Scrapping inheritance tax is a terrible idea

There is no hole deep enough that a Conservative minister cannot muster the spadework to excavate it to even greater depths. No sooner had Kwasi Kwarteng announced that he was dropping his proposed reduction in the upper rate of income tax, than Andrew Griffith, one of his ministers at the Treasury, declared that he would like to see inheritance tax abolished. ‘I have lots of my fantastic local association [members] with me here and they will know because they asked me at my selection meeting 27 months ago which tax, if I had the choice, I would most like to see eliminated. History will record it was inheritance tax, ’he told Conservative party conference. 

Dropping the 45 pence tax rate to 40 pence was at least the right policy, albeit at the wrong time – it was politically explosive at a moment when you are demanding that workers make do with below-inflation pay rises. Abolishing inheritance tax would be damaging for the Tories at any time. I don’t doubt that inheritance tax is unpopular – among those who are in line to receive large legacies. But among young voters without wealthy parents, who have already seen their chances of owning their own home destroyed by the ever-greater concentration of property wealth in the hands of a lucky few? Reducing income tax – whether it be the top rate or basic rate – is about rewarding work. All that would be achieved by abolishing inheritance tax, by contrast, would be to reward good fortune. And no, I don’t accept Milton Friedman’s argument that inheritance tax would destroy the incentive to work because no one would want to invest on a horizon beyond their own lifetime. That might be an argument against inheritance tax set at punitive levels, but not one set at similar levels to income tax.

Griffith – and any other Tory tempted to press for the abolition of inheritance tax – needs to study the age profile of his voters. Why is it that only 30 per cent of 30-to-39-year-olds voted Conservative in the 2019 general election? This is a group well beyond rebellious youth; they are people who are settling down, building careers, and raising families – or rather they would be if they could afford a decent home. A large part of the reason why so many of this age group are unable to do so is that their parents’ generation is clinging onto property, much of it acquired through inheritance. Younger people have been condemned to become their buy-to-let tenants. No wonder they are no longer attracted to the party of capitalism and the free market.

Far from abolishing inheritance tax, the Conservatives should be increasing it. Or rather they should abolish inheritance tax as a tax on estates – and tax the recipients instead. Inherited capital and income should be treated exactly as any other kind of capital and income, taxed at 0 per cent, basic rate or upper rate depending on how much money was being inherited. That would be fair – and enhance incentives to work. No longer would the children of wealthy parents be able to acquire, as they can now, a million-pound family home without paying a penny in tax. (In the case of a family home the threshold rises to £500,000, which can be added to your partner’s £500,000 allowance to enable a million pound home to be passed on for nothing.) If the children of wealthy parents want a fancy home, they would have to build their own careers instead.

Why did North Korea fire a missile over Japan?

It was a new dawn, a new day, and a new North Korean missile test. The land of the morning calm – as South Korea is affectionately-nicknamed – awoke to the launch of the fifth North Korean ballistic missile in ten days.

Over the past ten months, the international community has become accustomed to a growing number of North Korean missile launches, of an increasingly diverse range of missiles. Kim Jong-un’s determination for North Korea to become a nuclear state, and be recognised as such is only heightening.

Last night’s launch was of a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile. The world had become familiar with North Korea’s missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles falling into the disputed waters of the East Sea (known by Japan as the Sea of Japan). This time, however, the missile flew over Japan into the Pacific Ocean, activating Japan’s alert system telling residents to take shelter: a feat last achieved five years ago. With a range of 4,500, it was the longest demonstrated range of any North Korean missile. It has the potential to strike the US-territory of Guam, home to a strategic US naval base.

Why launch a missile now? Over the past week, the US, South Korea, and Japan have conducted anti-submarine drills off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula. Joint military exercises with US aircraft carriers, including the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan, also took place during Kamala Harris’s visit to Seoul on 29 September.

A North Korean provocation frequently occurs when the US and South Korea stage defensive military exercises. The current international environment is notably in Pyongyang’s favour. As Russia’s war intensifies, the focus remains on Ukraine.

Launching missiles now means that North Korea has a high chance of escaping sanctions. The UN Security Council is currently in a state of paralysis, and a weakened Security Council benefits Kim. Divisions between western powers and former Cold War enemies means that Russia and China are now more reticent than ever to side with the West and support sanctions on North Korea. Only in May, China and Russia blocked US-led proposals for further sanctions on the country given its renewed ballistic missile tests earlier this year. Although claims of a coming strategic triangle between Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang are exaggerated, we should not discount a future North Korean rapprochement with the two states if doing so benefits North Korea. Whether it’s cash for ammunition – despite North Korea denying having exported weapons to Russia – or merely support in the form of solidifying opposition against the US and its allies, the hermit kingdom will do anything within its remit to exploit the current international environment in its favour. 

Who will stop North Korea? For all its increasingly vociferous opposition to the US, today’s missile launch demonstrates how China is not willing to die on the North Korean hill. Many observers thought that North Korea would restrain from provocations until after the opening of the 20^th People’s Congress of the Chinese Communist party on 16 October, in which Xi Jinping will likely be re-appointed to a record third term as general-secretary of the party. Yet, that Pyongyang has chosen to test a ballistic missile nearly two weeks before this critical event shows that not even its Cold War benefactor can deter its nuclear ambitions. Living with a nuclear North Korea is no longer a prospect, but a reality.

Is it time to look again at nuclear power?

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February this year marked a watershed moment in the debate on energy security. How we heat our homes, power our businesses, and what needs to be done to protect those energy sources was thrust once again to the top of each European country’s agenda.

The fallout from war in Ukraine has also led to a question being asked: is it time to look again at nuclear power? This was the topic of discussion at a Spectator panel at Tory conference. Robert Buckland, Secretary of State for Wales thought so: ‘We cannot afford to lose any time in investment in nuclear.’

This was proved most painfully when rocketing energy prices quickly began to expose how vulnerable Europe’s dependence on gas made it. Germany found its long-standing strategy of buying gas from Russia, including through the Nord Stream pipeline, a huge political and economic liability. It took it several months to succumb to Western pressure to finally pull the plug on the Nord Stream 2 pipe and now faces the real possibility of winter blackouts as a result.

France, which gets only 10 per cent of its energy from gas, has fared better: consumer energy bills have stayed comparatively low. Britain, whic,h as of this year generates more power from renewables than fossil fuels, has found itself somewhere between Germany and France.

For Buckland, the debate is not so much about which specific energy source is best. It boils down to one word, he said: ‘Security’. But, setting up power generators takes time – and nuclear is no exception. In 2007, the chief of energy company EDF predicted that customers would be cooking their Christmas turkeys using nuclear power from the new reactor at Hinkley Point by 2017. The power station’s opening has been repeatedly pushed back and isn’t expected to open until 2027: 10 years late.

‘The issues of energy security were not as writ large as they are now, but they should have been,’ said Buckland. This is a sentiment Tom Greatrex, CEO of the Nuclear Industry Association, agreed with. ‘Had we prepared about a decade ago, we would have been in a much, much better position.’ So, there’s no time like the present.

Energy security, Greatex argued, can be found through a so-called ‘robust energy mix’ – using multiple power sources to generate the UK’s energy. Currently, nuclear accounts for just 15 per cent of the UK’s energy production – unless new investment is committed, that percentage is due to drop even further in 2024 when the nuclear power stations in Hartlepool and Heysham close.

But, there’s more to achieving a robust energy mix than just focussing on nuclear, Dhara Vyas, acting CEO of trade association EnergyUK, said. ‘It’s much more nuanced than that. We need to increase the rollout of nuclear, just as we need to increase the rollout of carbon capture storage, offshore wind – we need to increase the mix.’

Added to this is the question of cost. ‘Nuclear is an expensive project,’ said Andy Mayer, of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Its cost as an investment risks being passed on to the customer: while nuclear energy is currently cheaper than the astronomical costs of gas, that won’t always be the case. But, Mayer said, the signs are there that Truss’s government is willing to commit the time and money to developing the industry.

‘Fear not, we are taking this very seriously,’ were Buckland’s words of reassurance. Hundreds of thousands of pounds will, he said, be used to fund research and development, creating new technology and training up employees. This could, according to Vyas, create more than a million jobs in the nuclear industry over the coming years.

The consensus, then, is that nuclear energy is something we should have started taking seriously long ago. But, better late than never, the question at hand now is how we invest in and develop the energy sector in a way that cushions the UK from fluctuations in supply – including from unpredictable foreign dictators.

Suella Braverman blasts Tory MPs over tax cut U-turn

Are we heading for a U-turn on the U-turn over the scrapping of the 45p tax rate? Liz Truss has said she would still like the top rate on high earners to come down, despite reversing on the policy just yesterday. Members of her cabinet agree she should bring it back: Suella Braverman has blasted Tory MPs for forcing the PM to ditch the tax cut. The Home Secretary said: 

‘I’m very disappointed that members of our own parliamentary party staged a coup effectively and undermined the authority of the Prime Minister.’ 

Levelling-up secretary Simon Clarke endorsed Braverman’s comments on Twitter, commenting that ‘Suella speaks a lot of good sense, as usual.’

So could the 45p tax cut really make a comeback? Truss insisted it’s not currently on the agenda, but she didn’t rule out returning to the issue. Speaking to the BBC, the PM said she ‘would like to see the higher rate lower’ in a bid to make the UK ‘a competitive country.’ 

Scrapping plans to abolish the top tax rate, it seems, was not due to a change of heart or a reconsideration of the policy itself. Rather it had become a ‘distraction from the major policies,’ Truss insisted – one that she did not want to see continue.

Is this plan realistic? While Truss and Kwarteng might have ditched the policy to renew focus on the rest of their growth strategy, doing so has also broken trust within the party, and suggested (very) early on in her premiership that she can be bounced into U-turns, even on major policy.

Having failed to properly make the case for binning the top rate in the first place will make it even more difficult to resurrect. The very public way in which this debate played out for the Tory party will make it even more politically toxic to return to. Any attempt to rekindle the discussion will need to wait until the memory of this party conference is long in the past. Given what a memorable few days it’s been in politics, that could take some time.

Iain Duncan Smith joins the benefits rebels

Iain Duncan Smith is the latest senior Tory to speak out against cutting benefits by not uprating them in line with inflation. The former work and pensions secretary and party leader told a ConservativeHome fringe on Universal Credit this morning that he thought it was a ‘peculiar debate’ to be having, adding: 

Almost certainly there would have to be a vote [on changing the benefits calculations] because it’s automatic. And therefore if you freeze it or change it, then that will be changing the system. My personal view is I don’t see what will be gained by it. But I do see what will be gained by making sure that they have enough money through the winter. Because, as I say, that money will flow back into the economy at the very time that we need the economy to be growing. That’s one of the ways in which the economy will be supported from the bottom.

He reminded the audience that he resigned back in 2016 over George Osborne’s planned cuts to disability benefits, and that ‘to repeat that mistake would be wrong at this stage’. As the fringe ended, he was told by host Paul Goodman that he hoped those in government were listening to the points he was making, and IDS replied shortly: ‘They’re not.’

This isn’t just significant because of Duncan Smith’s knowledge of the benefits system. It is also worth pointing out that he backed Liz Truss to be leader, supporting her fight back against the ‘Treasury orthodoxy’. IDS’s dealings with the Treasury when he was in the Work and Pensions department were never positive, partly because the Treasury is suspicious of big spending projects like Universal Credit, and partly because the minister did not get on with Osborne. IDS was offered a cabinet position, but turned it down, with those close to him suggesting he wasn’t happy with the offer of Leader of the House when he wanted to be running another delivery department. The MP who took the Leader of the House job was Penny Mordaunt, who has spoken out on the benefits uprating row too.

Duncan Smith did tell the fringe that he wasn’t even sure if this was a debate that was actually happening in Downing Street, but the line Liz Truss and others have been using is that no decision has been made yet on whether to update in line with inflation or instead in line with wages. The review is taking place this autumn, but the size of the row at this conference already suggests that a decision may need to be taken ahead of schedule to stop this from becoming another revolt, which would leave Truss even weaker.

Can Aukus help counter the threat from China?

Aukus is a pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. But its primary purpose is combatting another country: China.

‘It’s about China, let’s be quite clear,’ says security minister Tom Tugendhat. ‘You will not see many direct references to China in Aukus literature,’ says Sophia Gaston, director of the British Foreign Policy Group, ‘but it is certainly implicit. China is looming in the background; a spectre’.

That spectre was the focus of a fringe event at Tory party conference, discussing whether Aukus can shift the balance in the Pacific. Tugendhat is optimistic it can. One of the headline announcements of the Aukus pact – the development of nuclear-powered submarines – remains some time away. But the agreement, announced last September, is already bearing fruit: deeper co-operation between the three countries’ navies is already evident, says Tugendhat.

For Australia, it’s vital that the Aukus pact succeeds in the face of the growing threat from Beijing. ‘This project is existential for Australia,’ says Gaston. But the agreement is about more than just Australian domestic security, important as that is. Tugendhat argues that Aukus should be a broader springboard for alliances between other countries. ‘Aukus should be at the core of a new alliance of free countries that enables the sharing of technology,’ he says.

Sir Martin Donnelly, president of Boeing Europe, which sponsored the event, agrees that the pact is going well. But he worries that the UK risks getting left behind in this alliance. ‘There has been good progress,’ he says. ‘My concern is that, in some areas, particularly pillar two (cooperation on advanced technological capabilities) there are some signs that Canberra and Washington have gone further than London has. Now is the time for the UK to be very pro-active’.

Alicia Kearns MP says that it is clearly in the UK’s interest for this pact to succeed. She sees the agreement as primarily a ‘tech accelerator’, allowing the three countries to work closely together. Donnelly agrees: ‘This is an opportunity for us to get better at developing technology together. We have got to maintain that technological edge,’ he says.

Aukus is important for another reason, argues Kearns: the fact that clashes between various countries increasingly happen at sea. As a result, she says, ‘we need a maritime-informed view as we go forward’ – something that Aukus, which is intended to shift the balance in the world’s largest ocean, should hopefully help do.

The trouble with ‘Bros’

Hollywood and identity politics really is a toxic mix. Awards shows are dominated by hectoring actors. Popcorn fluff must now ‘send a message’. Concerns about representation apparently obsess casting directors. And a film being on-message is often prized over it being any good. Lazy recycled stories and reboots are given a ‘diverse’ gloss. We’re obliged to hail an all-female Ocean’s 11 or Ghostbusters reboot as some breakthrough for womankind, rather than another sign that Tinseltown is completely devoid of new ideas.

But this obsession certainly has its uses for Hollywood bigwigs, as the confected controversy over the new movie Bros makes clear. Bros is a gay romcom directed by Nicholas Stoller, who co-wrote the screenplay with the film’s star, Billy Eichner. It is being promoted as the first film of its kind to get big-studio backing. The critics, we’re told, love it. The only hitch is that the initial box-office reception has been tepid. For Eichner this can only mean one thing: and it’s nothing to do with whether his film is actually any good or not.

In a series of tweets – following a disappointing opening weekend, where Bros took fourth place and just $4.8million (£4.2 million) in cinemas – Eichner got his excuses in early. He said that ‘even with glowing reviews…straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros’. He encouraged ‘everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo’ to ‘go see Bros tonight’, assuring enlightened straights it is ‘special and uniquely powerful to see this particular story on a big screen, especially for queer folks who don’t get this opportunity often’.

Eichner’s comments bring to mind those famous lines from Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Die Lösung’. The poem is a satire on the anti-democratic politics of Stalinist East Germany, which wonders if it might be simpler for the government to just ‘dissolve the people’ and ‘elect another’. It cannot be, of course, that Bros just didn’t do that well – that it failed to connect with audiences or wasn’t promoted as well as it could have been. No, all those moviegoers are the problem – and they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Given we’re all expected to believe that bigotry lies at the heart of everything and everyone these days, Eichner isn’t even required to back up his own mad assertion.

This is becoming a bit of a trend. The Rings of Power, the new Lord of the Rings series on Amazon Prime, has been so panned by fans that Amazon recently paused viewer reviews. The backlash was naturally chalked up by some to racism, given the show’s ‘diverse’ cast. The much simpler explanation, that fans just didn’t like the show, is apparently preposterous. In turn, these blowups seem to incentivise journalists and studios to rally to the defence of complete dross, purely because they’re told some vague group have taken against it. 

The irony of Eichner’s comments is that they betray something else. When he damns those ‘certain parts of the country’ that supposedly took against his film you know instantly the places he’s likely to be talking about – those towns full of rednecks and opioids, no doubt, starved of cultural riches and blighted by awful opinions. That this is coming from the man fronting a mainstream, big-studio movie is telling. Hollywood, often derided as playing to the lowest common denominator and chasing mass appeal, is apparently now comfortable with bashing audiences and telling them what’s good for them. And if a film flops, you can just blame it on the audience.

It’s about time Hollywood remembered that its job is to entertain moviegoers, not hector them. But I really wouldn’t count on it. At a time when identity politics infects everything, it seems that many execs would rather say the ‘right’ thing, make the ‘right’ stand and sell tickets only to the ‘right’ kind of people than actually make money. Still, sooner or later they are going to realise that ordinary people don’t take kindly to being insulted – and that, to paraphrase Brecht, Hollywood can’t just cancel the audience and cast another.

Do Oxford students really need trigger warnings?

It is freshers’ week on campus. Brand new students get to make friends, get drunk and find their way around university. The excitement culminates with freshers’ fair, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find your tribe by joining everything from the paragliding club to the Mao appreciation society. Who cares if you never attend a single meeting? For one brief moment, you can flirt with the person you might become.

Freshers’ fairs offer new students a glimpse of the intellectual and political possibilities on offer at university. But sadly not at Oxford. This year, Oxford University’s freshers’ fair comes with a big fat trigger warning. Apologies. I should of course have prefaced that sizeist statement with ‘Trigger Warning: body shaming.’ And to be totally accurate, it is not one big fat trigger warning on the whole fair but a multitude of little warnings, one for each stall deemed to be promoting activities or ideas those in charge think new students might find distressing.

It is unlikely to be the bungee jumping club or the competitive vodka-drinking society that gets slapped with a trigger warning. It is not physical risks that students are being advised to avoid but emotional distress. The fashion for warnings has taken off following a row over the presence of an anti-abortion, pro-life group at last year’s fair.

Whatever your view on abortion, the application of a trigger warning suggests that the mere presence of pro-life campaigners is potentially so distressing that students should steer clear altogether. But what is the point of a university if not to confront difficult ideas? Presumably, medical students need to think about how they might counsel pregnant women; philosophy students may ponder the point at which human life begins and history students might look at how women’s rights have changed over time. Badging these topics as potentially distressing helps no one.

The focus on anti-abortion campaigners reveals the political motivation that lies behind trigger warnings. Whatever the rhetoric, they have nothing to do with protecting people suffering from trauma. Repeated studies have shown that trigger warnings are not only ineffective but may actually be counterproductive when it comes to helping psychologically vulnerable students. But they continue to be useful for activists who want to flag up people or ideas they consider politically dangerous. Trigger warnings highlight challenges to the current consensus on campus.

Spraying trigger warnings around universities like disinfectant has a devastating impact on free speech. Students learn that university is not a place for exploring ideas but a place to be protected from anything controversial. They learn that debate is not an exciting chance to hone your arguments or change your mind, but something best avoided for your own emotional safety.

With this in mind, Oxford’s freshers’ fair also has a ‘wellbeing zone’ where students who feel ‘uncomfortable’ can go to relax and chat with members of the ‘advice and wellbeing team’. Presumably there will be colouring books, bean bags, milk and cookies. This is not university but play school.

I have been writing about campus censorship for more than a decade. Back at the start, I was at pains to point out that few students arrived at university itching to no-platform controversial speakers or sign petitions to have books removed from the library. I argued it was activist academics and university administrators who taught students to see themselves as vulnerable and ideas as dangerous.

Things have changed since then. Often, it is the students’ unions, like the one at Oxford, that are now pushing for trigger warnings. The freshers’ fair organisers have justified their plans on social media, explaining that they are no longer able to ban societies outright because of freedom of speech legislation. We can only imagine their frustration. The trigger warnings, then, are a ‘mitigation’ put in place ‘to support the welfare of students’.

It is now students who want to stick red flags on ideas they find distasteful. This is peer-to-peer censorship by young adults firmly wedded to a perception of themselves as mentally and emotionally vulnerable and in need of psychological protection from dangerous ideas. The form-wielding bureaucrats and rainbow lanyard-clad lecturers can stand down. Their work is complete.

In truth, students’ unions have always attracted busybodies wanting to boss their fellows into organised activities and carefully-controlled fun. The difference is that today, their main concern safeguarding the fragile mental health of their peers and opposing political views they find distressing. We have to hope that Oxford’s latest intake will ignore the trigger warnings and turn the wellbeing zone into a space for ferocious debate.

Will Catalonia ever achieve independence from Spain?

Catalonia’s pro-independence government almost imploded last week. A major disagreement between its two governing parties occurred after one half of the coalition – hardline secessionist party Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) – proposed a no-confidence vote against president Pere Aragones for not pushing the secessionist cause hard enough. Aragones, a member of the more moderate Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), promptly fired his deputy president Jordi Puignero. He said this was ‘absolutely necessary to strengthen the government’. Although an understandable reaction, it’s also just as likely to have the opposite effect.

Aragones is the most capable leader the Catalan separatists have had in years, but he’s in an impossible position. On one side he faces a mutinous coalition partner and the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), a civic organisation that campaigns for an independent Catalonia. On the other is a central government (also a coalition) led by Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who has stated that there will be no independence referendum on his watch. Whichever way he turns, Aragones meets opposition and conflict.

Animosity between Catalonia’s moderate and hardline secessionists is never far from the surface. The current crisis was triggered on 11 September, when Aragones refused to attend ANC-organised celebrations in Barcelona for Catalonia’s National Day, or Diada, commemorating the day in 1714 when Barcelona fell during the War of Spanish Succession.

By not endorsing the Diada demonstrations, Aragones drew attention to his radical differences with the ANC, which has criticised the ‘inaction’ of the Catalan government and seeks a unilateral declaration of independence in 2023. Even calculating attendance at this year’s Diada is politically divisive: Barcelona’s police estimated about 150,00 people showed up, which would make it one of the worst-attended in years; the ANC, however, claims that almost four times that amount were present in the city centre.

Aragones might not be making much headway in his talks with Sanchez regarding a Madrid-sanctioned independence referendum – but Junts and the ANC, in demanding unilateral action, ignore the political complexities of their project. They also seem to forget that it was precisely by unilateral action that separatists contributed to a constitutional crisis from which Spain has still not recovered.

Last Saturday was the fifth anniversary of Catalonia’s most recent independence referendum, in which 92 per cent opted to split from Spain. Although the vote, which had 42 per cent turnout, had been declared illegal in advance by the Constitutional Court, then-Catalan president Carles Puigdemont unilaterally declared independence at the end of that month. 

Reacting swiftly, and with unprecedented severity, the Spanish government led by Mariano Rajoy suspended Puigdemont’s cabinet and took direct control of the north-easterly region. In late 2019, after a six month trial, Spain’s Supreme Court handed several leading separatists lengthy prison terms for their roles in organising the referendum.

Puigdemont fled to Belgium in the vote’s aftermath and has not returned to Spain since for fear of being arrested. Last week, he thanked Puignero for his loyalty via social media, adding, ‘we will not be able to say the same about others when they leave office’. It was clear who Puigdemont was referring to – the current, less combative occupant of what he once called the Catalan presidency’s ‘electric chair’.

Since the tumultuous events of 2017, Catalan separatists have stalled, hamstrung by their own internal divisions and opposition from a resolutely unionist central government. There have been a couple of boosts, though. The first came in June last year, when Sanchez, mindful of his dependence on ERC votes in congress, pardoned and released all of the imprisoned separatists (by no means did this decision signal a softening of his stance towards their cause). The other came in the form of a ruling from the UN Human Rights Committee in August, according to which the political rights of separatists stripped of their duties and thrown into pre-trial detention in 2017 were violated.

Despite Aragones’ efforts to deradicalise the independence movement, its popular support seems to have dwindled. Polls have historically shown Catalans to be roughly split down the middle on the matter, but according to the most recent, released in March, only 38.8 per cent want an independent Catalonia, while 53.5 per cent wish to remain part of Spain. The poll also revealed that 72.6 per cent of Catalans want a referendum on secession, perhaps indicating that the majority regarded the 2017 vote as illegitimate (if true, that might also explain the low turnout).

In seeking Madrid’s approval to stage a legal referendum, Aragones points to the Scottish independence vote of 2014. He sees it as an example of what can be achieved if there is ‘political will’ on both sides, and insists that the Spanish and Catalan governments can collaborate in the same way. Surviving a term in Spain’s most charged political seat, though, might prove even more complicated.

Why Penny Mordaunt’s pre-rebellion matters

Another day, another Tory rebellion. Liz Truss needs to think of ways to constrain spending and tough decisions lie ahead. One option is to increase benefits in line with average salaries (6.2 per cent), rather than CPI inflation (9.9 per cent). Her aides are preparing the argument. Why should someone on welfare see their income rise faster than someone in work? And with public sector wages rising at just 2 per cent, can government really give a near-10 per cent rise to those on benefits – while saying that there’s not enough money to do the same for nurses, teachers etc?

Those around the PM think that, unlike the 45p tax rate cut, this is a tough-love, fiscal-responsibility battle that can be won. ‘We have to look at these issues in the round,’ said the Prime Minister on the BBC Radio 4 interview broadcast this morning, ‘We have to be fiscally responsible.’ So she is considering, at very least, uprating benefits by earnings rather than inflation. But if she’s ready for a fight, then so are her Tory opponents. Intriguingly, Penny Mordaunt now seems to be leading them.

As Isabel Hardman mentioned yesterday, Chloe Smith, the new Work and Pension Secretary, is not using the language of tough love (‘protecting the most vulnerable is a vital priority for me and this government’). Damian Green is one of several MPs making similar noises, as is Michael Gove and IDS. So Truss may struggle to get a lean settlement through the House of Commons. That’s why it matters that Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons, has declared herself in favour of increasing welfare by inflation. Such open freelancing by a cabinet member is rare and indicates a collapse in discipline.

‘I’ve always supported – whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system – keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense to do so,’ is Mordaunt told Times Radio. ‘We want to make sure that people are looked after and that people can pay their bills. We are not about trying to help people with one hand and take away with another.’ She’ll have known – as all cabinet members will know – how unhelpful this is to Team Truss.

Uprating benefits to inflation would be hugely expensive due to the staggering number currently on out-of-work benefits: 5.3 million in total. This figure has yet to be acknowledged by the government (which prefers a more narrow definition of unemployment) and can only be found by interrogating the DWP StatXplore database. There’s a six-month lag, such is the lack of attention to all this. But 5.3 million amounts to 13 per cent of the UK working-age population, rising to 20 per cent in Manchester and Birmingham and 25 per cent in Blackpool. Here’s the breakdown, which we keep updated on The Spectator data hub:

As I’ve argued, the real scandal here is the waste of human potential, more than the waste of money. We have a near-record number of vacancies in the UK – about 1.3 million (hence the pressure to relax immigration rules). To combine this with near-record numbers of people on welfare is, to put it politely, quite a feat. But it’s also a very expensive situation – and one set to become more expensive still. If welfare rates rise far faster than earnings, it further weakens the incentive to work – making one of Britain’s hardest problems harder still.

This is a complex and difficult argument to make – and one distinguishing feature of Liz Truss’s government is that it struggles to hold such discussions even with the Tory party, let alone the country.  That’s why one of the plans being mooted by Truss’s opponents is to handcuff her, perhaps by forcing her to accept a Chancellor who would calm the markets and not collude with her to do things without sign-off from her cabinet (like cutting the 45p tax).

Another plan is for the cabinet to assert itself as a moderating force – and ensure decisions are no longer made by a Truss-Kwarteng duumvirate but in conjunction with the cabinet. This was Mordaunt’s campaign theme (leadership should be less about the leader, she said, and ‘more about the ship’). George Freeman, who recently backed Mordaunt’s for the leadership, has called for the cabinet to rise up and take back control from Truss.

That’s why this other remark from Mordaunt to Times Radio is so interesting: 

She [Truss] wants cabinet to be a forum where we can really kick the tyres on policy, where we can have frank discussions that aren’t leaked. It should be consultative. We should take decisions together.

Truss wants no such thing. Her premiership has so far been distinguished by major decisions being taken by a tiny number of advisers very much excluding her cabinet. So this is a pre-rebellion from Mordaunt: she is describing a situation she’d like, not one that exists. Perhaps in hope of making a new reality – and having a decent narrative of opposition should she run as leader again. If the Leader of the House becomes leader of the rebellion, then things will certainly get interesting.

Liz Truss walks into another row

With a wearying inevitability, Liz Truss has gone from one row to another. One of her own cabinet ministers, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, has warned her against cutting benefits. She told Times Radio: 

‘I’ve always supported – whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system – keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense to do so. That’s what I voted for before.’ 

This is the kind of cabinet indiscipline that you’d expect in the weakest and latter days of a premiership, not the first few weeks.

Mordaunt joins a growing list of Tories who have broken cover to insist benefits must be uprated in line with inflation. As I wrote yesterday, even the Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith made clear on the conference stage that she wasn’t keen to make these kinds of cuts, saying ‘protecting the most vulnerable is a big priority for me’. Once again, I have spoken to a lot of MPs in the government who aren’t prepared to break cover yet but who would resign and vote against the government on this matter. 

Truss has insisted on her morning broadcast round that ‘no decision’ has been taken on whether to update benefits in line with inflation or earnings (the latter would be a real-terms cut). But she is still conforming to the pattern of the 45p climbdown. As she herself has acknowledged, there wasn’t enough pitch-rolling before the Chancellor announced the abolition of the 45p rate. In this instance, there hasn’t been an attempt to argue that it would be acceptable to cut benefits at this time. It has allowed Truss’s opponents, including the formidable Michael Gove, to frame the issue themselves. It means that if Truss now starts trying to claim that this is about ‘fairness’ and helping people in work vs those on benefits, she will struggle, because Tory MPs and the public at large are much more aware that 40 per cent of universal credit claimants are in work.

In the parties and bars in Birmingham last night, the 45p reversal hadn’t really calmed Tory nerves. In fact, many MPs and aides I spoke to seemed even more resigned to their party heading for a period of opposition after the next election. I say ‘resigned’, but perhaps a more accurate description would be that many are longing for a break. The way the party is behaving is tantamount to a cry for help from someone hoping for an intervention from friends and family. In politics, that generally means the electorate booting you out of government and into rehab, better known as opposition.

For a full list of Spectator Tory conference fringe events, click here

Full list: Tories against the PM’s benefits plan

Another day, another backbench rebellion brewing for Liz Truss. Having U-turned over the 45p tax rate cut following a revolt from Tory MPs, the Prime Minister is once again facing trouble. This time it’s her plan to raise benefits in line with earnings rather than inflation that is going down badly. Below is The Spectator’s running tally of the Tory MPs who have voiced their concerns:

1. Penny Mordaunt: it ‘makes sense’ that welfare should rise in line with inflation (4 Oct, Times Radio interview)

2. Michael Gove: ‘my basic position, my starting position is, yes, Boris was right (that benefits should rise in line with inflation)’ (4 Oct, Times Radio)

3. Damian Green: to make hard-up families ‘struggle even more does not seem a sensible thing to do’ (4 Oct, BBC interview)

4. Esther McVey: ‘I have to say that it would be a huge mistake not to give a cost of living increase in the benefits.’ (3 Oct, CPS fringe event)

5. John Glen 

6. Mel Stride: ‘We’re coming off the back actually of a kind of quite a strong real-terms squeeze on those benefits already so I think that will be a really tough call to make’ (4 Oct, BBC Radio 4)

7. Iain Duncan Smith: ‘My personal view is I don’t see what will be gained by it (not raising benefits in line with inflation)’ (4 Oct, ConservativeHome fringe event)

8. Roger Gale: ‘You don’t protect the vulnerable by cutting benefits’ (4 Oct, Kent Online)

9. Robert Halfon: ‘It’s essential that we increase benefits in line with inflation’ (4 Oct, BBC Essex)

10. Alicia Kearns: (4 Oct, Tory conference fringe event)

11. Sajid Javid: ‘I personally believe that benefits must stay in line with inflation.’ (10 Oct, BBC Radio 4)

Why can’t MPs let Truss be Truss?

Our common culture – the huge audiences that tv, film and pop music used to attract – has evaporated. Politics is about the only thing remaining where we are all on the same page. It’s perhaps inevitable then that public reaction has become ever more febrile and volatile. Poll percentages now go crashing and soaring with a regularity that’s disturbing to those of us who can remember the prelapsarian age when we were the only people who gave a stuff about politics and that we were considered odd because of it.

The marked outlandishness of British party politics has been evident since that day in September 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party. Followed closely by parliament’s inability to implement the referendum result, Theresa May’s manifesto massacre of 2017, the rise and fall of Boris Johnson, with a dollop of Covid and war in Europe on top, and the broadcast media screaming and clucking and gotcha-ing throughout, has made the country seem, at times, ungovernable. The events of the past fortnight have seen yet another crescendo in a frenzied symphony that never seems to stop.

Like most people, I suspect, the workings of the financial markets are something of a mystery; like the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster. When they panic I’m painfully aware that all I have to rely on are my prejudices and my tribal loyalties, weak as those are. I have no idea what a gilt market is, but then even people who do know what they are offer wildly contradictory takes. It’s a bit like overhearing a heated dispute in a language that you don’t speak.

I do, however, know about engaging with the public, at least as much as anyone can hope to. The truth must be delivered wisely. And it seems clear that the fiscal event was the worst sold thing since Coca Cola proudly unveiled ‘pure’ bottled water that turned out to have sprung from the municipal supply of Sidcup. Expecting the already busy and worried British populace not only to react rationally to counter-intuitive ideas but banking on them to take a long-term view, when your legions of enemies will spin them in the most negative, and clear, way possible seems suicidally optimistic.

The broadcasters reacted exactly as anybody except Truss and Kwarteng would have expected. They are horrified when anybody in government does something that Tony Blair would not have done in his first term. That is their factory settings for politics, as if those fleeting fool’s spring conditions could ever apply again. And it’s not as if the package was notably that extreme. Bizarre policies like lockdown school closures, the abolition of the category of sex, granting certain groups extra rights based on random immutable characteristics, etc: these just roll by, largely unexamined and subsumed into public life.

But did the squawking and whinnying among Tories help? I’d suggest not. My attitude to the Conservative party is like that of a miner to a shaky pit prop, rotted, wonky and worm-eaten, but it’s all you’ve got to prevent thousands of tons of dross and clinker descending to flatten you.

Tory MPs have behaved like a herd of antelope at the sight of a lion on the horizon. They are spooked and jumpy, and surprisingly active for people who are commonly said to be ‘exhausted’, but which I think really means bored. Liz Truss did pretty much what she said she was going to do, at length, again and again, throughout the summer. And she is, let’s put it politely, not renowned for her communication skills. Why were her MPs so taken aback?

My advice to Tory MPs, now they’ve got the tax U-turn, is this. Yes, it may all very well be going wrong. But for goodness sakes, let it be.

Yes, it would be very funny for people like me if you tried to defenestrate yet another leader. (And the seriously mooted idea of reinstalling Boris is even funnier – why stop there, dig up Bonar Law.) There is really nothing much you have to lose. You’ve tried everything else, doing the policy Hokey Cokey of austerity/massive public spending, firing thousands of police/hiring thousands of police, etc. You got rid of a leader who wanted to be loved, and replaced him with a leader who doesn’t care if she is hated. You did this. So accept it.

And losing your seats, would it be so bad? Look on the up side: you wouldn’t have to sit looking at Richard Burgon every day.

So let Truss be Truss. You made your bed. Lie in it.

What to eat in game season

Game is a perfect refutation to the sort of militant vegan campaigners who go around placing floral tributes on packaged meat. So long as shoots are responsibly conducted, game is as environmentally sustainable and ethical as meat-eating gets.

But this year looks set to be a tough one for parts of the industry. Chiefly because of a severe outbreak of avian flu in France, gamekeepers in the UK have struggled to source enough birds to rear (90 per cent of partridge eggs and 40 per cent of pheasant eggs are imported from or through France). By some estimates up to 70 per cent of partridge shoots and nearly a third of planned pheasant shoots may be cancelled this year. To make matters worse, a recent Cambridge study raised concerns that eating pheasant is likely to expose you to increased levels of toxic lead in your diet (the researchers say that occasional consumption is unlikely to be an issue, but weekly consumption maybe more so).

Game comes in all shapes and sizes: grouse, hare, mallard, rabbit, snipe, teal, venison, wild goose, woodpigeon, woodcock, partridge, pheasant. The naturally free-range animals’ diet on moorlands, on farmland and in forests adds layers of flavour to the meat. It’s low in cholesterol, and has fewer calories than other meats. At a time of rising prices, it is also worth noting that it is – somewhat contrary to its reputation – quite economical. A free-range chicken breast is nearly 60 per cent more expensive than a wood pigeon breast. A whole free-range chicken is nearly 20 per cent more expensive than a whole wild rabbit of the same size. As Phil Howard of Elystan Street puts it: ‘Eating game is one of life’s no-brainers… it’s local, lived happily and it’s lean, nutritious and cheap.’

Where to eat the best game? In London, there is plenty of choice. At the Jugged Hare in Barbican there’s a starter of wild Suffolk venison tartare, and a main of spatchcock wood pigeon with English cherries, as well as the signature dish of jugged hare, mash, Savoy cabbage and bacon. Corrigan’s in Mayfair has a Yorkshire grouse for two with salt-baked beetroot, fermented blackberry and Manjimup truffle. You should also ask after their famous grouse pie which only makes fleeting appearances on the menu. Kensington’s Maggie Jones’s (named for Princess Margaret who used to regularly dine there under that alias) has partridge and pheasant on the menu, both from the Windsor Estate. La Poule au Pot in Belgravia’s pretty-as-you-like Orange Square is also a lovely restaurant, and they have squab pigeon and hare on the menu. Meanwhile at The Game Bird at the Stafford hotel, the restaurant’s eponymous dish is roast squab pigeon with a herb barley risotto. Enoteca Turi (Italian; Chelsea) and Quo Vadis (British; Soho) are also good bets. Beyond London, try The Leaping Hare in Suffolk, The Woodsman in Stratford-upon-Avon, The Inn at Whitewell in Lancashire and Rothay Manor in the Lake District.

If you prefer to cook your own kill there is a nice recipe from Mary Berry for a pheasant stew. Or you could try this recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for roast partridge with sage, thyme and cider. As we enter the season for bracing autumnal walks, you could make some of these pheasant sausage rolls to pack in your knapsack. And for a supper at the end of a day’s happy sport outside, consider this venison ragu with pappardelle which manages to be both elegant and hearty.

Game is tremendously versatile. Will Bowlby of Kricket says his favourite is either mallard or venison: ‘The former provides a much leaner and more complex flavour in the meat compared to its farmed counterpart.’ As for wild deer, ‘the different cuts lend themselves to different things… we braise the shoulders for a biryani, and we trim the haunch to make kebabs and hunter-style curries. And any leftover trim gets minced down and turned into a rich keema with yoghurt, tomatoes and dried fenugreek.’ Mark Kempson of Kitchen W8 in Kensington says you can be as technically complex or simple as you choose: ‘A pheasant goujon is so easy to do and people love it. The meat is packed with flavour as a result of game birds and animals being free range and able to forage on the bounty of the countryside.’ Kitchen W8 is doing a ‘Celebration of Game’ menu that features the likes of Yorkshire grouse consommé to start, followed by a warm salad of partridge and a glazed venison faggot. So – who’s game?

A rough guide to the season

What to eat and when to eat it:

• Rabbit and woodpigeon: all year round
• Scottish red deer (stags): 1 July to 20 October
• Scottish / English fallow deer (bucks): 1 August to 30 April
• Hare: 1 August to 28 February
• Grouse: (Glorious) 12 August to 10 December
• Partridge: 1 September to 1 February
• Mallard and teal: 1 September to 31 January
• Pheasant: 1 October to 1 February
• Woodcock: 1 October to 31 January
• Scottish / English roe deer (does): 21 October to 31 March
• Scottish red deer (hinds): 21 October to 15 February
• Scottish / English fallow deer (does): 21 October to 31 March

Where to buy it

For those who can’t shoot their own, try these online stockists:

• Wild and Game
• Willo 
• The Blackface Meat Company
• The Wild Meat Company 
• Primal Meats
• Alternative Meats 
• Eversfield Organic 

The secrets of London by postcode: W (West)

It’s the area that unites James Bond, Rick Wakeman and both Queen Elizabeths. In the first of our series looking at the quirky history and fascinating trivia of London’s postcode areas, we explore the delights to be found in W (West) – everything from fake houses to shaky newsreaders to dukes who are women…

• The BBC News TV studios are mounted on enormous steel springs to prevent the damage that would otherwise be caused by the Bakerloo line, which runs underneath Portland Place, right down the side of New Broadcasting House. Can’t have vibrations from the Tube trains sending Huw Edwards all wobbly, can we? The same problem was faced by the radio studios that used to occupy the basement – you would occasionally hear the trains on air.
• Lancaster Gate (once home to the Football Association) was named after Queen Victoria, as she was the Duke of Lancaster. The reigning monarch always is, irrespective of gender.
• In 1925 Selfridges was the venue for John Logie Baird’s first public demonstration of an early form of television. He used a ventriloquist’s dummy called Stooky Bill, whose brightly-painted face was ideal for the relatively dim images to which TV was then limited.
• The store’s founder, Harry Gordon Selfridge, is credited with coining the expression ‘the customer is always right’, as well as the promotional phrase ‘only x shopping days until Christmas’.
• Bond Street is named after the 17th century property developer Sir Thomas Bond – whose family motto ‘the world is not enough’ (‘orbis non sufficit’) ended up as the title of a film starring Sir Thomas’s namesake, James. This in turn was a reference to the fact that in the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the College of Arms judges that 007 might be descended from Sir Thomas.
• Take a trip to Leinster Gardens in Bayswater and examine numbers 23 and 24. If you didn’t know their secret, you’d be very unlikely to notice that they are, in fact, completely false frontages. The five-storey constructions – replete with columns, balconies and sash windows – are there purely to disguise the open-cut section of Tube line that runs underneath the road, at right-angles to it. They were built by the company behind the Metropolitan Railway in the 1860s to assuage local residents. The fake houses are maintained by Transport for London to this day.

• While we’re on the Tube, as it were, South Ealing (in W5) is one of only two London Underground stations whose names contain all five vowels. Can you work out the other one? (Clue – it’s in the EC postcode area. Answer below.)
• The Savile Row tailor Huntsman was the inspiration for the Kingsman films. As well as kitting out Edward VIII, Winston Churchill, Laurence Olivier and Charlie Watts, Huntsman have been making suits for movie producer Matthew Vaughn since he was 18. One day during a fitting Vaughn got the idea for a film. Look through the window from the street and you can see that the main room is dominated by two stags’ heads mounted on the wall. These were owned by a client who left them at Huntsman when he went for lunch one day in 1921. He never returned.
• Fancy staying where one of Britain’s most famous essayists used to live? Hazlitt’s hotel takes its name from William, who lived at 6 Frith Street (one of three adjacent houses that the hotel now occupies). Hazlitt died there too, in 1830, his landlady hiding his body under the bed while she showed the room to a potential new tenant. The rooms (all named after Soho figures of the 18th and 19th centuries) maintain period quirks – as the hotel put it, ‘in some rooms it is an uphill walk to bed’. But modern conveniences make your stay luxurious as well as characterful: for instance Jonathan Swift has a 12in shower head (lucky chap). Modern writers who stay here (such Bill Bryson and Seamus Heaney) often leave signed first editions of their works in the library. Sadly the Harry Potter first editions left by J.K. Rowling are now so valuable that they have to be locked away. Rooms from £289; reservations@hazlitts.co.uk.
• Piccadilly gets its name from the ‘pickadil’, the large and ornate lace collar you see in portraits of Elizabeth I, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake et al. In the early 1600s Robert Baker, who’d made his fortune from the collars, purchased land in the area and built himself a house. It soon became known as Pickadilly Hall, and the street followed suit.
• Mayfair’s name is a reference to the fair that used to be held there every… well, you can guess the month. Founded in 1686, the fair was famed for attractions such as boxing, bull-baiting and (bizarrely) semolina-eating contests. Increasingly unruly (pickpockets and prostitutes abounded), the fair was finally banned in 1764.
• Cordings, the traditional country clothing store on Piccadilly, is part-owned by Eric Clapton. A fan of the store since his teenage days (he would stare longingly at its window displays at night, having missed his last train home), the rock star responded in 2003 when Cordings found itself in financial difficulty. As he put it, if they went out of business, where would he get his tweed jackets?
• If you want your Sunday cooking to extend beyond a traditional English roast, head to Benares on Sunday 23 October. Sameer Taneja, head chef at the Berkeley Square institution, is running a masterclass in Indian cuisine. Between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. he’ll guide you through some of his favourite dishes (current highlights on the restaurant’s menu include tandoori muntjac, baby poussin tikka masala and Lucknowi-style Scottish lobster). Then your friends can join you for lunch afterwards. Class £199 per person, friends joining for lunch £50 per person; events@benaresrestaurant.co.uk.

• The Soho alleyway St Anne’s Court was once home to Trident Studios, where Elton John recorded Candle in the Wind, David Bowie recorded Life on Mars? and Queen recorded their first three albums. It was also where Marc Bolan recorded Get It On. The piano glissando near the beginning was played by a then-unknown Rick Wakeman. When Wakeman pointed out to his friend Bolan that he could have played the part himself (simply by running his finger down the keyboard), Bolan responded that he wanted Wakeman to have the £9 session fee. ‘I’d have just given you the money, but you wouldn’t have accepted it.’
• Round the corner in Frith Street you’ll find Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Although famed as a jazz player, Scott was also responsible for the saxophone solos on Lady Madonna by the Beatles and I Missed Again by Phil Collins.
• Queen Elizabeth II’s birth, at 17 Bruton Street, was the last birth of a British monarch to be witnessed by the Home Secretary. This tradition dated back to the ‘warming-pan scandal’ of 1688, when a rumour went round that James II’s son had been stillborn, and that a ‘replacement’ baby had been smuggled into the room in a warming pan. To confirm that possible future monarchs really were of the royal line, all such births were then witnessed by the Home Secretary. Sir William Joynson-Hicks was the man on duty in 1926.

Answer: the other Tube station whose name contains all five vowels is Mansion House.

Trains, planes and wheelchairs: why is this still a route to disaster?

Whenever I take a train journey, I am filled with dread. Despite always booking assistance, I am terrified there won’t be someone at my destination with a ramp to help me and my powered wheelchair on to the platform. Many a time has my travel companion – or a complete stranger – had to straddle the train and the platform to stop the train doors closing with me stuck inside. I have frequently arrived at my destination late and stressed, left with the impression that my time doesn’t matter. What on earth could I be late for – surely nothing important?

So I have read with horror, but not surprise, the recent stories of disabled people being abandoned or mistreated when travelling on planes and trains. I know from bitter experience that chaotic journeys and ruined plans are a regular occurrence when trying to navigate the public transport system.

In July, BBC journalist Frank Gardner complained about being stranded on an empty plane without wheelchair assistance after landing – the fifth time this had happened since he began using a wheelchair in 2004. In June, Gatwick apologised to Victoria Brignell, who was stuck on a plane for more than 90 minutes after landing when airport staff failed to come to assist her.

Stories like this – and many more – mean I’ve never dared take my powered wheelchair on a plane. I’m worried that when I arrive it will be broken or missing, ruining my holiday. For this reason I have ruled out plane travel for the foreseeable future.

And trains aren’t much better. I was considering using the train for my daily commute, so I did a trial run. I booked a wheelchair space, but despite me pointing out the carriage with a wheelchair sign on the door, the member of staff helping me insisted I got into a different one. I got on board and found myself in the bicycle store. The corridor was too narrow for me to move from there and so I had to insist that he help me get off at the next stop and get back on in the correct place. I was met with huffing and puffing. I ended up discounting the train altogether. I just couldn’t face the prospect of dealing with such obstructive and rude behaviour each day.

These issues aren’t unique to overground trains, either. Anna Landre, a disability justice activist and scholar, was recently stranded on the London Underground. Staff should have been at her destination with a ramp, but nobody appeared – and Landre was unable to summon help as the emergency levers on the Tube train weren’t at wheelchair height. Her only option was to tweet at Transport for London. She later received an apology and was told that ‘appropriate action has been taken’ – although sadly with no mention of how this might be prevented from happening again.

If you have a disability, you can never take a trip on the spur of the moment, and you have to plan everything to the nth degree. ‘The fatigue is real,’ says Erik Matthies of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). ‘You have to psych yourself up for it every time.’

Many individuals who are blind or partially sighted rely on public transport to get around. Yet Matthies described to me a catalogue of problems, including a lack of basic safety features such as tactile paving at railway stations (found to be a contributory factor in the death of a visually impaired man in London last year), the diminishing number of railway staff, poor passenger assistance and a lack of audio announcements.

And those whose disabilities aren’t always obvious from the outside face difficulties of their own. Matthies says many travellers don’t recognise that priority seats should be available to those with any disability – not just those who have a mobility issue. Campaigners have highlighted cases of travellers with conditions such as Parkinson’s being forced to stand for long periods or having to cancel trips because they can’t reserve seats on some services, while those who require wheelchair access can book one of a handful of accessible seats.

RNIB members also regularly report difficulties just trying to reach a bus stop or train station in the first place. These include obstacles on pavements, insufficient pedestrian crossings and even an encroachment on previously safe ground by the cycle infrastructure that often requires pedestrians to cross cycle lanes before reaching, for example, a bus stop.

So what can be done to make public transport better for everyone? Tactile paving at railway stations is a must, as well as audio-visual announcements across all buses. Consistency is key. Patchy accessibility has gone on for too long, leaving disabled travellers at sea when they have to deviate from a familiar route. Training for staff is crucial to ensure better passenger assistance and more positive experiences across the board.

My dream would be for every train to have step-free access. Until then, assistance intercoms on trains to allow passengers to contact staff would be a good start. If emergency levers on all trains (whether underground or overground) were at wheelchair height, this would provide a simple back-up solution for those occasions when no assistance arrives.

In terms of planes, the day when passengers can remain in their own wheelchairs during every flight feels a long way off. However, proper (and timely) assistance and no lost or damaged mobility equipment would go a long way to restoring faith in air travel.

Martyn Sibley, CEO and co-founder of inclusive marketing agency Purple Goat, believes that disabled people need to be consulted by transport providers. He told me that ‘inclusive design is proved to enhance everybody’s experience, and by including all people there’s far-reaching economic benefits too’.

Aside from these excellent reasons, it is also the right thing to do. It is 2022 and it’s time that the travel industry acted like it.

What does Michael Gove want?

Tory conference has long been more stage-managed than other party meetings, but this year the official speeches from ministers have also been condensed into a very strange late afternoon slot lasting just two hours. The rest of the time is free for fringe meetings and plotting.

Ministers and their aides have been told they have to keep their addresses to the hall announcement-lite, which makes those two hours feel largely pointless. Kwasi Kwarteng didn’t announce very much at all, even though his two U-turns have dominated the day’s agenda. This morning, the Chancellor dropped the plan to abolish the 45p rate of tax, and this evening it has emerged that he is also bringing forward his medium-term fiscal plan from 23 November – something ministers had been asked to hold the line on.

A clue to the next potential U-turn came not in one of the speeches but in one of the considerably more-scripted and stage-managed ‘discussions’. These have been going on for years at Conservative conference: a minister or two is relegated from a formal speaking slot to a cosy and allegedly informal sit-down with someone who is often a very nice and slightly nervous small business owner, charity pioneer or environmental campaigner. The chit-chats involve a suspiciously large sheaf of notes: indeed, in this particular ‘discussion’, Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith largely abandoned the pretence that this was spontaneous and held her script up so she could read from it verbatim. 

But within that script, Smith had a line that she may well end up using against her ministerial colleagues such as Kwarteng in future. She told the hall that ‘we know that people are struggling with some of the costs that are rising’, adding: ‘That’s why protecting the most vulnerable is a big priority for me.’ It sounds quite anodyne, but given one of the big battles of the autumn is going to be over whether benefits are raised in line with inflation, it was a clear marker that Smith doesn’t think that trying to get some savings this way is the right thing to do. She’s not a noisy cabinet minister and is much more likely to make her arguments behind closed doors. But she does also have a very helpful backbench campaign led by someone who loves a public fight: Michael Gove.

What is Gove’s endgame? He hasn’t packed up his bags since Kwarteng U-turned on the 45p: instead, he was still touring the fringe this evening. He has made clear that the benefit rise must go ahead, and many of his colleagues have made the same point to Kwarteng themselves. But even if it does, that’s not going to be the former minister’s last battle. Tory MPs are fascinated by where he wants this to end. Is he still hoping that Kemi Badenoch, who he initially backed for leader, could yet take over from Truss? Badenoch had a really good stint on the conference stage in the most lively session of the afternoon programme. She had members eating out of her hand as she talked about taking pride in Britain, about immigration, and about culture wars. Perhaps Gove might want her star to rise further. Or perhaps he is still holding out for Rishi Sunak, who he later backed, and who is staying away from the conference to allow Liz Truss to ‘own the moment’. 

I don’t get the sense that a Sunak succession would do anything to stop the civil war in the party, though: there is a lot of bad feeling among MPs about the way some parts of his campaign operated. Then again, there’s just a lot of bad feeling and mistrust in the party now. The one thing Truss has managed to unite her party on is that MPs in every faction are now annoyed with her.

Is Britain making the most of Brexit?

Brexit was hailed by its supporters as an opportunity for Britain to go out and into the world. But six years on from the EU referendum, are we making the most of Britain’s departure from the EU?

Not so, according to Conor Burns, Minister of State in the Department for International Trade. Burns says that, as an early supporter of Brexit, dating back to when he read the Maastricht Treaty as a student, he relished the opportunities that leaving the EU would offer in doing things ‘differently’. Sadly, he says, there has been a ‘failure’ to capitalise on these. 

Even Brexit’s firmest supporters admit there has been turbulence. Since Britain’s departure from the EU there has been a marked decline in UK exports to Europe: in the first six months of 2021, these fell by 15.6 per cent, or £12.4 billion. ‘The figures on exports are really depressing,’ admits Burns, who was speaking at a Spectator fringe event at Tory party conference in Birmingham.

The IEA’s Annabel Denham, who was also on the panel alongside The Spectator‘s editor Fraser Nelson and Tory MP Mark Garnier, shared this sense of disappointment. ‘It is immensely frustrating that Brexit provided us this opportunity to finally ignite the red tape’ but that this has not been taken up, she says.

Trade is really one of the places where we can seize the benefits of Brexit, Burns says. By ‘unblocking the arteries’ and allowing goods to flow more easily across the border, it’s a win-win for businesses and consumers. One of those businesses that exports a lot to Europe is Amazon, which sponsored the event. Its UK boss John Boumphrey points out that a significant chunk of its business revenue – around half – comes from small businesses that operate on its platform and use its distribution infrastructure to fulfil deliveries.

‘As a big business’, he says, ‘we are relatively well equipped to deal with friction (in terms of paperwork at borders)’. But an audience member whose family sells camping gear through Amazon suggests that Brexit has still made life harder. His company used to sell lots of equipment to campers in Germany. Now the amount of paperwork means it isn’t worth the hassle.

Jacob Rees-Mogg says in his previous job as Minister for Brexit opportunities one of his aims was to ‘significantly reduce’ the amount of forms that need filling in by those seeking to export goods. But clearly there is still plenty of work to be done. 

If Brexit hasn’t been plain sailing, there is still cause for optimism, says Rees-Mogg. The business secretary is optimistic that Britain’s departure from the EU will ultimately help businesses and free up trade, not least in helping to cut red tape. The government is currently working through thousands of EU regulations left over from when Britain was a member of the bloc. Come the end of next year, a Brexit bill sunset clause means that’s what’s left of this EU law will vanish.

As we move away from EU rules, Rees-Mogg says the government is keen to ensure that new unnecessary regulations don’t take their place. The hope is that, for the majority of companies, onerous regulations will become a thing of the past.

Chris Philp’s hopes for ‘calm’ may be premature

The Spectator’s panel on tech-driven economic growth at Tory party conference began with a disclaimer. ‘Just to clarify, I am not inside the tent’, says economist Gerard Lyons. Lyons was an advisor to Boris Johnson at City Hall so is no stranger to frontline politics, but in recent weeks, he’s been identified as one of the ‘three Trusketeers’, the economists advising Liz Truss on her radical economic agenda. 

Lyons is still a supporter of Trussonomics, whatever that may be. ‘We are moving away from cheap money globally, not just in the UK’, he says, trying to contextualise the difficulty that the government has faced on the bond markets. He also argued that polling shows public support for scrapping the national insurance hike, the energy package and slashing income tax. But he’s made plenty clear – on this panel and elsewhere – that he does not condone Liz and Kwasi’s complete plan. ‘I didn’t have foresight of the mini-budget,’ he says.

But more aligned to Trussonomics than Lyons was the chief secretary to the Treasury, Chris Philp. ‘It’s been a somewhat busy day’, Philp apologised after turning up late. He wasn’t wrong: the last few hours had seen the government U-turning on its scrapping of the 45p income tax. But on economic growth, tech-driven or not, Philp was clear that 2.5 per cent was still the government’s target. ‘On this the Chancellor and I are aligned,’ he said.

Philp and Lyons were joined on the panel in Birmingham by Olly Batrum, senior analyst from the Institute for Government, and Steve Hare, CEO of software company Sage, which sponsored the discussion (and the gin), chaired by The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews. Their aim was to answer the question: ‘Can tech pull Britain out of its economic slump?’. They discussed automation, education and training (the latter being especially important in preventing vast swathes of the workforce losing out from the former), and that buzzword from a past era ‘levelling up’. After all, when it comes to creating tech clusters and working with exceptional universities in the UK, London isn’t the end of the story.

It was an optimistic panel (Philp disputed that Britain was in an ‘economic slump’ at all). Should the government achieve all on the wish list that was drawn up in this session, the economy will be in a very good place indeed. But Chris Philp’s hope that ‘more calm will now break out at 1 Horseguards’ may be wishful thinking when it comes to the rocky road lying ahead of the Treasury in the coming weeks.

It’s no surprise eco zealots targeted Captain Tom

What drives someone to do something as morally depraved as throw human faeces on a monument to Captain Sir Tom Moore? The video allegedly showing a climate-change campaigner dousing a likeness of Sir Tom, in what was reportedly a mixture of urine and excrement, is deeply chilling. 

The person in the video is part of a pressure group called End UK Private Jets. The woman allegedly executed the vile stunt in order to raise awareness about the polluting impact of private jets. Quite how defiling a monument to a national treasure in such an appalling way is going to raise the public’s eco-awareness is anyone’s guess. It’s far more likely to make people feel sick, and angry.

Call me an old-fashioned moralist, but my view is that you shouldn’t throw crap at any monument. Least of all Sir Tom’s. A British army officer who became globally famous in his 99th year of life for raising millions of pounds for the NHS – he’s hardly Edward Colston, is he?

Perhaps it should go without saying but pouring piss and poo on a public monument to a late, much-loved elderly man is not normal behaviour. So it seems to me there are two possible explanations for this wicked act. First, perhaps this protester has ‘issues’, to use modern parlance. Perhaps she’s a troubled individual. If so, let us hope she gets the help she needs.

Or perhaps this foul act is yet another expression of the misanthropy that lurks at the heart of so much modern green campaigning. Perhaps this speaks to radical greens’ lowly view of humankind in general.

There is unquestionably an arrogance and a dogmatism in a great deal of green agitation today. And it isn’t hard to see why. It’s because these people genuinely believe they are saving the planet from mankind’s monstrous and toxic impact. The more eco-activists convince themselves that the end of the world is nigh – and that only they, the enlightened ones, have the intellect and wherewithal to do something about it – the more they will believe that any kind of action is justified to achieve their urgent ends.

There’s a direct link between the End of Days mindset of modern greens and their increasingly haughty and irritating forms of protest.

Whether it’s Extinction Rebellion occupying central London for days on end, or Insulate Britain blocking motorways and preventing people from getting to work, going on holiday or visiting loved ones, eco-agitators clearly think little of disrupting daily life.

And that’s because they’ve convinced themselves that the apocalypse is just around the corner. And you can’t be doing with niceties, can you, when you have an extinction-level calamity to hold at bay?

There is a religious, cult-like feel to eco-activists’ conviction that they must do everything they can – including disrupting oil production, holding up ambulances and even throwing excrement around – to stave off the doomsday they’ve been having feverish nightmares about for yonks.

Some have said the horrible befoulment of Sir Tom’s likeness will not convince anyone of the need to take environmental action. That’s true, but it somewhat misses the point. It might have been the aim of traditional forms of political activism to persuade people, to try to bring us on board. But eco-protesting has an altogether different goal. Its object is to save us, not convince us; to hector us, not persuade us; to punish us, not help us.

As George Monbiot once said, climate-change activism is ‘a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.’

He’s right. Environmentalism is, at root, a campaign against people. That’s why it has an undeniable streak of contempt in it. Perhaps the alleged vandalism of Sir Tom’s likeness was that contempt taken to its most despicable level yet.