Politics Archives

Friday

14 October 2022

The markets have rebounded – but how long for?

So, no Black Friday. The pound is steady, the FTSE100 up 1.5 per cent, the FTSE250 up more than 3 per cent. Just as fears grew that the end of the Bank of England’s gilt-buying programme could send pension funds to the brink and precipitate a fresh market crisis, the opposite happens: markets embark on a rebound. It won’t necessarily last, of course. The long, miserable decline of stock markets and gilt markets this year has been punctuated, as ever, by periods of optimism, only for a fresh slide to begin. But for the moment it seems as if the big story that is driving markets is the expectation that Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget will see more U-turns – possibly as early as today – or even be dumped altogether.

Michael Simmons

Six graphs that could seal Liz Truss’s fate

When Britain crashed out of the European exchange rate mechanism on Black Wednesday, prime minister John Major phoned the Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie to ask how the day’s events would be covered. McKenzie is said to have responded: ‘Prime minister, I have on my desk in front of me a very large bucket of shit which I am just about to pour all over you.’ With the Bank of England ending its emergency support for pension funds this afternoon, what newspaper editors are saying about the present Prime Minister by market close could come down to the ebbs and flows of these six graphs: 1. It’s all about gilts. Yesterday gilts were going in the right direction. Five-year yields finished the day 0.31 percentage points lower than where they started.

Steerpike

Fight or flight? Kwarteng dashes home

It seems that panic and turmoil is something the markets and Tory party currently have in common. Kwasi Kwarteng is flying home a day earlier than planned from the annual meeting of the International Money Fund in Washington – so he will be back in London this afternoon when the Bank of England is due to end its gilt-buying programme, risking further chaos on the markets. So what’s Kwarteng up to? There are four options: Could Kwarteng be hoping to swoop in and save the day? 1. Quell rebellion, argue against a U-turn The Tory party is buzzing with speculation of a plot brewing to oust Liz Truss before Christmas.

Thursday

13 October 2022

Steerpike

Rishi Sunak thanks his supporters

There’s not much for the Tories to cheer about at the moment but there was little sign of the blues last night in Leicester Square. Members of Rishi Sunak’s campaign packed out the Londoner Hotel to toast their king over the water with glasses of English sparkling wine. In what his supporters insist was an event long in the diary, MPs, spinners and activists gathered to hear the man himself give a belated thanks to all those who had backed him. Fresh off the back of his Treasury farewell on Wednesday night, Sunak was on his best behaviour, declining the chance to declare vindication at his triumphant rival’s recent woes.

James Forsyth

Kwarteng fails to squash corporation tax U-turn speculation

Kwasi Kwarteng has done an interview from Washington which will do nothing to calm speculation about an imminent U-turn on corporation tax. The Telegraph’s Szu Ping Chan reports that: In response to a question about how markets “have improved today because they think you're about to do a U-turn on corporation tax”, Mr Kwarteng said: “Let’s see”. ‘Let’s see’ is, obviously, a million miles from a denial or a reaffirmation of the current policy. If the government is going to change course on this – going back on one of the centre pieces of Liz Truss’s leadership campaign – they would be well advised not to drag this out any longer.

Lara Prendergast

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

39 min listen

This week: In his cover piece for the magazine Owen Matthews writes about the power struggle at the heart of Russia. He is joined by Jade McGlynn, specialist in Russian Studies at the Monterey Initiative, to discuss whether Putin might be running out of time (01:00).Also on the podcast: Has America’s pot policy gone to pot? In The Spectator this week Mike Adams says that US cannabis legislation has been a total failure, a view contested by Katya Kowalski, Head of Operations at drug policy think tank Voltface. They both join The Edition podcast to debate the way forward for cannabis legalisation (16:26).And finally: Should we pity privileged men? For our magazine Damian Reilly writes about The Privileged Man, the support group for men that have it all.

Steerpike

Boris turns down editor job

Who will take over the Evening Standard, the ailing London freesheet currently losing £14 million a year? One name floated by those in the know is a certain Boris Johnson. The chatter at the Northcliffe House is that the former PM decided against it, with one old hand suggesting that Johnson thought the paper was not long for this world. A spokesman for Johnson did not deny he'd been offered the role when asked but refused to comment. It seems Lebedev has his eyes on another former chancellor. Rishi Sunak's name, too, has been mentioned by one Steerpike conspirator Johnson would have been a rare catch for proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, a global figure with decades of journalistic experience.

James Forsyth

Will Truss be gone by Christmas?

14 min listen

After a day of speculation, the rumours that Liz Truss was about to U-turn on more areas of the mini-budget proved untrue. Conservative MPs had a tense evening in the 1922 Committee meeting last night – are there any good options left for the Prime Minister?Isabel Hardman speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Ross Clark

Five things market-watchers should look out for tomorrow

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

James Forsyth

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

Is Liz Truss about to U-turn? The Westminster grape vine is buzzing with informed speculation that the government is set to abandon more of the measures in the mini-Budget in an attempt to regain the confidence of the market and Tory MPs. I am told that members of Liz Truss’s political team who had previously resisted the idea that anything further needed to change are now beginning to accept that more of the mini-Budget will have to be scrapped. The problem for the government is that the markets are now pricing on the basis of a U-turn – UK gilts have rallied on the reports. So if the government doesn’t end up changing course it will be in a worse position than it was 24 hours ago and facing a fresh market backlash.

James Snell

Iranians have turned against the mullahs’ empire building

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

Jake Wallis Simons

Channel 4’s Hitler art show is no laughing matter

Can Channel 4 sink any lower? The TV channel has purchased a painting by Adolf Hitler so that a studio audience may decide whether to allow comedian Jimmy Carr to destroy it with a flamethrower. In other words, popular television is trolling the Jewish community, all those around the world who suffered under Nazism and anybody who remains in possession of a moral compass. The fate of one of the world’s most problematic and disturbing artefacts will be determined by a studio audience and a comedian. As a symbol of 2022, it’s pretty good. Who thought this was a reasonable idea? Step forward Ian Katz, Channel 4’s director of programming. 'This kind of programming is difficult and expensive,' he pointed out. 'And probably not a rational, commercial approach.

Stephen Daisley

Kanye West is not OK

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

Michael Simmons

NHS waiting list exceeds record-breaking seven million

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

Steerpike

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

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

Katy Balls

The Fiona Hill Edition

40 min listen

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

Wednesday

12 October 2022

Katy Balls

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

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

James Forsyth

Kwasi vs the markets

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

Martin Vander Weyer

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

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

Owen Matthews

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

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