Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Steerpike

Full list: Tories against the PM’s benefits plan

Another day, another backbench rebellion brewing for Liz Truss. Having U-turned over the 45p tax rate cut following a revolt from Tory MPs, the Prime Minister is once again facing trouble. This time it's her plan to raise benefits in line with earnings rather than inflation that is going down badly. Below is The Spectator's running tally of the Tory MPs who have voiced their concerns: 1. Penny Mordaunt: it 'makes sense' that welfare should rise in line with inflation (4 Oct, Times Radio interview) 2. Michael Gove: 'my basic position, my starting position is, yes, Boris was right (that benefits should rise in line with inflation)' (4 Oct, Times Radio) 3.

Gareth Roberts

Why can’t MPs let Truss be Truss?

Our common culture – the huge audiences that tv, film and pop music used to attract – has evaporated. Politics is about the only thing remaining where we are all on the same page. It’s perhaps inevitable then that public reaction has become ever more febrile and volatile. Poll percentages now go crashing and soaring with a regularity that’s disturbing to those of us who can remember the prelapsarian age when we were the only people who gave a stuff about politics and that we were considered odd because of it. The marked outlandishness of British party politics has been evident since that day in September 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

What does Michael Gove want?

Tory conference has long been more stage-managed than other party meetings, but this year the official speeches from ministers have also been condensed into a very strange late afternoon slot lasting just two hours. The rest of the time is free for fringe meetings and plotting. Ministers and their aides have been told they have to keep their addresses to the hall announcement-lite, which makes those two hours feel largely pointless. Kwasi Kwarteng didn't announce very much at all, even though his two U-turns have dominated the day's agenda. This morning, the Chancellor dropped the plan to abolish the 45p rate of tax, and this evening it has emerged that he is also bringing forward his medium-term fiscal plan from 23 November – something ministers had been asked to hold the line on.

Brendan O’Neill

It’s no surprise eco zealots targeted Captain Tom

What drives someone to do something as morally depraved as throw human faeces on a monument to Captain Sir Tom Moore? The video allegedly showing a climate-change campaigner dousing a likeness of Sir Tom, in what was reportedly a mixture of urine and excrement, is deeply chilling.  The person in the video is part of a pressure group called End UK Private Jets. The woman allegedly executed the vile stunt in order to raise awareness about the polluting impact of private jets. Quite how defiling a monument to a national treasure in such an appalling way is going to raise the public’s eco-awareness is anyone’s guess. It’s far more likely to make people feel sick, and angry.

Kate Andrews

Are the Tories in the business of managing decline?

11 min listen

Kwasi Kwarteng has just spoken at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham defending his mini-Budget, despite having u-turned on the cut to the 45p tax rate this morning. Will his speech have calmed his fellow Tories and, more importantly, the markets? Katy Balls speaks with James Forsyth, Kate Andrews and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max Jeffery and Oscar Edmondson.

Isabel Hardman

Are the Tories in the business of managing decline?

Kwasi Kwarteng's speech to Tory conference was an attempt to get his party back behind him after his U-turn on the 45p rate. He acknowledged it a number of times in his address, opening by saying it had been a 'tough' day, but insisted that the government needed to keep going. The members in the hall laughed as he referred to 'a little turbulence' and insisted that 'we are listening'. After the U-turn, it was quite audacious to insist the government had an 'iron commitment' to anything After the U-turn, it was quite audacious to insist the government had an 'iron commitment' to anything, but his commitment today was to 'fiscal discipline' and the 'central and guiding mission' of the government to grow the economy.

Kate Andrews

Everything’s under control, says Kwasi

You could tell Kwasi Kwarteng was aware of his words and tone as he delivered his Conservative party conference speech to a hall full of Tory members this afternoon. It was a delicate set of circumstances, with him having had to U-turn on his plan to abolish the 45p tax rate only this morning. But perhaps more importantly he learned a lesson after the mini-Budget: his words can move markets. And he’d be loathe to push them into freefall again. Kwarteng worked hard to compensate for the total lack of lip-service he had paid to fiscal discipline in his mini-Budget. He praised the UK’s status of having the ‘second lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7.

Isabel Hardman

74 Years of the NHS: Can its crisis be cured?

30 min listen

As the NHS turns 74, the service has never been under so much strain. The pandemic has created record waiting lists of almost seven million in England alone. Every month, tens of thousands of accident and emergency patients are left to wait for more than 12 hours with ambulances queuing up outside. Other long-term challenges such as an ageing population are coming to a head.  On this podcast, Isabel Hardman, The Spectator’s, assistant editor and her guests take a look back at the history of the NHS to talk about what the service was founded for, and why it is in crisis now.

Andrew Downie

Bolsonaro isn’t finished yet

São Paulo The polls got it wrong again. In the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) got 48.4 per cent of the vote, 5.2 points ahead of the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Polls had predicted a possible first-round win for the insurgent. But – with neither candidate gaining a majority – they will now face a run-off election on 30 October. Bolsonaro hasn't just flirted with the idea of a coup, he's wined and dined it Lula has the lead and remains sanguine about victory. But the momentum is with Bolsonaro, the populist former army captain whose chaotic administration has polarised Brazil.

James Snell

Isis is wreaking havoc in Afghanistan

The bomb tore through an examination hall in Kabul on Friday, where students – mostly minority Hazara, mostly young women – were sitting a practice test in preparation for university. Thirty-five were killed, dozens more injured. An unspeakable human tragedy. We don’t formally know who did it, but we can guess. Under the Taliban’s leadership, Afghanistan is a haven for terrorists. And the terrorists compete. The Taliban is, in my judgement, indistinguishable from al-Qaeda.

Ross Clark

How to stop a blackout

Will the lights go out this winter? A letter from the energy regulator Ofgem reveals just how seriously it is taking the prospect, and lays out what would happen if the UK can't get sufficient gas to meet demand. Ofgem declared that ‘here is a possibility that GB entering into a gas supply emergency’ this winter and lays out what would happen in the event of this happening i.e. when insufficient gas is available to supply the gas network at any wholesale price. It turns out that Ofgem would seek to reduce demand by telling the largest gas users to switch off their plant. These, it adds, ‘will likely be large gas-fired power stations’.

James Forsyth

Why has Truss u-turned?

13 min listen

The Prime Minister has abandoned her plan to scrap the top 45 per cent rate of income tax. Why?Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.Produced by Max Jeffery.

Steerpike

Nadine goes for Truss (again)

To inspire one Nadine Dorries tweet may be regarded as a misfortune, to inspire two looks like carelessness. Less than 24 hours after the former Culture Secretary criticised Truss for appearing to blame her Chancellor for the 45p tax debacle, she's back at it again. Frustrated by Truss's decision to junk much of the Johnson agenda from 2019, the high priestess of online harms took to her favourite medium of Twitter to write: Widespread dismay at the fact that 3 years of work has effectively been put on hold. No one asked for this. C4 sale, online safety, BBC licence feee review - all signed off by cabinet all ready to go, all stopped. If Liz wants a whole new mandate, she must take to the country.

Steerpike

Watch: Truss defends 45p tax cut… after U-turn

Oh dear. It's bad enough that Liz Truss has had to U turn on her 45p tax cut plan. But because she did it so late last night – at an emergency summit with Kwasi Kwarteng – it meant that Truss only did it after doing a round of ITV regional interviews, but before the embargo on the interviews. That means we now get to watch a series of TV clips of the Prime Minister defending a policy she has now abandoned. Naturally the ITV journalists have only been too happy to share today clips of these exchanges in which Truss, in full Maggie mode, confidently declares there will be no shift in policy, mere hours before, er, a shift in policy. So much for joined up government.

Andrew Tettenborn

How Liz Truss can wrongfoot Labour over human rights

Liz Truss's government has taken a deserved pasting in the polls for its slapdash economics, but all is not lost for the Tories: the party is doing a good job of holding the line on some of its more enlightened social policies – not least on ensuring freedom of speech. Justice Secretary Brandon Lewis's appearance at a fringe event yesterday was understandably overshadowed by other events. But his comments are too important to go unnoticed. Lewis told a Policy Exchange meeting he intended to fashion free speech laws to make clear there was a right to say what one thought, even if it offended others.

John Keiger

France and Britain are brothers in despair

Since Brexit, Britain and France appear to have drifted apart. Leaders from both countries have engaged in an on-off war of words. But despite these political fractures, Britain and France have actually come to resemble each other more closely than ever. It is now difficult to differentiate the economic, financial, social and political conditions that exist on both sides of the Channel.  France and Britain face a wave of strikes over the coming months. After a lull over the summer, Gallic workers are once again walking out: public sector and railway worker unions staged a national strike for wage increases last week. Even moderate unions are now threatening mass stoppages if Macron continues his labour reforms.

James Forsyth

Is Truss still prepared to be unpopular?

The U-turn on the abolition of the 45p tax rate marks the end of the first phase of the Truss premiership. Truss came in declaring that she was prepared to do ‘unpopular’ things, that she was going to smash through the consensus and put economics ahead of political optics. Her retreat on 45p signals the end of that period of government. She has retreated under sustained political criticism of, to use Grant Shapps’s phrase, the ‘tin eared’ nature of the cut. She has bowed to the optics. Now, the U-turn was better than the alternative: a rapidly growing rebellion. It was clear when Jake Berry’s threat to take the whip away from those who opposed the cut emboldened its Tory opponents, rather than cowing them that a U-turn would be necessary.

Matthew Lynn

Will anyone ever be able to cut the 45p tax rate?

Well, that went well. Kwasi Kwarteng's decision to axe the 45 per cent top rate of income tax triggered a crash on the financial markets. It then ran into so much opposition from the public and from Conservative MPs fearful for their seats that it had to be scrapped completely. Right now, it seems unlikely that any politician will want to revisit the subject any time in the next two or three millennia. Abolishing Christmas would be less toxic. If they do, however, one point is surely clear: the 45 per cent rate is here to stay. The only way any politician will ever be able to scrap it now is by stealth. For all the hullabaloo around the 45 per cent top rate of tax, it makes little sense for the economy.

Steerpike

Penny’s four-letter jibe at Tory comms

It was Pendemonium last night at the Tory conference as Penny Mordaunt toured the evening circuit, following her recent leadership bid. Adoring fans met her at every turn, with one remarking to Mr S 'she's what we could have won!' At the midnight reception for Conservatives in Communication, dozens swarmed the Leader of the House, rapturously hanging on her every word. And Mordaunt was clearly enjoying the attention, joking to the audience of hacks, lobbyists and spinners: It’s been a long day. What have we learned so far in conference? We’ve learned our policies are great but our comms is shit! That'll go down well in No. 10. Asked 'On a scale of one to ten how confident are you that Liz Truss will be the leader that takes us into the next election?

Isabel Hardman

Why would Tory MPs trust Truss now?

Most Tory MPs went to bed last night convinced that their party was heading for an almighty showdown over the 45p tax rate. In the bars and parties of the conference in Birmingham, both Conservatives who were loyal to Liz Truss and those who were less-than-loyal were confident of one thing: she wouldn't fold quickly.  'She's got one thing left which is her reputation as someone who doesn't turn,' one backbencher said to me. 'If she loses that then she loses that credit with the public, and my colleagues will stop trusting that they can go on the airwaves and defend what she's doing.' They are waking to a big surprise: as Katy Balls covers here, the Chancellor has U-turned on the 45p as an unnecessary distraction.