How Justin Trudeau caved to Putin

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was certain that its sanctions were worth the pain. But there always was a question as to whether this resolve would last once the domestic difficulties actually started. This week, western countries moved closer to admitting it might be too much to bear.

At the time of the invasion in February, a massive Russian turbine was being repaired in Montreal. It was one of many turbines used to send gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany. When the Russians moved into Ukraine, it was kept in Canada as punishment. Over the next few weeks and months Russia replied, cutting off gas supplies to the continent. Gazprom – the Russian state-owned energy giant – last month said it would only ramp up gas supplies to Europe if it got its turbine back. Germany asked the Canadians to send it to Moscow, and Trudeau has now agreed. In Kyiv, this is seen as a sign that blackmail is working.

The turbines are serviced every three to four years, with much of the work carried out in Canada by Siemens. Gazprom’s claim – that the lack of the turbines was a reason they cut off gas to Europe – was seen by energy analysts as a test of western resolve. Ukraine’s energy minister Herman Galushchenko called it ‘absolute blackmail’, and claimed that Russia could easily provide enough gas without the turbine. There are pipelines through Ukraine and Poland which can fully compensate and don’t need the turbine, but Gazprom is only releasing 36 per cent of what it can, he said. Ukrainians in Canada had been urging Trudeau not to cave, but he eventually released the turbine. Germany is delighted that he has now done so: Olaf Scholz said ‘we welcome the decisions of our Canadian friends and allies’.

In Kyiv, they’re less pleased. Zelensky last night said that bowing to blackmail means more blackmail. Ukraine’s foreign ministry said that Trudeau’s decision ‘violates international solidarity’ and that ‘it will have only one consequence: to strengthen Moscow’s sense of impunity’.

But the decision to send the turbine has been supported throughout the West. The US State Department has backed the move. The EU – Germany especially – is terrified that Putin will turn off the gas in the winter, so is building storage facilities in preparation. As energy bills continue to soar, western leaders are recognising that the damage from an economic war is two-sided.

Ukrainians fear that Putin is slowly winning his war of nerves with the West. Concessions to Russia will keep coming, although they will be decorated with platitudes about standing behind Ukraine. Winter is coming, and the West is looking weaker.

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Bleak, vapid and banal: why are the Tory leadership videos so awful?

The Tory candidates have released a set of videos presenting their claim to become Britain’s next prime minister.

Frontrunner Rishi Sunak has dubbed his pitch, ‘Ready for Rishi’, which sounds, unfortunately, like the cheapest option at a Hounslow massage parlour. His movie centres on his unstoppable rise to world domination. His mum was a penniless immigrant who passed her exams and worked at a chemist’s shop in Southampton. His Dad was a humble NHS doctor. Scratchy old Kodak photos show us the ‘Sunak Pharmacy’ in all its faded grandeur. He omits his public school days and his City whizz-kid career. And he says nothing about his mega-rich wife.

Clearly he wants us to believe that he moved straight from mum’s corner shop to the House of Commons. There we see him holding key meetings with wise decisionmakers and nodding earnestly as they build the future together.

Rishi positions himself as the sober alternative to three years of crazy-haired chaos. Safe, sensible, highly competent. He’s the super slick insurance broker offering you the best deal on the market with a crocodile grin and a clammy handshake (and, incidentally, a pair of ears the size of Hobnobs). But once he’s got your signature on the deeds, he’ll scarper with your cash and never be seen again. His spin is as brittle as cake icing. He vows to lead the country with ‘honesty, seriousness and determination’ rather than ‘by telling ourselves comforting fairy tales… that will leave our children worse off tomorrow.’ But his favourite ‘fairy tale’ is a tax and waste fiscal policy that will rack up debts for the next generation. And ‘honesty’ is a virtue alien to him. ‘Politics at its best is a unifying endeavour,’ says the backstabber whose resignation last week ended the career of the boss who gave him everything. He’s got a nerve all right. The lad could go far.

Penny Mordaunt’s jam and Jerusalem video was filmed from a helicopter which sweeps across the British landscape and shows us plunging cliffs, pearly lakes, gorgeous cricket pitches and St George’s flags fluttering over village churches. Stirring orchestral music captures the patriotic mood. If you watch it in an armchair, you’ll be standing to attention within five seconds, saluting.

A velvety male voice-over advises us to choose a new leader ‘with solemnity and wisdom’. But what does that mean exactly? Up pops Cap’n Mordaunt to declare a new type of leadership ‘that is less about the leader and a lot more about the ship.’ The vapid soundbites pile up and eventually fall back to earth in a verbal mudslide. ‘We need more than just a plan,’ says the voiceover. ‘We need teamwork to deliver it.’ Hang on. What was the plan in the first place? No one wants to join a ship that’s sailing into battle without a strategy. The good news is that Cap’n Mordaunt obviously hangs out with some very talented film producers. Make her head of tourism.

Over to Tom Tugendhat who delivers a short, bleak and utterly miserable piece to camera. No jacket or tie. Just a plain white shirt. He could be a serial killer at a parole board hearing. He drones on about his previous service in uniform (on the prison farm?) and he explains that his appetite for more ‘service’ drew him into parliament. His words are banal and forgettable. His gloomy, sallow face is off-putting and faintly creepy. He looks like a man who enforces safety standards in children’s play-centres. Not a serious pitch for power. Perhaps he did it to win a bet.

Liz Truss’s film shows her trotting around various presidential palaces in her high heels and greeting fat men in suits surrounded by flags. Does she want to be PM or is this a pitch to keep her Foreign Office brief? Worryingly, she sets out a new policy mid-video when she vows to ‘ensure Putin loses in Ukraine.’ Foreign secretary, we’re not at war with Russia. Perhaps she plans to get the ball rolling on her first day in Downing Street. After all, the verb ‘ensure’ is highly specific. As PM she could make good on her threat by vaporising Putin with our nuclear arsenal. Or, less controversially, by unleashing the British army and sweeping Russia’s forces to the gates of Moscow as the French did in 1812. Napoleon Liz has lost it. The small print of this advert is bonkers.

Finally, Sajid Javid. Rather like ‘Ready for Rishi’, the Saj is perennially impressed with his own brilliance. He came from nothing, he tells us. And he goes back to nothing to see how it looks. And it’s not great. In his home town of Bristol he stands with a dark umbrella and stares at the former family business which seems to be derelict. The camera cuts to a pile of abandoned cushions being pelted with drizzle. The subtext is clear. ‘Thank God I got out of this dump.’ But Bristol is a highly politicised city, full of students, like Brighton or Liverpool. Might not the local boy have shown himself reaching out and winning a few supporters from the opposite side?

The Saj’s real problem is his hairstyle. Which doesn’t exist. Javid is not just bald. He’s distressingly so. And we learn from history that hairless Tories rarely prosper. Ask William Hague or David Willetts. Churchill knew of this defect and augmented his look with theatrical props that suggested a life rich in character and passion. The fat cigar, the caddish Homberg, the brandy glass, the thumb suavely tucked into the waistcoat pocket. Javid looks like a mugged tourist wandering the streets asking for directions. And this dreary video seems to be a personal audition for the job of Loneliness Tsar. That would suit him perfectly. He has no friends, it appears. None at all. Only a man with no friends would film himself entering a café to meet his friends – or are they his siblings? – who are conveniently seated around a table and waiting to share an emotional cappuccino and a profoundly moving Danish pastry. We see his actual best friend – his mum – who greets him in her kitchen with a phrase that suggests they haven’t met in decades.

‘Hello my son. My son, I love you,’ she says. The press-ganged matriarch was probably hoping these words would help her ambitious boy. But they don’t. A normal mum says ‘darling’ to her son. And some mums even remember the lad’s name. If Javid’s goal is to project dullness he succeeds. But his sad, tortoise-like face peeping at the viewer in anxious entreaty is worse than dull. It’s hell. Someone should buy him a hat or give him a peerage.

Who will Priti Patel endorse?

Priti Patel is not running for the Tory leadership. The Home Secretary ruled herself out in a statement released minutes ago. Her decision not to stand makes it much more likely that Suella Braverman can get the nominations needed to get on the ballot and the 30 votes required to stay in the contest.

Patel does not say who she is going to back herself. But the speculation is that it will be either Nadhim Zahawi or Liz Truss rather than Braverman, her rival for the support of the ERG. Patel’s support would be an adrenalin shot for the Zahawi campaign which is not yet at 20 publicly declared backers. For Truss, Patel’s backing – after the support of Rees-Mogg and Dorries – would help her in her effort to portray herself as the candidate of Johnson loyalists and the right.

China’s Ponzi banks are teetering

What began as a run on a handful of provincial banks is rapidly morphing into one of China’s worst financial scandals, threatening the stability of the country’s heavily indebted financial system. It poses a serious challenge to a Communist party obsessed with social order, which has thuggishly cracked down on desperate depositors demanding their money back.

At the weekend, protesters in Henan’s capital Zhengzhou were charged, beaten and dragged away by unidentified security officials dressed in white shirts and dark trousers, who appeared to be working in concert with uniformed police. An estimated 1,000 angry depositors had gathered in front of a branch of the People’s Bank of China, carrying banners that read ‘We are against Henan government’s corruption and violence’ and ‘No deposits, no human rights’. They chanted, ‘Henan banks, give me my money back’ and one protester reportedly pasted pictures of Mao Zedong on pillars in front of the bank.

Some of the protesters suffered broken bones and eye injuries. The ugly scenes rapidly circulated on Chinese social media but were quickly deleted by CCP’s censors. The first scandal emerged in April when four provincial banks suddenly suspended online cash withdrawals, freezing the deposits of thousands of people. The local authorities claimed ‘criminal gangs’ had taken control of the banks and siphoned off the funds through illegal transfers and fictitious loans worth as much as 40 billion yuan (£5 billion).

The case attracted widespread attention in China after the local authorities in June manipulated the personal health codes of depositors to prevent them from getting to Zhengzhou to protest. Covid apps are mandatory in China, crunching vast amount of data about health, contacts and location to determine Covid risk. Those who receive a red rating are grounded and usually quarantined. They certainly can’t travel, as the depositors discovered.

At the time, the authorities were roundly condemned for undermining trust in the country’s anti-Covid strategy. The manipulation was reportedly repeated against some would-be protesters at the weekend, but this time it did not prevent others from getting to Zhengzhou.

The Henan depositors do seem to be the victims of fraud, but the headache for Xi Jinping is that they blame the government and are unlikely to be the only ones whose savings are at risk. Opaque provincial banks in particular are heavily indebted, weighed down with bad loans, and for years have colluded with powerful local businesses and the local authorities. Loans have typically been made to well-connected firms or individuals with little or no due diligence. It was a recipe for corruption. At the same time, small investors were offered ‘wealth management products’ that typically offered high-interest rates, which were necessary to attract the funds to pay off earlier investors – a classic Ponzi scheme.

Zombie banks could stagger on as long as the Chinese government continued to pump money into the economy, but the economic backdrop has now changed radically. Economic growth is stagnating and the Covid-19 pandemic and the CCP’s ceaseless lockdowns are taking their toll. Bad loans are soaring.

At the same time, after years of soaring real estate prices, China’s property bubble is bursting, with a growing number of developers unable to repay their loans. It now threatens to spill over into the local banking crisis. In 2020, lending to developers accounted for an astonishing 39 per cent of bank loans. Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission has described the property market as a ‘grey rhino’ – a very obvious but ignored threat.

Property is the main driver of China’s domestic economy, accounting for almost a third of GDP. A large proportion of local government income comes from selling land to the property developers, an income flow that is now drying up. There is concern about hidden local government debts because of the widespread use of opaque financing vehicles, often in collusion with local banks. By one estimate, outstanding local government debt is worth 44 per cent of GDP, but nobody knows for sure, since the financial system is so lacking in transparency.

The events in Henan are the tip of a potentially very large iceberg. In the short term, opaque and badly regulated regional lenders and their local government patrons are the most vulnerable, but China’s national financial system is shaky too. The party secretary in Henan, Lou Yangsheng, is an ally of Xi, which makes it more difficult for Beijing to pass it off as just local ill-discipline.

After the ugly scenes of the weekend, the local regulator promised that depositors in the Henan banks will be repaid. But the promises were vague about how this will happen and who will pay. Many in China remain were sceptical. ‘The statement gives no clear clue. They just don’t want to return our money,’ said one depositer. There was scepticism too about local government claims that the problems are all down to ‘criminal gangs’. The anger is unlikely to subside – there is very little trust in the authorities and with life savings at risk, some have little to lose.

We need a clean start

Families in the United Kingdom face a moment of crisis. It is becoming harder for people to simply get by. For so many of them, there is more month than there is pay. We face danger abroad, division in our politics, an economy saddled with debt and a creeping sense of despair about our collective future.

This is a defining moment for us. It is a defining moment for our country. It is a defining moment for our party, and it is going to test the values for which we stand. I am going to talk about economic policy today: but for me – for conservatives – leading on the economy is not only a question of policy. It is a question of values – it is a question of mission – a question of our task and purpose.

We have been charged with the mission of advancing the interests of the British economy and the British people. They have asked us to hold ground for them: to secure the possibility of prosperity for each and every one of them. They have asked us to not only hold the line, but to advance their aspirations: to move them and their children more confidently into the future. To hear them and to respond to them. And, most importantly, to serve them, advancing all of us towards a future with a stronger, fairer, and more resilient economy.

They have asked us to advance; and, yet we have retreated.  In a moment that is so desperate for so many—and when our service is most needed—we have retreated. We have retreated into the pettiness of a politics that is more about personality than principle. We have retreated into division when we desperately need unity. When our nation needed our party to function, we retreated into faction.  When the moment demanded service, we delivered scandal. This is a crisis of purpose, of leadership, and of trust.

We have been divided and distracted when we need to be united, responsive, and committed to the future of our people. I am sorry, but I cannot accept retreat. We should not accept retreat. We must return to service. We need leadership with a renewed sense of mission. Leadership that sees beyond divisive politics and delivers results. Leadership that will return government to the service of our economy, our people, and our country.

We need a clean start. For me, that is more than a slogan or a catchphrase.  It is a mission statement. It describes our path forward together. It summarises our advance orders for next decade – it allows us to move forward together afresh, optimistic, enthusiastic, confident, post-Brexit and ready to seize the moment anew.

That is why I am introducing my ten year plan for growth. It will return our government to the service of the British people and the British economy. It will make our economy stronger, our society fairer, and make our country more resilient.  And it will do it by returning to the core values that unite us as conservatives.

I believe in liberty and the low taxes necessary to defend it. I believe in responsibility and the honesty essential to delivering it.  And I believe that with a clean start—and with a return to service—we can ensure the prosperity of homes and families in every part of the country. Stronger, fairer and more resilient. I believe that a clean start that returns us to the service of the people will produce a brighter future.

Our economy should be advancing, not retreating. Yet millions of people are opening bills with dread – not knowing what they’ll have to cut, to pay for what they need. They’re filling up their car wondering what it will cost to get to work the next day or next month. Every day, families are seeing their savings being steadily eroded and wondering will this be over by Christmas?

This just isn’t sustainable. It’s not fair. It’s not right. We must act. Like all conservatives, I want people to keep more of their own money. I believe we should cut the cost of government wherever we can. This isn’t an auction. I’m not here to bid for the highest or the lowest on every tax policy. I am here to make the case that our economy can only prosper if we believe that people—and not Westminster—know best how to spend their money.

I know the pain families are feeling now. That is why my first pledge is to take fuel duty down by 10p a litre. My second is to reverse the national insurance rise. This isn’t about percentages. It’s about jobs. That’s why I didn’t vote for the increase then, and I wouldn’t now. It about jobs and workers. But that’s not enough. We need to go further.

I want to ensure that we cut the right taxes to get the right results. Our investment incentives are amongst the worst in the OECD. That means it’s less attractive to invest in the UK than anywhere else. That fewer businesses buy machinery, train their staff and plan for the long term. Economists talk about ‘productivity’ – and Britain’s lack of it. What that really means is we don’t create enough; we don’t create fast enough; and we don’t sell well enough. That means every hour British workers are losing out.We can fix it.

Businesses can invest more in technology and training, to drive up real pay, not inflation. But they can only do it if we change the incentives. That means making it cheaper for companies to invest in their future. That’s why I am committing to ensuring businesses have the certainty they need to invest, by introducing a programme of permanent full expensing, giving firms the confidence they need to plan for future growth. The United Kingdom under my leadership will have the most investment friendly tax system in the OECD within five years.

But let me be clear – tax cuts cannot be the only round in the magazine My 10 year strategy for growth goes beyond taxes. What we need is deregulation to allow companies to thrive. Not because all regulation is bad–a market needs rules and a way to enforce them. But technology moves fast and often outpaces the regulators, and so even well-intended rules can become stifling

We need regulations that serve the best interests of our people and our economy and those written for a different time and a different order need particular attention. I want to seize one of the biggest economic benefits of Brexit that we haven’t yet grasped. I am talking about the EU’s Solvency II regulations, EU rules that forced British insurers to sit on dead money that they are not allowed to invest. I will urgently reform these rules, to bring these savings to life.

Employing people, starting businesses, building homes and giving families a chance. To be clear: that will mean that around £100 billion of British savers’ money can be put to work regenerating our communities and building homes. That is dead money breathing new life into our communities

The truth is that the last Government hasn’t moved far enough or fast enough. We need a clean start to bring new energy and determination, and on this we need to escape the EU’s regulatory orbit. Now Brexit has given Britain the chance to do better: I will deliver. That’s how we will harness this country’s full potential 

Because talent isn’t exclusive to Telford. Brainpower is not greater in Brighton… and I can tell you from the green benches… that the IQ isn’t higher in Islington than in Inverness. What that means is that an economy which neglects places, doesn’t just neglect people. It neglects an opportunity for prosperity for us all.

The Northern Research Group talk about spanning the divide, and about ensuring that opportunity is spread across the country I entirely agree. That is why I will equalise funding across all our regions – making sure that spending on innovation, infrastructure and transport is spread fairly, so that growth can follow. A clean start requires serving all of Britain

My friend Jake Berry speaks about wanting a Vocational Oxbridge in the North. I want one in every region. That is why I will commit to creating new Institutes of Technology across every major town and city of the UK, so that every child has the chance for a world class technical education. Levelling up isn’t about an us vs. them, a North vs. South, or an East vs. West. It’s about harnessing the energy of the entire country to build a better future for everyone. I have talked about how to make our economy stronger.

I now want to turn to how to a clean start can serve the goal of a fairer economy. To a family in Newport, GDP isn’t what they’re worried about – it’s GPs. When a family gets ill, when we need help, when we need support. We all turn to our public services. We know how important they are. But we also know they are struggling. And that means we are too. Too many of us are struggling to access the services we need, to see the doctors we want, struggling to feel safe and secure in our homes. Take the NHS. 

We’re putting record investment in without seeing the outcomes we need I know that even the most dedicated teams need targets. Take a simple measure – the four hour A&E pledge was last met in 2015 People deserve better. We expect better I will deliver better. As a first and immediate step I would reintroduce a binding A&E and referrals target and hold NHS leaders accountable for it.

But we won’t just focus on the symptoms. On my first day as Prime Minister I will bring together experts from the NHS, the wider public sector, the military, the private sector and the voluntary sector to bust through the NHS Backlog. Copying the success of the vaccine taskforce that delivered the first vaccine in the UK before anywhere else. Focus matters. Delivery matters. Competence matters.

Finally, we need the kind of clean start that will make our economy and society more resilient. From Covid to the energy crisis, we have learnt that even if we get everything right, our country and our economy is exposed to threats at home and abroad. A responsible government is one that plans ahead – that thinks about the future, not just the present. One that takes steps to ensure that we are not vulnerable, and that those who try to harm us, fail I have warned about this many times before – about the vulnerability we face in our supply chains, and our energy.

We all remember the desperate times as we rushed to secure protective equipment on far away runways and still found ourselves short … and we all feel the pain of higher oil and gas prices now. That is why I will introduce an energy resilience plan to ensure that the UK has dependable power produced at home or sourced from trusted allies That’s the only way we can truly protect our sovereignty. It’s the only way we can keep household bills low.  It’s the only way we can keep our businesses competitive.

That means more clean energy. It means more nuclear energy and the capture and storage capability to help reduce carbon. It means creating a strategy to ensure that we aren’t dependent on China to process our critical minerals, or on hostile states for our gas and it means working with our Allies to ensure that where we do import energy we do not compromise our values, or our alliances. That is the only way that we can tackle the weaponization of our energy markets by hostile states. Let me say now – if we do not grasp this issue – we are giving ground to our enemies, who will ruthlessly exploit it

Ladies and gentlemen, this great country of ours is at a crossroads. We are faced with some daunting challenges at home and abroad. We need serious leadership. We need to tackle the cost of living crisis. We need a ten year plan for growth. We need bold leadership to deliver a return to service I am ready to serve.

I am ready to lead. We need a clean start. Thank you

Is Rishi’s tax cut pledge enough to rally MPs?

Rishi Sunak has a reputation for sleek and snazzy presentation, and his leadership launch this morning was no exception – by Westminster standards, anyway. The air-conditioning was on full blast as young activists lined up with their ‘Ready For Rishi!’ signs, next to heavily branded backdrops. And the guest list was long. MPs in attendance included many who had already declared for Sunak: Bim Afolami, Claire Coutinho, Helen Whately, and Liam Fox.

There were also surprise guests, including the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who introduced Sunak and credited him for delivering ‘the biggest tax cut for working people in a decade’ by lifting the National Insurance threshold for millions. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps also turned up (until five minutes before Sunak’s launch, he had been running a leadership bid of his own). Perhaps the most eye-catching guest, however, was Gavin Williamson, Boris Johnson’s former Education Secretary who played a pivotal role in securing ‘Team Boris’ MP votes in the 2019 leadership contest. He lay low at the back of the room.

Like Sajid Javid yesterday, Sunak committed to a ‘positive campaign’, as mud-slinging and ugly briefings have ramped up in recent days, reminding his audience that ‘we are still part of the same Conservative family’. As James Forsyth notes, it’s a growing worry within the party that attacks are getting too personal and too dirty, handing Labour gift after gift for when the next general election comes. In the spirit of getting along, Sunak also had some glowing words for the Prime Minister, insisting Johnson is ‘one of the most remarkable people’ he has ever met, pledging that he would take ‘no part in a rewriting of history that seeks to demonise Boris, exaggerate his faults or deny his efforts’.

Sunak’s praise for Johnson’s ‘good heart’ comes at an interesting time, as the Prime Minister’s most loyal cabinet members – including Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg – threw their support behind Liz Truss last night, increasing speculation over who the Prime Minister is quietly hoping will replace him. But the comments suggest Sunak is already thinking past the parliamentary race and onto his pitch to the grassroots. Hustings between the final two candidates will present a lot of frustrated Tory voters who still feel loyal to the Prime Minister. This will require a balancing act. Presenting as too anti-Boris could harm a leadership hopeful in the next stage of the race.

On tax and spend, Sunak did not shy away from accusations that he won’t cut taxes straight away. ‘We need to have a grown-up conversation about where we are, how we got here and what we intend to do about it,’ he said to kick off his speech, repeating the phrase ‘grown-up conversation’ two more times during his ten-minute remarks. Rather than matching other contestants tax cut for tax cut, he doubled down on his commitment to ‘traditional conservative economic values’ and dismissed anything else as ‘fairy tales.’ ‘It is not credible to promise lots more spending and lower taxes,’ he insisted, narrowing in on the main debate that has dominated the leadership race so far.

While Sunak remained vague on his timeline for tax cuts, but he did commit to delivering tax cuts and explained his order of priorities: ‘Once we’ve gripped inflation, I will get the tax burden down. It is a question of when, not if.’ So the timeline goes: ‘tackle inflation, grow the economy and cut taxes.’

Will this be enough for MPs, who are eager to see the tax burden go down, to get behind Sunak? His promise to eventually cut taxes might convince some of them, though both MPs and voters are going to want some specifics soon. But if curbing inflation is a necessary requirement for Sunak to slash tax, there will be no guaranteed date for delivery. Persuading the party that this is the most responsible approach – and ultimately the best approach to secure long-term tax cuts – remains Sunak’s biggest battle.

How far will Tugendhat go?

There were three leadership launches in Westminster this morning. Rishi Sunak, the frontrunner, spoke at the QEII Centre; Kemi Badenoch, the rising star, pitched to Policy Exchange. But what of Tom Tugendhat, the longtime backbencher, kicking off his campaign at the BBC’s Westminster studios? How best to describe his place in the Tory leadership race?

The former army officer’s appearance this morning epitomised his strengths and weaknesses within a crowded field. His speech was prepared and heavy on policy: his pitch stressed integrity and the need to win public trust. Having won the backing of Jake Berry, the Northern Research Group chairman, Tugendhat detailed his support for the ‘levelling up’ agenda: a sensible move, given how few leadership candidates have emphasised this to an electorate full of northern Tories uncertain about who to back. Berry seemed impressed, nodding along as his candidate talked about new technical institutions and addressing regional inequality.

Much of what Tugendhat said will be welcomed by Conservatives both in parliament and outside it. He said that the UK must not ‘retreat’ economically and politically as he promised tax cuts to help ease the cost-of-living crisis and a ‘clean start’ following the scandal-hit Boris Johnson years. He said that the British people wanted a government to ‘not only hold the line but to advance their aspirations’ and backed a ten-year strategy for economic growth under which the UK would have ‘the most investment friendly tax system in the OECD within five years.’

Tugendhat only took three questions but handled them competently enough, deploying humour to deflect one about his differences to Boris Johnson. What then of his weaknesses? Much like Nadhim Zahawi’s shaky start, there are concerns about how well Tugendhat will cope under sustained pressure. His tactic of deliberate, slow answers to queries will be unlikely to hold under a barrage of questioning from a hostile interrogator – especially as the contest goes on and internal party opposition becomes more fierce.

There are concerns too as to how comfortable Tugendhat – who backed Remain – is comfortable with the Rwanda deal and potentially breaching international law by ripping up the Northern Ireland Protocol. He has already endorsed the former and called for a ‘clean slate’ with regards to the latter. The Tonbridge backbencher is clearly happy to talk about broad-brush economic policy and has a sound grasp of foreign affairs. But as the campaign goes on, it remains to be seen how effectively he will perform when challenged about more contentious issues.

The MPs who support him are among the most evenly divided, with a similar number of MPs who backed Remain as those who backed Leave. That’s a strength but also a potential weakness too, as Tugendhat seeks to win more of the party right without losing his more moderate supporters. The former army officer will also need a spark of magic if he’s to change the dynamics of the contest: on today’s evidence that was in short supply.

The big question over Kemi Badenoch’s bid

Kemi Badenoch has just completed her leadership launch. Although she is an outside bet, her campaign has been building momentum after Michael Gove endorsed her and she came a narrow second in a ConHome poll on who should be the next Tory leader. The launch saw her try to put the flesh on the bones of her pitch to MPs – which so far has been dominated by identity politics. In a flick to her position on culture wars, the toilets at the venue had paper signs put on them so they weren’t gender neutral.

In her speech, Badenoch was all too happy to put clear blue water between herself and Boris Johnson, saying politicians ought to be honest that people can’t have their cake and eat it. She also said tax ought not be the defining debate in the contest, it should be the candidate’s judgment:

‘Governing involves trade-offs, and we need to start being honest about that. Unlike others, I am not going to promise you things without a plan to deliver them. People are sick of that. They’re crying out for honesty.’

In the Q&A that followed, Badenoch was asked what immediate support she would offer on the cost of living. She said that she thought short-term handouts were a bad idea.

I asked what Badenoch’s response was to critics who say she is just too inexperienced and it would be irresponsible for her to enter 10 Downing Street.

She replied that no one had put her in cabinet but she had been there and willing – and this meant she hadn’t been tainted by bad decisions. She said that her work as a junior minister and the fact that she has balanced different briefs shows she can be PM. But this still remains the biggest question mark over her bid.

Kemi Badenoch’s toilet stunt

War and famine in Ukraine and inflation and rising bills at home. These are tough times in Britain and abroad: the winning candidate for the Tory leadership will have to be able to really deal with the big issues. But, er, not every MP in the running is keen to focus on such themes. Kemi Badenoch, the surprise star in this contest, has taken a rather different approach, preferring instead to dive head-first into the culture war.

And so it was in that spirit that the Badenoch campaign sought to make something of a stunt out of the facilities at their official launch this morning. Camilla Turner, the Telegraph journalist, spotted that makeshift signs have been added to toilet doors to say ‘Men’ and ‘Ladies’.

Could it be an apparent dig at one particular candidate? Step forward Penny Mordaunt, who previously told the House of Commons from the despatch box last year that ‘trans men are men and trans women are women.’ Since then Mordaunt has tried to row back from her previous statement but given the heated debate at present over single-sex facilities, it would hardly be a surprise if rival candidates tried to make political capital out of it.

Will Badenoch’s toilets leave a Penny spent?

Does Suella Braverman understand welfare?

Suella Braverman’s welfare tirade exemplifies the current Tory pandering to baby boomer myths about social spending and moral decay. Interviewed by ITV News on Monday, the leadership candidate said:

I think we spend too much on welfare. There are too many people in this country who are of working age, who are of good health, and who are choosing to rely on benefits, on taxpayers’ money, on your money, my money, to get by. I don’t think there’s enough rigour. Universal Credit’s been a brilliant thing in stamping out the culture of dependency but there’s further we can go, there’s more we can do.

Since I’m about to be very critical, let’s begin in a spirit of charity. There are roughly 3.5 million people on out-of-work benefits during a labour shortage, or 5.3 million if incapacity-related benefit is included. Are there people ‘choosing to rely on benefits’ instead of working? Yes. One way we know this is because there is a problem of benefit fraud. Braverman doesn’t mention fraud and her word choice (‘culture of dependency’) suggests she is talking instead about a lack of willingness to work but let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Fraud overpayments, which in 2019/20 stood at 1.4 per cent (£2.8 billion) of overall welfare expenditure, doubled to 2.9 per cent in the first year of the pandemic and held steady at three per cent (£6.5 billion) last year. So, benefit fraud is a contextually small but real problem.

Beyond that, Braverman’s thesis is hopelessly wrong. ‘We spend too much on welfare.’ The UK dedicates roughly one-fifth of its GDP to social spending. That places us 17th – roughly in the middle – of OECD countries. However, ‘social spending’ covers all social protection expenditure, not just working-age benefits, which is what people tend to think of when they talk about welfare. The single largest item in social protection outlay is the state pension.

In 2019/20, the government spent £1,598 per head in England on the state pension. In the same year, it spent just £17 per head on unemployment benefits. (Incapacity, disability and injury benefits in total came in at £644 per capita.) In fact, the UK spends more every year on the state pension (£113 billion) than it does on education (£96 billion) and more than it does on defence (£45 billion), law and order (£39 billion), housing (£14 billion) and environmental protection (£13 billion) combined.

Pensioners, not those on incapacity or unemployment benefits, are the primary beneficiaries of welfare spending. They are the sole and exclusive beneficiaries of 10 per cent of total managed expenditure across government. They are, you might say, choosing to rely on benefits, on taxpayers’ money, on your money, on Suella Braverman’s money, to get by.

Baby boomers don’t think of their state pensions as benefits. Benefits are something lazy, feckless, workshy people receive and they are none of those things. They worked hard all their lives, remember. They deserve their pensions. Unlike benefit claimants, who are undeserving. Why undeserving? Because they claim benefits, of course.

This is the same circular boomer logic that sees people who voted to cut their parents’ pensions demand that their own be triple-locked. The same mindset in which avocado toast is the reason millennials are doomed to a life of renting, not the fact that boomers bought their houses on the cheap then used their votes and their planning objections to make home ownership prohibitively expensive for their children. (When you factor in foisting Joni Mitchell, tie-dye and post-structuralism on the world, these people have a lot to answer for.)

I appreciate it’s a Tory leadership election and Braverman knows her electorate. I appreciate, too, that there are no rewards in politics for telling unpopular truths. But boomer mythology is socially destructive and so is the political cowardice that confirms boomers in their self-interest rather than asking the most pampered generation in all Creation to put something back into the society they have taken so much from.

That way, no one would have to pretend that we spend too much on working-age welfare. We could admit that, at just 21 per cent of previous in-work income, UK unemployment benefits are the lowest in the entire OECD. That our system is the fourth-strictest in the OECD. That over-65s experience the same poverty rate as working-age adults without children (18 per cent) while almost a third of children in Britain live in poverty. We could start to talk about how we make this a fair country for everyone, not just the most powerful voting bloc.

Speaking of voting, I’ll close with a few purely electoral points. First, voter attitudes on welfare have been softening since before the pandemic. Britons are twice as likely to reject the suggestion that benefit claimants don’t deserve help as they are to agree with it. The same is true of the assertion that welfare recipients are ‘fiddling’ the system. The Tories are addressing a changing country with talking points a decade out of date.

Second, and of more immediate concern: this leadership contest is a rare opportunity for the Tories to get media coverage by talking about policy. Even if you want to put clear blue water between yourself and the bloke on his way out the door, there are smart and not-so-smart ways to do it. Making yet another welfare crackdown a centrepiece of your campaign falls under the category of not-so-smart. It may go down well with an electorate of Tory MPs but the voters get to hear you, too. The government of which you are a member has presided over a 35 per cent drop in the out-of-work benefit claimant count in the space of a year and boasts an unemployment rate to rival Ted Heath’s. Why would you go on TV and say benefit claims are spiralling out of control and not enough people are in jobs?

Suella Boomerman might appeal to certain Tory demographics but she has neither the insight nor the savvy of a prime minister.

Watch: Beth Rigby heckled at Sunak’s launch event

Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak tried to strike a conciliatory tone at his campaign launch this morning, in which he praised his former boss Boris Johnson as a ‘remarkable’ man with a ‘good heart’. It appears though that Sunak’s defenestration of the PM might be a sore point for his campaign.

At the launch, Sunak was grilled by Sky’s Beth Rigby, who suggested he was a divisive figure, saying:

‘You have a police fine over partygate and there have been questions too over your very wealthy family avoiding paying millions of pounds in tax due to your wife being a non-dom taxpayer…’

Mr S isn’t sure that Rigby is best placed to suggest that those who break the Covid rules should have no place in public life. But it was her suggestion that Sunak was an ‘utterly corrosive figure’ that seemed to hit home, with the crowd heckling and booing the Sky News presenter in response as she finished her spiel.

Watch the moment it happened here:

Cutting taxes isn’t irresponsible

Everyone is supposed to have their 15 minutes of fame. Perhaps I have just had mine, after the contenders for the Tory leadership were invited to endorse the ‘charter for tax cuts’ that I co-wrote for Conservative Way Forward. It was certainly pretty cool to be namechecked at the launch event on Monday both by the new Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, and by a strong candidate to be the next prime minister, Suella Braverman.

The thinking behind the charter was simple. I wanted to summarise the case for tax cuts and respond to some of the arguments against; including that we cannot afford them, or that they would be inflationary. The timing, as it turned out, could not have been better. The changes at the top of the Tory party are a golden opportunity to rethink economic policy. The government should do much more to lower the tax burden as part of a pro-growth strategy, including proper supply-side reforms and a return to sound money.

Other countries are facing similar economic challenges, but the UK is one of the few to be actively tightening fiscal policy in the midst of a global crisis. This is contributing to a significant increase in the burden of tax, which will soon be the heaviest since the 1940s. Rishi Sunak recognised the need to slow the pace of consolidation and to provide more help to households. Nonetheless, the overall fiscal stance will continue to be contractionary on current plans. The tax system is also becoming more complicated, especially for businesses.

The arguments in favour of cutting taxes are therefore straightforward. It is right in principle: people should be free to decide how to spend more of their own money. Higher inflation also means many people are now paying far more in tax than they – or the Treasury – had expected. Cutting tax is also right in practice, especially now, when the UK needs to boost growth and households need more help to deal with the cost of living. But this is not just about supporting demand. Tax cuts can also help the supply side of the economy by making work pay, and encouraging enterprise and investment.

There is still a danger that some people see tax cuts as the solution to any economic or social problem, in the same way as others might always want more public spending. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is right to warn that tough decisions will have to be made. A fiscal watchdog that does not bark would not be much use at all.

Nonetheless, there is nothing fiscally responsible about tax increases if they tip the economy into recession, saddling future generations with a weaker economy and even higher bills. In the meantime, there is still plenty of room for a little more borrowing against any sensible fiscal rules. According to the OBR’s baseline scenario, the UK’s public debt-to-GDP ratio is actually projected to fall from around 96 per cent now to less than 70 per cent in the 2030s, before rising again. There is no magic number here, but anything less than 100 per cent is fine.

Concerns about the debt interest bill are also exaggerated. The impact of higher inflation on the cost of index-linked gilts will be spread over many years, and the real interest rates on these bonds are still firmly negative. It is not clear either that tax cuts would add much, if anything, to inflation. For a start, the overall level of inflation depends mainly on monetary policy, not fiscal policy. The amount of money the Bank of England prints is the central determinating factor. 

What’s more, tax cuts could actually reduce inflation, both directly (such as cuts in VAT or fuel duty) and indirectly (income tax cuts might increase the incentive to work, easing labour shortages and taking some of the pressure off wages).

Even if the overall impact on inflation is unfavourable, it is therefore likely to be small. To provide some perspective here, initial Bank of England analysis suggests that the recent cost of living support package (costing well over £15 billion) might raise CPI inflation by (just) 0.1 percentage point. It would not necessarily be a bad thing either if we did end up with looser fiscal policy and tighter monetary policy. Most economists agree that the UK has got this mix wrong. A shift in the balance here should support sterling too, which would also help with inflation.

Worries about the impact on inflation have also not prevented Rishi Sunak from cutting some taxes already, notably the large increase in the National Insurance threshold. These concerns are evidently not insurmountable. Which tax cuts to prioritise largely depends on exactly what you are trying to achieve, whether it is a quick boost to demand, more support to lower-income households or the squeezed middle, or improvements in the supply-side performance of the economy.

Everyone will have their favourites here. My own would be to cancel the planned increases in corporation tax, lower income tax by unfreezing the thresholds and bringing forward the cut in the basic rate and do a bit more now on the cost of energy (including cutting VAT on fuel). But regardless of exactly how it is done, the government needs to do more to reduce the tax burden again – and the sooner the better.

Why I should become prime minister

This is an edited transcript of Kemi Badenoch’s speech announcing her candidacy for the Conservative party leadership.

It’s time to tell the truth. For too long, politicians have been telling us that we can have it all: have your cake and eat it. And I’m here to tell you that is not true. It never has been. There are always tough choices in life and in politics. No free lunches, no tax cuts without limits on government spending, and a stronger defence without a slimmer state. Governing involves trade-offs, and we need to start being honest about that. 

Unlike others, I’m not going to promise you things without a plan to deliver them. People are sick of that. They’re crying out for honesty. Today, I want to be honest about our economic challenge. The scale of the challenge we face means we can’t run away from the truth. Inflation has made the cost-of-living crisis acute, but the problems go back way further. We’ve had a poor decade for living standards. We have overburdened our economy. There’s too much unproductive public spending, consuming taxpayers’ hard-earned money. And there are too many well-meaning regulations slowing growth and clogging up the arteries of the economy. Too many policies like net-zero targets set up with no thought to the effects on industries in the poorer parts of this country. And the consequence is simply to displace the emissions of other countries. Unilateral economic disarmament. That is why we need change.

And that is why I’m running to be leader. The Prime Minister should tell the truth, because the truth will set us free. The problems run deep. And I’m in no doubts about the scale of the challenge any new prime minister will have to deal with. The underlying economic problems we face have been exacerbated by Covid and by war. But what makes the situation worse is that the answers to our problems, conservative answers, haven’t been articulated or delivered in a way appropriate to the modern age. We have been in the grip of an underlying economic, social, cultural and intellectual malaise. The right has lost its confidence and courage and ability to defend the free market as the fairest way of helping people prosper. It has been undermined by a willingness to embrace protectionism for special interests. It’s been undermined by retreating in the face of the Ben and Jerry’s tendency, those who say a business’s main priority is social justice, not productivity and profits, and it’s been undermined by the actions of crony capitalists, who collude with big bureaucracy to rig the system in favour of incumbents against entrepreneurs. The truth that limited government – doing less for better – is the best way to restore faith in government has been forgotten, as we’ve piled into pressure groups and caved in to every campaigner with a moving message. And that has made the government agenda into a shopping list of disconnected, unworkable and unsustainable policies. 

The knowledge that the nation state – our democratic nation state – is the best way for people to live in harmony and enjoy prosperity has been overridden by the noisy demands of those who want to delegitimise, decolonise and denigrate. And if we don’t stand up for our shared institutions – for free speech, due process and the rule of law – then we end up with a zero-sum game of identity politics, which only increases divisions when we need to come together. 

So free markets, limited government, a strong nation state. Those are the conservative principles we need to beat back protectionism, populism and polarisation, and to prepare us for the challenges ahead. To win for our country. If I were Prime Minister, I would be driven by these conservative principles to deliver a fairer, freer, wealthier, and united Britain. It’s those conservative principles, and the belief in facts, however uncomfortable, with unflinching honesty, that will guide my approach to government and how he puts things right. 

So how are we going to do this? I’m an engineer, a systems thinker, a problem solver. In engineering you can’t overcome resistance with rhetoric. You can’t get the machine to work with promises. You need to analyse the issue deeply, untangle the mess others have made, and methodically put things right. In the debate we’ve been having about the future of our party and our country, there have been lots of promises to cut taxes, and I can understand why. With economic growth faltering and the highest tax burden in decades, it is right that we ask: how do you reduce taxes on businesses, families and individuals? And I am committed to reducing corporate and personal taxes. But I will not enter into a tax-bidding war over ‘my tax cuts are bigger than yours’. To make you make promises that you cannot keep is a betrayal of everything that I stand for. 

I really want to stress that the dividing line in this race is not tax cuts. It’s judgment. You can only deliver lower taxes if you stop pretending that the state continues to do everything for your country. It’s not just a matter of doing the same with less. We need to focus on the essential. We need to be straight with people. The idea we can simply say ‘efficiency savings’, click our heels twenty times and they’ll materialise is for the birds. It’s the scale and structure of government that drives the inefficiencies. 

My government will discard the priorities of Twitter and focus on the people’s priorities. When we can’t deliver passports and driving licenses on time, why are we spending millions on people whose jobs literally didn’t exist a decade ago, like staff wellbeing mentors? What about the wellbeing of the actual public, who can’t go on holiday because we can’t process a piece of paper in time? We are spending more than you have ever done, and yet people’s satisfaction with the quality of their day-to-day services is falling. This is not sustainable. We can’t carry on subsidising so many young people onto university courses which leave them in debts and diminished job prospects. We must require schools to concentrate on effective whole class teaching of rigorous subjects rather than allocating tight resources to superfluous support staff and peripheral activities. We should get the police to focus on neighbourhood crime and not waste time and resources worrying about hurt feelings online. 

By reducing what government tries to do, we not only reduce the cost of government, we not only focus and focus government on the people’s priorities, we allow the space for individuals, employers and entrepreneurs to solve problems. And only then do we create the opportunity to cut taxes. Yes, you can reduce the amount we spend on international aid while still remaining a force for good in the world. We can ensure an efficient civil service, but let’s be clear: simply getting rid of diversity and equality officers is not going to move the dial. It’s not good enough to just promise a bonfire of the quangos. Every single quango leader is accountable and sackable by a democratic minister. We can create proper accountability around £100 billion in grants which government currently dispenses. Every household in the country, especially during the course of the current cost-of-living crisis, thinks about value for money with every pound of the earned wages that they spend. Government doesn’t do that when it comes to people’s taxes. While the priority of the £300 billion the government spends on procurement should be value for money, in truth, this is being undermined by tick box exercises in sustainability, diversity, and equality. These are all good things, but they need to be done properly and we mustn’t move away from the core mission. 

Now I recognise that this is an ambitious agenda. And running to be Prime Minister when you’re a 42-year-old is by definition ambitious, but I am ambitious: for our country and for our party. I chose to become a Conservative MP to serve, and I chose this country because I can be who I am and I could be everything that I wanted to be. I grew up in Nigeria, and I saw first hand what happens when politicians are in it for themselves, when they use public money as their private piggy bank, when they promise the earth and pollute not just the air, but the whole political atmosphere with their failure to serve others. I saw what socialism means for millions: poverty and broken dreams. I came to Britain, determined to make my way in a country where hard work and honest endeavour can take you anywhere. I paid my way through college, working in McDonald’s, flipping burgers, cleaning loos, and I learned first hand that only your own money, rather than relying on others, gives you not just more freedom, but more dignity. I am so grateful to so many people who took a chance on me and helped me succeed. But I also remember that throughout my life there have been people who said, ‘You can’t. You shouldn’t. This is not for you.’ And in politics, many people said, ‘You’re in the wrong party. You’re saying the wrong things. You can’t do that.’ 

But I’m not the sort of person who you can sideline, silence, or cancel. I tell the truth. I fight for change. I stand up for people, and I stand up for the causes and the country I love. Some might say this is no time for novices. I think this is no time for steady as it goes, sinking into decline. It’s time for change. To win the next election and deliver conservative solutions to the challenges of today, the Conservative party must stand as the party of change. I have the conviction, the courage, and the clarity of thought to deliver that change for the people of this country. Thank you.

Cakeism is Boris Johnson’s true legacy

The smirk on the faces of politicians and journalists when they talk about ‘cakeism’ shows how Boris Johnson degraded public life, and will carry on degrading it long after his overdue departure from Downing Street. The Munchkin civil war we call the Conservative leadership contest shows that ‘cakeism’ is the one part of Johnson’s legacy that will survive him. 

‘My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it,’ he said in 2016. Instead of laughing at Johnson and saying his desire to have it all ways was one of many reasons to ignore him, they laughed with him as if he were Billy Bunter at the tuck shop. And they’re still going along with it now.

To pick the most egregious of dozens of examples from the leadership contest, Sajid Javid, who was Secretary of State for Health until five minutes ago, promised to scrap the National Insurance rise he voted for only last year (along with nearly all the other leadership candidates, incidentally). You might say that it is outrageous that employers and workers are taxed when one in four pensioners is now a millionaire and capable of bearing larger burdens. But as Javid knows better than anyone else the tax rise is not currently being spent on social care, despite what Johnson promised. It provides emergency funding for an NHS that has a waiting list of 6.5 million, 100,000 vacancies and a tough winter ahead.

How does he propose to fund the tax cut? There is £32 billion of headroom in the public finances, Javid says. But inflation is eating that up and we have huge debts. Like every politician in a corner, he continues with airy mutterings about the deus ex machina of ‘efficiency savings’ doing the job. He then calls for public sector job cuts, when staff shortages are already hobbling the NHS and much of the rest of the public sector. Nor does Javid stop with National Insurance. The Financial Times puts the total cost of all his proposed tax cuts at £49.4 billion. How will that work?

He doesn’t seem to know or care. Worse, Conservative MPs and members do not want to know or care either. They want to be pro-tax cuts and pro-having a working NHS too.

It feels harsh to pick on Javid when every one of Rishi Sunak’s rivals is pounding him for saying that the party should not believe in ‘comforting fairy tales that might make us feel better in the moment, but will leave our children worse off tomorrow’. 

I confess to sitting up with a jolt when I heard that too. For God’s sake Rishi, I thought, if you want to win, don’t trample on their dreams. Don’t tell the Conservative party, of all parties, that Father Christmas isn’t real and the Magic Money Tree doesn’t exist. Sunak has to pay for the pandemic, whose cost his colleagues have already forgotten. When Johnson wanted to add increased health and social care spending he behaved as a true fiscal conservative would and insisted on tax rises rather than deficit spending to pay for it. Such is the delirium gripping his party, Sunak’s traditionalist insistence on sound public finances led Jacob Rees-Mogg to call him a ‘socialist’.

Javid, like Truss, Zahawi, and all the others whose names no one can remember, are now in a race to cut, whatever the consequences. After ratting, re-ratting and ratting again, Nadhim Zahawi says he wants 20 per cent cuts in every government department. Kwasi Kwarteng, a supporter of Liz Truss, said tax cuts would require reductions in public spending, but was unable to say what the consequences for the public would be.

Far from dying with the prime minister, Cakesim is running like a virus through the post-Johnson Tory party.

What is missing from the debate is not just hard choices but any connection to reality. Inflation is about to hit 11 per cent. There could be fuel shortages this winter. Even if there are not, there will be hunger and cold. Not one of the candidates has led on addressing a cost-of-living crisis that will hit them as soon as they enter Downing Street. Tax cuts would give people more money (but not those who need help most). But so would wage rises. Why is the Conservative party in favour of the former and not the latter?

The candidates have barely spoken about Ukraine. I assume that they would continue supporting Kyiv, but would like to hear them say so. Even if they do, how will they strengthen and reequip our armed forces? What measures will they take to protect fuel supplies in the winter? And how can they provide additional help to the poorest?

As for the standards in public life Johnson and his gang so comprehensively trashed. I have yet to hear a single proposal to restore them.

Compare the candidates’ fantasies with the justifiably self- confident speech Sir Keir Starmer gave this morning, in which he talked about embracing the technologies of the future. Nowhere in the Conservative leadership campaign has there been discussion about how to help pharmaceuticals, financial services, the university sector, the creative arts – the businesses and institutions where Britain retains a competitive advantage. They cannot be mentioned because this government’s hard Brexit hurt them all, and the EU is a Tory taboo. No senior Conservative can propose easing the economy’s troubles by advancing better relations with the EU without destroying their career.

Cakeism, older readers will recall, began when Johnson claimed we could have the benefits of the European single market, while leaving the European single market. We should have realised it is a lie by now. Indeed we should have known it at the time.

Instead, the British public can only gaze on the Conservative party in wonder. There comes a point in every government’s life when it can no longer handle the challenges of the world as it is. If readers doubt that the Conservatives have reached and gone way past that point, I would urge them to look at its leadership contest.

My plan to give Britain a better future

Rishi Sunak launched his Tory leadership bid today. Here’s the full text of his speech:

We need to have a grown up conversation about where we are, how we got here and what we intend to do about it. It is a conversation for those of us gathered here in this room today and the Conservative party more widely.

But, above all, it’s a conversation we need to have with the British people. And it starts with being honest with each other. That matters because the decisions we make in the coming days and weeks will set a course that will determine whether the next generation of British people inherent a stronger and more confident nation.

The Conservative party was elected with a large majority so it falls to us to decide who carries the flag forward in this parliament. But it is not a decision that should be made behind closed doors with no input from the public.

From the beginning I wanted this campaign to be more than just my case for the leadership. I also wanted it to be a moment where the party and country came together. Before I talk more about the campaign, I want to say something about how we got here.

I want to talk about Boris Johnson. As candidates to replace him, we owe it to the British people who elected Boris as Prime Minister in 2019 to explain why he is leaving office. There is something profoundly wrong about a process that sees a sitting Prime Minister replaced while the people doing the replacing pull the curtains and act like it’s nobody’s business but theirs. It’s everybody’s business. 

So let me tell you how I see it. Boris Johnson is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. And, whatever some commentators may say, he has a good heart.

Did I disagree with him? Frequently. Is he flawed? Yes – and so are the rest of us. Was it no longer working? Yes and that’s why I resigned.

But let me be clear. I will have no part in a rewriting of history that seeks to demonise Boris, exaggerate his faults or deny his efforts. We know his achievements: breaking the Brexit deadlock, winning a stunning election victory, rolling out a world-class vaccination programme and standing up for a free Ukraine when other leaders were still wringing their hands.

Some people might advise that I should avoid saying all this in case it alienates people. But that wouldn’t be honest. If telling you what I think – positive and negative – costs me the leadership, so be it.

People deserve to know what I really think before they decide, not afterwards. Since I declared a few short days ago the response has been…well…overwhelming, beyond my imagination. Thousands of volunteers have reached out to join our campaign because they have heard a message of change.

I am running a positive campaign focused on what my leadership can offer our party and our country. I will not engage in the negativity that some of you may have seen and read in the media. If others wish to do that, then let them – that’s not who we are. We can be better.

Because, I look across the field of candidates and I see colleagues and friends. I see people who I admire and respect. People with exceptional qualities. I want to say to all of them: we are still part of the same Conservative family and when this election is over we’re going to work together for the British people.

But before that, we have to resolve some disagreements. Incredibly important disagreements about the nature and depth of the challenges this country faces and the right response to them.

A pandemic that all but broke the world economy. A war in mainland Europe. And most visibly at home now, a global spike in inflation that has risen to levels not seen since the 1970s and 80s.

When confronted with challenges so fundamental the right place to start is with your values. And my values, traditional Conservative values, are clear.

Hard work, fairness, patriotism, a love of family, pragmatism, but also an unshakeable belief that a better future is something that we can create. 

Values that compel me to say it is completely unacceptable in this country that too many women and girls do not enjoy the same freedom most men take for granted in feeling safe from assault and abuse. That our natural environment is an inheritance we preserve and protect for future generations and that our role as a global leader in keeping our oceans and air clean is critical. And that at a time of rising global instability, we have a responsibility to the world to provide leadership. That is why, as Chancellor, I prioritised record funding for the armed services who represent the best of our country and do heroic work.

But as vital as values are, they are not enough. We need to have a grown up conversation about the central policy question that all candidates have to answer in this election. Do you have a credible plan to protect our economy and get it growing?

My message to the party and the country is simple. I have a plan to steer our economy through these headwinds. We need a return to traditional Conservative economic values. And that’s means honesty and responsibility, not fairy tales.

It is not credible to promise lots more spending and lower taxes. I had to make some of the most difficult choices in my life as Chancellor, in particular how to deal with our debt and borrowing after Covid. I have never hidden away from those. I certainly won’t pretend now the choices I made and things I voted for were somehow not necessary.

And whilst that maybe politically inconvenient for me, it is the truth. As is the fact that once we’ve gripped inflation, I will get the tax burden down. It is a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’.

And I will achieve this because I have a clear plan to get our economy growing quickly. We need to implement the radical reforms I set out as Chancellor to the way businesses are taxed, to make our country the best place in the world to invest more, train more and innovate more. 

We need to use the new freedoms Brexit has given us, and the new mentality it can give us, to reform the mass of regulations, bureaucracy, and constraints that too often get in the way. We need to build a new consensus on people coming to our country: yes to hard working, talented, innovators, but crucially control of our borders.

And we need to transform the performance and productivity of our public services by integrating technology, empowering good leaders and caring much more about what actually works than what sounds good. I believe we can build a better, smaller, 21st century government that helps to support growth and countries around the world seek to emulate.

If we do all of this, we will get our economy growing quickly again. Not just for a short burst, but sustainably for generations to come. This is the surest path to tax cuts that work, to keeping our schools and NHS strong, to properly funding our armed forces and keeping our country safe.

So, that is my plan: tackle inflation, grow the economy and cut taxes. It is a long-term approach that will deliver long-term gains for families and businesses across the United Kingdom.

I am prepared to give everything I have in service to our nation, to restore trust, to rebuild our economy and reunite the country.

I want to have a grown up conversation where I can tell you the truth: a better future is not given, but earned.

That is why I am standing to be the next leader of the Conservative party and your Prime Minister.

Thank you.

End of quote. Repeat the line. Joe Biden can’t go on

How much longer can the global disaster that is Joe Biden’s presidency go on? Surely there comes a point when the Democrats do what the Tory party did to Boris Johnson last week – declare enough is enough and force him out? The odds of Biden running for a second term are shrinking dramatically – no matter how many times he insists he will go on. The more pressing question is whether he can even hold on for the remaining two years of his first four.

A miserable poll just published in the New York Times shows that only 13 per cent of Americans think their nation is on the ‘right track’. Among Democrats, 64 per cent said they wanted a new candidate for Democratic candidate in 2024  – and a staggering 94 per cent of Democrats under the age of 30 feel the same way. It’s hard to see how any leader can go on with such horrendous numbers. Biden’s approval rating is now 33 per cent – with more than two-thirds of independent voters disapproving. Forty seven per cent of African Americans want a different Democratic candidate in 2024 and 63 per cent of Hispanics. Among whites, the figure is 70 per cent.

The reasons for Biden’s collapse are manifold, but they start with a near-total loss of faith in the man himself. He’s just too old and it’s too painfully obvious. Two years ago, to suggest Biden was past it was to invite accusations of spreading Trump propaganda. Now, 33 per cent of Democrats cite the President’s ‘age’ as their reason for wanting someone else to stand (for 34 per cent, it’s ‘job performance’).

Only 3 per cent are blunt enough to say ‘mental acuity’ – but the normally lapdog loyal Democratic press now openly discuss his mental unfitness for high office. The Atlantic recently published a simple but effective essay explaining to readers just how old Biden will be by the end of his second term. Last weekend, the New York Times revealed that aides are concerned that Biden will ‘trip on a wire’ because he’s so doddery. His energy level is ‘not what it was’ and aides ‘hold their breath’ nervously when he talks. He works a five day week and rests up as much as he can.

As if to prove the point, on Friday Biden gave the world another viral proof-of-senility clip when he began reading out the instructions from his teleprompter: ‘End of quote. Repeat the line.’

‘As Mr. Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party,’ declared the Gray Lady’s White House correspondent, Peter Baker.

In other words, the Biden show can’t go on.

End of quote. Repeat the line.

The Biden show can’t go on.

If the American economy was singing, it’s possible to see how Biden might be propped up in office. But the economy is a top concern for more than 75 per cent of American voters – and only 1 per cent rate America’s current financial health ‘excellent’. Team Biden was eager to boast about the healthy US employment figures which came out last week. But this sliver of good news must be set against the continuing cost-of-living crisis, or ‘Bidenflation’ as some Americans call it, which is impoverishing everyone.

Moreover, Team Biden is falling apart as exasperated aides continue to quit. Last week, the White House communications director Kate Bedingfield announced she would stand down after the summer. That just weeks after Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, stood down, and a number of other more junior press aides have gone. Clearly, it’s tough work trying to spin the idea that Joe Biden is working.

Other senior staff have bailed, too – Cedric Richmond, once a key adviser, left in May. And Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House Covid czar, sloped off in April. Biden, already the oldest US President, may or may not be able to stagger on until 2024. Yet with the mid-term elections coming up in November, and Democrats facing heavy losses, his deteriorating presidency will become more and more untenable.

How Love Island killed sex

Love Island’s annual ‘heart race challenge’ – where contestants perform jokily seductive dances on the opposite sex – took place last week, an eternity in villa time. The girls and boys who raise heart rates the most win. It is always divisive, since the women in particular – dressed in nearly nothing and manoeuvring with everything they have – understandably get touchy when their man’s heart rate rises more for a rival.

Usually the challenge is extremely sexy, but not outright pornographic. This year that changed. We watched the women put their bare bums – most wore only thong-style garments – up in the men’s faces and waggle them before turning around and straddling them, mimicking full sex as well as oral sex and other sexual moves, like full-body licking. Shirtless, tight mini short-sporting lads then picked the women up, monster-style, and put them face down on the ground before mounting them and commencing, with professional pornographic technique, rhythmic thrusting that showed off their toned athleticism. The inroads made by BDSM were extra clear in this year’s heart rate challenge: more than one contestant came out in leathers wielding a whip. The riding crop brandished by Gemma Owen, footballer Michael Owen’s 19-year-old dressage champion daughter, was almost fetching.

As far as a heart rate challenge goes, it’s effective. Even as a relatively prim viewer I found myself grinning and adrenalised, staring with arrested fascination. Love Island contestants are often criticised for being too plastic and too surgically enhanced. But there is no doubt whatsoever that, surgery or no, they have burstingly brilliant bodies, and bar the odd comedy man, the contestants seem to be quasi-professionally trained in sexualised dancing. In other words they have scaled the heights of contemporary, endlessly digitally-refracted sexiness. They are masters at looking hot, having nailed the shortest route to the dopamine rush. Their metier is the shimmering depthlessness of young bodies who spend their lives taking selfies in no clothes, pouring their souls and sense of self into the tiny tripartite orbs of the iPhone lens.

The contestants ­­seem more recognisable as people this year (sometimes they actually say things you could imagine a real person saying), but still seem utterly stumped when it comes to what lies beyond thongs and corner boob and pornographic dancing. Thus we have the anguished and perplexed tears of Tasha, a model and dancer of picture perfect looks, after the heart rate of Andrew, the man she was coupled up with, goes higher for Danica, single and unfancied at the time but later to pair up with a model at the explosive Casa Amor, where the men and women are sequestered with a new battery of the opposite sex. Tasha couldn’t accept that having got dressed in her tiny neon pink swimsuit, spent lots of time on looking perfect and unleashed her sexiest moves, Andrew’s machinery hadn’t processed the input correctly. Tasha correctly feared that in this world, if the body fails, you have nothing: all the warm words and bedtime cuddles count for nothing. Andrew’s romps only days later with new girl Coco in Casa Amor while Tasha’s back was turned turned those fears into reality.

Love Island is not everyone’s cup of tea, and for good reason. But the programme is important because its contestants are at the bleeding edge of media culture. This means they set and reflect trends in fashion, dating, sexual ethics and modern relational sensibilities. They are creatures of Instagram and TikTok, where sexuality is kaleidoscopically disseminated and refracted.

The result is that sexiness has become a technique you can master and deploy so long as you do – and possess – the right things. Girls must wear thongs, have big boobs and a wobbly bum and put on hair extensions; the men must have a tan, a six pack, tattoos and white teeth.

But in this rubric, sexiness kills sex. Eros has long departed these shores; lust and desire remain and can be profound and raw forces even now. But for the islanders, and for Gen-Z more widely, they seem to have drifted further out of reach. It becomes harder and thornier to instigate and enjoy sex, because there are so many psychological and political landmines. There is most definitely a right and a wrong way to do sex now, a world of feelings and power dynamics to which all must be hyper-attuned. Self-consciousness has been heightened by three-lens smartphone cameras that constantly show bodies as they should be and amplify the gap between them and reality.

And so, the two former functions of sex: sheer naughty fun, or an act of love (sometimes even baby-making) have essentially evaporated. No wonder sex rates have plummeted among the younger generation: 15 per cent of 20 to 24 year olds say they’re sexually inactive, compared to six per cent of Gen X at the same age. A recent study by the charity Humen found that half of university students feel their experience has been marred by mental health issues: feeling perpetually anxious isn’t good for sex either.

In the absence of fun or love or babies, the conservative flank of Gen-Z are searching for meaning. They have decided sex comes up short on that front too. This, at any rate, was my observation at a recent conference for 18-30 year olds interested in freedom. One young man of about 24 advocated a return to chastity outside marriage and baby-making. Watching the bulging-bodied Love Islanders gyrate and thrust, and then feel worthless and hurt, you can understand how for some, the enforced meaning – and danger – of a Handmaid’s-Tale style regime of sex could begin to seem, well, sexy.

The problem with euro-dollar parity

The euro is nearly level with the dollar. It should not matter in theory, because of the relatively low share of the US in EU trade. But it does in practice.

Some predict that the euro will fall below parity. There is a straightforward explanation for this: the war in Ukraine and unpredictable Russian gas supplies to Europe make the dollar a safe haven for investors. On top of this, US interest rates offer a higher return on investment. But it is not only the dollar. Looking at the broader picture, the European Central Bank’s measure of the euro’s real effective exchange rate against 42 partner countries confirms this trend towards a new historic low:

really bad news comes from the combination of the euro’s falling value, the energy crisis, and the return of inflation. Global energy commodities are denominated in dollars. Energy prices thus not only rise due to supply shortages but also due to exchange rate movements between the dollar and the euro. The price of Brent crude oil in June, for instance, was down 19 per cent compared to its 2008 peak in dollars, but 20 per cent up on the same peak in euros.

European inflation reached 8.1 per cent in May, with the trend still pointing upwards. A couple of years ago, when the main concern for the ECB was deflation, a depreciation of the euro towards the dollar and other currencies would have been more than welcome. But now, in this inflationary environment it is a totally different matter. Allianz estimated that a 7 per cent depreciation of the euro against the dollar would increase inflation by 0.8 percentage points at the end of the year. Since the beginning of this year, the euro already depreciated by 12 per cent.

In theory, a falling exchange rate would boost Europe’s export industry just when the home economy is about to slow down. But this is not happening in real life because industry is supply-constrained. Germany has experienced a big drop in exports, so much so that it recorded its first monthly trade deficit in a generation. A slowing economy, rising inflation, ongoing supply constraints and geopolitical uncertainty are the current parameters for the ECB’s decision making. The dollar appreciation adds another unhappy ingredient to the mix.

Is the Tory right being split?

Today’s the day in the Tory leadership race where it starts to look less like a fun run with anyone and everyone taking part. By this evening, candidates need to have the backing of at least 20 of their MP colleagues. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat are the only candidates out of a field of 11 (and possibly still growing) to reach the threshold. It means today will be a frenzied round of conversations in the corridors of power, with half of Conservative MPs still to give their endorsements (read the full list here).

One of the big tussles is over who gets the backing of the right of the party. Liz Truss isn’t far off reaching the threshold, but she is competing with Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and potentially also Priti Patel, who still hasn’t ruled herself out. The worry among MPs on this wing is that the three or maybe even four candidates end up splitting the vote to the extent that none of them makes it into the final two. There isn’t much evidence that a deal could be struck between the camps, either: the right of the Tory party isn’t homogenous and there are significant ideological differences between the candidates. Truss has secured the backing of Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg, which has its benefits in certain parts of the party. But it also adds grist to the mill of the not inconsiderable group of Tories who want Anyone But Truss and are prepared to game things so that she isn’t in the final two.

Then again, the pitch from the Truss camp is that she’s the only one who can stop Sunak, who has gone from being the golden boy to being someone who really, really winds up a lot of Tory MPs with his refusal to go for tax cuts when he was chancellor and his description of such promises as fairytales in this campaign. The Anyone Buts are going to be very busy in the early stages of this campaign to try to get their most dreaded candidates out of that final two.

How I’d deliver a clean start for the UK

Good morning and welcome. 

Families in the United Kingdom face a moment of crisis. It is becoming harder for people to simply get by. For so many of them, there is more month than there is pay. We face danger abroad, division in our politics, an economy saddled with debt, and a creeping sense of despair about our collective future.

This is a defining moment for us. It is a defining moment for our country. It is a defining moment for our party, and it is going to test the values for which we stand. I am going to talk about economic policy today: but for me — for Conservatives — leading on the economy is not only a question of policy.

It is a question of values — it is a question of mission — a question of our task and purpose. We have been charged with the mission of advancing the interests of the British economy and the British people. They have asked us to hold ground for them: to secure the possibility of prosperity for each and every one of them.

They have asked us to not only hold the line, but to advance their aspirations: to move them and their children more confidently into the future. To hear them and to respond to them. And, most importantly, to serve them, advancing all of us towards a future with a stronger, fairer, and more resilient economy

They have asked us to advance; and, yet we have retreated. In a moment that is so desperate for so many — and when our service is most needed — we have retreated. We have retreated into the pettiness of a politics that is more about personality than principle.

We have retreated into division when we desperately need unity. When our nation needed our party to function, we retreated into faction. When the moment demanded service, we delivered scandal.

This is a crisis of purpose, of leadership, and of trust. We have been divided and distracted when we need to be united, responsive, and committed to the future of our people.

I am sorry, but I cannot accept retreat. We should not accept retreat. We must return to service. We need leadership with a renewed sense of mission. Leadership that sees beyond divisive politics and delivers results. Leadership that will return government to the service of our economy, our people, and our country.

We need a clean start. For me, that is more than a slogan or a catchphrase. It is a mission statement. It describes our path forward together. It summarises our advance orders for next decade – it allows us to move forward together afresh, optimistic, enthusiastic, confident, post-Brexit and ready to seize the moment anew.

That is why I am introducing my ten year plan for growth. It will return our government to the service of the British people and the British economy. It will make our economy stronger, our society fairer, and make our country more resilient. And it will do it by returning to the core values that unite us as Conservatives.

I believe in liberty and the low taxes necessary to defend it. I believe in responsibility and the honesty essential to delivering it. And I believe that with a clean start — and with a return to service — we can ensure the prosperity of homes and families in every part of the country. Stronger, fairer and more resilient.

I believe that a clean start that returns us to the service of the people will produce a brighter future. Our economy should be advancing, not retreating. Yet millions of people are opening bills with dread – not knowing what they’ll have to cut to pay for what they need. They’re filling up their car wondering what it will cost to get to work the next day or next month. Every day, families are seeing their savings being steadily eroded and wondering will this be over by Christmas?

This just isn’t sustainable. It’s not fair. It’s not right. We must act. Like all Conservatives, I want people to keep more of their own money. I believe we should cut the cost of government wherever we can. This isn’t an auction. I’m not here to bid for the highest or the lowest on every tax policy. I am here to make the case that our economy can only prosper if we believe that people — and not Westminster — know best how to spend their money …

I know the pain families are feeling now. That is why my first pledge is to take fuel duty down by 10p a litre. My second is to reverse the national insurance rise. This isn’t about percentages. It’s about jobs. That’s why I didn’t vote for the increase then, and I wouldn’t now. It about jobs and workers.

But that’s not enough. We need to go further I want to ensure that we cut the right taxes to get the right results. Our investment incentives are amongst the worst in the OECD. That means it’s less attractive to invest in the UK than anywhere else. That fewer businesses buy machinery, train their staff and plan for the long term.

Economists talk about ‘productivity’ – and Britain’s lack of it. What that really means is we don’t create enough; we don’t create fast enough; and we don’t sell well enough. That means every hour British workers are losing out. 

We can fix it. Businesses can invest more in technology and training, to drive up real pay, not inflation. But they can only do it if we change the incentives. That means making it cheaper for companies to invest in their future.

That’s why I am committing to ensuring businesses have the certainty they need to invest, by introducing a programme of permanent full expensing, giving firms the confidence they need to plan for future growth. The United Kingdom under my leadership will have the most investment friendly tax system in the OECD within five years.

But let me be clear – tax cuts cannot be the only round in the magazine. My 10 year strategy for growth goes beyond taxes. What we need is deregulation to allow companies to thrive. Not because all regulation is bad – a market needs rules and a way to enforce them. But technology moves fast and often outpaces the regulators, and so even well-intended rules can become stifling.

We need regulations that serve the best interests of our people and our economy, and those written for a different time and a different order need particular attention. I want to seize one of the biggest economic benefits of Brexit that we haven’t yet grasped.

I am talking about the EU’s Solvency II regulations, EU rules that forced British insurers to sit on dead money that they are not allowed to invest. I will urgently reform these rules, to bring these savings to life. Employing people, starting businesses, building homes and giving families a chance.

To be clear: that will mean that around £100 billion of British savers’ money can be put to work regenerating our communities and building homes. That is dead money breathing new life into our communities.

The truth is that the last Government hasn’t moved far enough or fast enough. We need a clean start to bring new energy and determination, and on this we need to escape the EU’s regulatory orbit. Now Brexit has given Britain the chance to do better. I will deliver.

That’s how we will harness this country’s full potential. Because talent isn’t exclusive to Telford. Brainpower is not greater in Brighton and I can tell you from the green benches that the IQ isn’t higher in Islington than in Inverness.

What that means is that an economy which neglects places doesn’t just neglect people. It neglects an opportunity for prosperity for us all. The Northern Research Group talk about spanning the divide, and about ensuring that opportunity is spread across the country. 

I entirely agree. That is why I will equalise funding across all our regions – making sure that spending on innovation, infrastructure and transport is spread fairly, so that growth can follow.

A clean start requires serving all of Britain. My friend Jake Berry speaks about wanting a vocational Oxbridge in the North.

I want one in every region. That is why I will commit to creating new Institutes of Technology across every major town and city of the UK, so that every child has the chance for a world class technical education.

Levelling up isn’t about an us v.s. them, a North v.s. South, or an East v.s. West. It’s about harnessing the energy of the entire country to build a better future for everyone. I have talked about how to make our economy stronger.

I now want to turn to how to a clean start can serve the goal of a fairer economy. To a family in Newport, GDP isn’t what they’re worried about – it’s GPs. When a family gets ill, when we need help, when we need support we all turn to our public services. We know how important they are. But we also know they are struggling.

And that means we are too. Too many of us are struggling to access the services we need, to see the doctors we want, struggling to feel safe and secure in our homes.

Take the NHS. We’re putting record investment in without seeing the outcomes we need. I know that even the most dedicated teams need targets. Take a simple measure – the four hour A&E pledge was last met in 2015. People deserve better. We expect better. I will deliver better.

As a first and immediate step I would reintroduce a binding A&E and referrals target and hold NHS leaders accountable for it. But we won’t just focus on the symptoms. On my first day as Prime Minister I will bring together experts from the NHS, the wider public sector, the military, the private sector and the voluntary sector to bust through the NHS backlog, copying the success of the vaccine taskforce that delivered the first vaccine in the UK before anywhere else

Focus matters. Delivery matters. Competence matters.

Finally, we need the kind of clean start that will make our economy and society more resilient. From Covid to the energy crisis, we have learnt that even if we get everything right, our country and our economy is exposed to threats at home and abroad.

A responsible government is one that plans ahead – that thinks about the future, not just the present. One that takes steps to ensure that we are not vulnerable, and that those who try to harm us fail. I have warned about this many times before – about the vulnerability we face in our supply chains, and our energy.

We all remember the desperate times as we rushed to secure protective equipment on far away runways and still found ourselves short … and we all feel the pain of higher oil and gas prices now. That is why I will introduce an energy resilience plan to ensure that the UK has dependable power produced at home or sourced from trusted allies.

That’s the only way we can truly protect our sovereignty. It’s the only way we can keep household bills low. It’s the only way we can keep our businesses competitive. That means more clean energy. It means more nuclear energy … and the capture and storage capability to help reduce carbon.

It means creating a strategy to ensure that we aren’t dependent on China to process our critical minerals, or on hostile states for our gas, and it means working with our allies to ensure that where we do import energy we do not compromise our values, or our alliances.

That is the only way that we can tackle the weaponisation of our energy markets by hostile states. Let me say now – if we do not grasp this issue – we are giving ground to our enemies, who will ruthlessly exploit it.

Ladies and gentlemen, this great country of ours is at a crossroads. We are faced with some daunting challenges at home and abroad.

We need serious leadership. We need to tackle the cost of living crisis. We need a ten year plan for growth. We need bold leadership to deliver a return to service. 

I am ready to serve. I am ready to lead. We need a clean start.

Thank you.