Rishi sunak

Thursday

Katy Balls

Can Boris take back control of No. 10?

There’s a mutinous mood in Westminster this Christmas. In quiet corridors on the parliamentary estate the question is being asked: has Boris outlived his usefulness? Ministers are laying low. Tory WhatsApp groups are hushed. MPs are dodging calls from the whips, claiming to be sick or working from home. In conversations with Tory MPs, it isn’t long before the topic of Johnson’s long-term future comes up. ‘Everyone’s sniffing the air — you can just feel it,’ says a former adviser to the Prime Minister. Members of the cabinet, from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, are accused of being on manoeuvres. One former minister has taken to measuring his office to

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Unbowed Boris has put his Tory rivals in their places

Boris was resurgent at PMQs today. He sprinkled scorn, merriment and mischief in all directions. He even boasted that last night’s Plan B crackdown was a Tory triumph that had not been won with Labour votes. Sir Keir Starmer (who also had a good day) clasped at his hair in incredulity. ‘He’s so far socially distanced from the truth that he actually believes that,’ scoffed the Labour leader. Boris is surrounded by cabinet plotters who are not without their qualities. Liz Truss has nice hair. Rishi Sunak looks like the perfect son-in-law. Priti Patel’s mean streak may win her a few votes. But that doesn’t add up to a leader

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Can Boris Johnson take back control of No. 10?

There’s a mutinous mood in Westminster this Christmas. In quiet corridors on the parliamentary estate the question is being asked: has Boris outlived his usefulness? Ministers are laying low. Tory WhatsApp groups are hushed. MPs are dodging calls from the whips, claiming to be sick or working from home. In conversations with Tory MPs, it isn’t long before the topic of Johnson’s long-term future comes up. ‘Everyone’s sniffing the air — you can just feel it,’ says a former adviser to the Prime Minister. Members of the cabinet, from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, are accused of being on manoeuvres. One former minister has taken to measuring his office to

Saturday

Patrick O’Flynn

Boris’s successor should be Rishi Sunak, not Liz Truss

Is the ball about to come loose at the back of the scrum? Though an imminent defenestration of Boris Johnson is still just about odds-against, the chances of him leading the Tories into the next election are certainly receding. Should a leadership contest be required as early as next year it is already clear who the two leading candidates would be. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak will face off against the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss for the right to define yet another new Tory era. Truss is a total rookie in a great office of state, having been in post for just a few months. As someone yet to mark his

Wednesday

Ross Clark

When will the Tories do something about house prices?

Anyone who doubts that the fiscal response to the pandemic has stoked inflation needs to look at the latest figures from the Nationwide on the housing market. Yet again they confirm that the deepest recession in modern history has been accompanied by a boom in house prices. Moreover, the inflation does not seem to have been reined-in by the ending of the stamp duty holiday. The price of the average home, according to the building society, rose by a further 0.9 per cent in November to reach £252,687. This is ten per cent up on last November and 15 per cent up on March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. How can

Monday

Ross Clark

Boris could pay a heavy price for his tax hikes

Given the enthusiasm for tax cuts usually shown by Conservative MPs it is remarkable how few of them have, in public, raised objections to the government’s loose fiscal policy. True, the Prime Minister’s announcement of a hike in National Insurance ostensibly to pay for social care, elicited squeals from the back benches, yet last month’s Budget drew only muted objections. This was in spite of claims by the Resolution Foundation that the Budget will cost an average household £3000 a year – if you take into account the effect of higher prices as businesses seek to pass on their higher tax bills to consumers. Today, however, Mel Stride, former Treasury

Saturday

Patrick O’Flynn

Does Rishi Sunak really understand red wall voters?

Rishi Sunak thinks Boris Johnson goofed badly when he conspired to upend Commons standards procedures. And he agrees with his red wall colleagues that this appeared to place the government on the side of a privileged elite. That is certainly the standard interpretation of his comment this week that the government needed to do better – and indeed unattributable briefings by an ally say that he regarded the episode as a ‘mistake’ which should be acknowledged by someone of cabinet rank. But if red wall Tories are tempted to regard Sunak as the true keeper of their flame then I suggest they think again. Because while Johnson has indeed gaffed, the

Friday

Kate Andrews

Eighteen months of inflation is not ‘transitory’

The big central banks have been insisting for months now that the rise in inflation is temporary, and will fade once the great awakening of the world economy starts to settle down. The Federal Reserve, Bank of England and the European Central Bank have looked on as inflation has overshot their forecasts. But when the opportunity to tame it with an interest rate hike approaches, the banks pass it up, reiterating instead that it is ‘transitory’ — the monetary equivalent of ‘it’ll be fine’. With inflation now at a 30-year high in the United States — 6.2 per cent — it’s starting to look like a pretty big bump. But should

Thursday

Katy Balls

Why Rishi Sunak’s sleaze row apology matters

Sorry may be the hardest word for Boris Johnson but that isn’t the case for certain members of his cabinet. After the Prime Minister refused once again in an appearance at the COP26 summit to apologise for backing Owen Paterson in a row over a proposed suspension for a lobbying breach, his ministers are finding their voice. This morning Rishi Sunak broke his silence on the issue. In an interview with the BBC, Sunak was asked about the current Tory sleaze row and former cabinet minister Geoffrey Cox’s outside earnings working in a tax haven. He replied: ‘I’m not familiar with specific details of that case. It wouldn’t be right

Friday

James Forsyth

Will the Tories cut taxes before the next election?

The Tory party has reached a fork in the road, I say in the Times today. One path involves sticking to the spending plans, hoping to cut taxes before the next election and getting rid of the new perception of them as tax raisers. The other drags them into ever more spending, led by big increases in public sector pay, and ends with them going to the country as a high-tax party. In his Budget speech and his address to Tory MPs, Rishi Sunak made clear that his preference was for the former approach, which should cut taxes before the country goes to the polls again. But sticking to even the spending

John Ferry John Ferry

Nicola Sturgeon is flailing in response to the Budget

The big tax and spend budget. More Gordon Brown than George Osborne. Sunak’s spending spree. However you wish to describe it, one thing is clear: Rishi Sunak’s budget marks a radical departure from previous Conservative chancellors. And while it might have ruffled the feathers of some Tories, it’s also causing problems for the SNP. In some ways the break from Tory convention is no surprise. Calls by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2020 for rich countries to spend their way out of the pandemic – and then further calls this year to shell out to boost recovery – signalled a new economic orthodoxy that Sunak has tapped into. Austerity is

Thursday

Matthew Lynn

Rishi Sunak has blown his premiership

The amount the state takes out of the economy will rise to the highest level in 70 years. An unreformed public sector will be showered with cash, with the health service allowed to spend whatever it likes. A tax system that was already creaking under the weight of its own complexity has just been made slightly more complicated, and it has been made a lot less competitive. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak with his usual panache sailed through his Budget yesterday. The problem, however, is this. While he might get away with pushing up taxes and spending for now, sooner or later it is going to catch up with him. And

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak’s low tax pitch to MPs

Is Rishi Sunak a low tax chancellor? He certainly likes to tell anyone who will listen that he is. Yet his actions tend to suggest the opposite. The tax burden is currently on track to reach its highest level since the early 1950s, and while Sunak unveiled one big tax slash in the Budget in the universal credit taper rate cut, the main thrust of Sunak’s announcements was spend, spend, spend. Tonight Sunak addressed Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 committee. After announcing £150 billion in extra public spending, Sunak sought to convince his party that, despite this, he was committed to lowering taxes. Having said in the chamber that

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Would the real Rishi Sunak please stand up?

It was a tale of two chancellors at today’s high-spending Budget. Rishi Sunak began by embracing the big-state profligacy pursued by Cameron and May, and maintained by their successors, Boris and Carrie.  The Chancellor reeled off stacks of figures indicating that the economy is roaring back to life. ‘Growth up! Wages up! Employment up!’ he shouted. And he announced that government spending sprees will also surge by £150 billion. He plans to restore the 0.7 per cent spending target for foreign aid by the end of this parliament. And he has ordered civil servants across Whitehall to find more stuff to buy.  ‘A real-terms rise in spending for every single

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Sunak backs the Union with cash, not love-bombs

Devolution has done so much to fracture the UK that, in Scotland, Rishi Sunak’s Budget is an event of the second order. Scottish interest in Budget day is typically limited to whisky duty, support for North Sea industries and the Barnett formula: the additional spending Scotland gets when the Chancellor splurges on England. Today’s Budget was for all of Britain. Not just Scotland, but Wales and Northern Ireland were weaved throughout Rishi Sunak’s speech. Quite apart from the fiscal or economic merits of the policies announced, the Chancellor’s speech was good politics. Not long after Sunak was promoted to the Treasury, I was told Scotland was a weak spot for him

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The significance of the Universal Credit taper rate cut

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have always been keen to stress that they are low-tax Conservatives — declarations that have previously sounded a bit like St Augustine’s prayer for the Lord to make him virtuous, but not yet. But the Budget announcement that the Universal Credit taper rate will be cut from 63 to 55 pence is a significant tax cut and one aimed at those most in need of it. When the Tories were in opposition, David Cameron railed against the 96 per cent marginal tax rate facing people moving from welfare into work. Universal Credit, introduced by the coalition government, was meant to solve this problem. It did

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Six things we learnt from the Budget

Another big fiscal event for Rishi Sunak today, as he delivered his Budget and the details of a three-year spending review. For the first time, Covid-19 wasn’t in the spotlight. Instead it was framed as a big-spending event, confirming plans briefed before the Budget — £7 billion in capital spending for the NHS, end of the public sector pay freeze — and announcing a series of new plans, including the return of increased foreign aid spending at 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2024-25. But break down the numbers and there are even more surprises in store. Here are the six things we learnt from today’s Budget: The tax take

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Rishi Sunak is a problem Labour can’t solve

Given Rishi Sunak spent so much of his Budget pointing out how high spending was – and given he announced some very Labour-friendly measures, such as a surprisingly big cut in the taper rate of Universal Credit from 63 per cent to 55 per cent – whoever responded on behalf of the Opposition was going to have a tricky job. Sir Keir Starmer should have been performing this thankless task, but thanks to his sudden self-isolation after a positive Covid test, it was the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves who had to do it instead. It’s not clear how much of the speech was her own and how much of it

Tuesday

Annabel Denham

Why Sunak’s wrong on teachers

Pupils lost around a third of their face-to-face teaching during the Covid lockdowns. Downing Street has promised an extra £3 billion of catch-up funding, on top of around £100 billion spent on education in a normal year. Fixing a lack of teaching should involve doing a bit more of it — but when asked if he would extend the school day, Rishi Sunak said longer hours wouldn’t provide ‘value for money’. It’s one of few areas where, in tomorrow’s Budget, the spending taps will be turned off. But why, as the Children’s Commissioner recently noted, are British state schools routinely closing their gates at 2.30 p.m.? The length of the

Monday

Katy Balls

Will education be the big Budget loser?

Which departments will fare the worst from this week’s Budget? It won’t be the Department for Health and Social Care. Over the past few days, new funding announcements have appeared in the papers meaning the NHS will be handed another £5.9 billion. That’s in addition to the £12 billion a year investment it will receive as a result of the health and social care levy. Meanwhile, Whitehall sources suggest that Michael Gove has had some luck in his push for more funds for the levelling up agenda. Where the mood music is less positive is education. When Sir Kevan Collins stepped down from his role as Boris Johnson’s education catch-up tsar over the