish nationalists

As someone who has been banging the drum for Westminster to legislate to secure the Union, it might seem churlish to gripe when legislation is proposed. In my defence, I am Scottish: churlishness is my birthright and griping my national pastime. So allow me to explain my grievances with the referendum act, which the Sunday Times says Liz Truss will introduce to ‘wreck the campaign for Scottish independence’. For one thing, I’m a traditionalist in these matters. I prefer the wrecking of the campaign for Scottish independence to be left to the experts: campaigners for Scottish independence. For another, passing a referendum act plays into the nationalist narrative that another referendum,

Steerpike Steerpike

Laura Kuenssberg’s new show falls apart on the launch pad

Well, that was…interesting. The BBC’s flagship political interview show, hosted first by Sir David Frost then by Andrew Marr, relaunched this morning under Laura Kuenssberg. On paper, she had it all sorted: she secured an interview with leadership frontrunner Liz Truss after she had pulled out of one with Nick Robinson just days before. It was a decent interview, as you’d expect from a former BBC political editor. It felt like the first interview of her premiership. If there was a winner, it’s Joe Lycett, who walked away with plenty of material for his next show But it ended to the whooping of applause from a comedian, Joe Lycett, a

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Sturgeon warns Truss could be a ‘disaster’

Liz Truss: ‘I will act immediately’ on energy bills The Sunday interview shows have returned just in time for the conclusion of the Conservative leadership contest. This morning, both candidates for the top job appeared on a revamped BBC programme opposite Laura Kuenssberg. With the last votes cast on Friday, the expectation is that Liz Truss will be taking over the reins from Boris Johnson. Kuenssberg asked Truss for her response to one of the country’s most pressing concerns: the enormous rise in energy bills: Truss: ‘I support exploring fracking’ Going into more detail, Truss said that she would be looking into expanding the UK’s domestic energy supply in a variety

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The police are having an identity crisis

What are the police for? The answer used to be obvious – to solve crimes and catch criminals. But now, I’d seriously have to think about it; going on the evidence of recent years, I’d probably conclude that they’re being paid to have a laugh, signal virtue and, of course, dance. Plod’s attempts at ‘getting down’ at the Notting Hill Carnival are legendarily embarrassing; last month, Lincolnshire police proudly shared a video of them doing the Macarena at Pride on the force’s official Twitter account. When people look back for an image to sum up the disintegration of our society, one of our own ‘Nero fiddling while Rome burns’ moments

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Liz Truss hints at her radical plans for government

What help will Liz Truss provide households and businesses with the coming cost-of-living crisis? That’s the question the frontrunner of the Tory leadership was pressed on as the Foreign Secretary appeared on the BBC’s inaugural Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show. After ducking out of a planned interview earlier this week with Nick Robinson, Truss once again refused to get into specifics as to what her offer to the public will be if she – as expected – is announced as the winner of the Tory leadership contest on Monday. She did, however, give a timeline for action should she enter 10 Downing Street. Truss said she would act within one