Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

The Spectator

The heatwave shows the lockdown instinct is still alive

Trains were running even more slowly than usual. Schools were closed again. Offices were empty. No one would deny that Monday and Tuesday were on the warm side, at least by British standards. Even so, there was something more alarming than the temperature: how quickly the authorities started to close down society – and showed that the lockdown instinct is still very much alive. The Met Office, a body that has turned from fairly comical to slightly sinister in recent times, started advising everyone to stay at home. The unions asked for schools, offices and transport systems to be closed down. There were no trains north out of King’s Cross or Euston, and Luton airport closed completely. Sadiq Khan lost no time in asking people not to have barbecues.

Coffee House

Sunak and Truss make final two – as it happened

Britain's next Prime Minister will be either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss. Refresh this page for the latest developments. 4.45 p.m. – Truss vs Sunak will be a philosophical war Kate Andrews writes... The Tory grassroots have got themselves a real economic debate this summer: Rishi Sunak’s ‘Thatcherite’ economic philosophy vs Liz Truss’s ‘Reaganite’ plans to boost growth. Both will have questions to answer. While Sunak’s line that ‘nothing comes for free’ is bound to resonate with Tory members, the tax burden has risen to a 72-year-high under his watch, as well as the introduction of a windfall tax on oil and gas companies that is very hard to explain within Conservative ideology.

Boris Johnson

Advice to my successor

Boris Johnson has vacated the office of Prime Minister for Liz Truss. Spectator readers may recall his handover notes from the last time he stepped down from one of the best jobs in the world. Read his final piece as The Spectator’s editor here (published 17 December 2005). It is an eternal and reassuring fact of human nature that when an editor announces that he is stepping down from a great publication, there is not the slightest interest in what he plans to do with his life, or even who he was. I have received many phone calls from friends and colleagues since announcing last Friday that this would be my last edition, and they only want to know one thing. ‘Who is taking over?’ I wish I knew myself.

Fraser Nelson

Cold War: Is Germany caving to Putin’s gas blackmail?

After a summit in Tehran yesterday, Putin spoke about the massive Russia to Germany Nord Stream 1 pipeline – currently closed for its annual maintenance period and due to reopen tomorrow. There’s a big question as to whether it will and at what capacity, given that Germany is at Russia’s mercy. Putin said that everything depends on western sanctions. He wants a turbine for the NordStream1 pipeline repaired in Canada – which would break sanctions – and the Germans are all for giving in. One turbine has just been repaired in Montreal, and Berlin begged the Canadians to send it back to give Putin what he wants. But Putin now wants a second turbine repaired. No turbine, no gas (and cold Germans).

Tom Goodenough

Penny Mordaunt doesn’t understand the internet

Penny Mordaunt’s flip-flopping over gender self-ID makes it difficult to know where she stands. But on another issue she has made things abundantly clear: Mordaunt doesn’t understand how the internet works. If she makes it to the final round of the leadership contest this afternoon – and indeed to No. 10 – Mordaunt has vowed to make the likes of Facebook and Google pay when news content appears on their sites. This half-baked plan makes a fundamental misunderstanding. Mordaunt says: ‘We will create a news bargaining code, similar to the law that has been passed by the Australian government.

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson’s final PMQs was a let down

Boris Johnson's farewell Prime Minister's Questions was rather like his premiership: full of the unexpected, rather chaotic and a bit of a let down. Westminster has already visibly moved on from Johnson, even though he remains in office until early September, and so Keir Starmer devoted his questions to asking Johnson about the candidates to be his successor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOyWdArA63Q Johnson claimed that he wasn't following the contest particularly closely, but that any one of the candidates would, 'like some household detergent, wipe the floor with him'. Starmer, however, was enjoying the many insults that have been thrown between the camps in this race to be leader, and quoted a number of them back at the Prime Minister.

Steerpike

Another Mordaunt Twitter blunder

Oh dear. It seems that the Mordaunt camp has done it again. Just hours after suggesting that Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss would 'murder' the Tory party if they were elected, another suspect #PM4PM tweet has been doing the rounds. It's about the Trade minister's ability to win a general election, citing a YouGov poll of 18-19 July of Tory party members. Team Mordaunt has released a graphic which shows Penny on 28 points compared to Sunak and Truss on 17 and 15 respectively. Separately, screenshots of a document are also being shared among MPs by Mordaunt's supporters, again referring to the YouGov poll labelled 18-19 July. Unfortunately, that poll was actually conducted between 12-13 July, as YouGov's findings show here.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris signs off at PMQs

It was Boris Johnson's final time at the despatch box today but there was little sign of it from some of the contributions. Scratchy, verbose, partisan: and that was just the Labour MPs. Still, that didn't faze the outgoing PM who, to rapturous applause and cheers from his benches, told the House about 'some words of advice to his successor.' He told either Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt or Liz Truss to 'stay close to the Americans' (an obvious reference to Churchill) and to do the same for the Ukrainians, plus cut taxes and deregulate 'to make this the greatest place to live and invest in.' He ended with a pointed jibe at those ever-online MPs whom he feels forced him out of office by focusing too much on social media, saying 'above all, it's not Twitter that counts.

Alex Massie

The impossibility of separating Scotland from Britain

Most histories of the United Kingdom fail to account for, or even acknowledge, just how unusual a country it is. One of the strengths of a history of Scotland within the United Kingdom is that it cannot avoid emphasising the sheer strangeness of Britain. It is a country quite unlike other European nations for it is, at heart, a composite state: a Union of four other nations creating a fifth which exists alongside – and sometimes above – its constituent parts. The tensions and interplay between these identities form part of Murray Pittock’s handsome new history. Although titled a ‘global history’ of Scotland, it is also, inescapably, a history of Britain itself, albeit one written from an ultra-northern perspective.

James Forsyth

The next PM must be ready for Putin

Westminster is understandably obsessed with the question of who makes the final two of the Tory leadership race, but today has also brought a reminder of the crises that the new Prime Minister will have to deal with from day one.  The European Commission is calling on all EU member states to cut gas use by 15 per cent to prepare for supply cuts from Russia through Nord Stream 1, which reopens tomorrow. With the pipeline only flowing at limited levels, and the heatwave leading to higher energy use than usual, Germany will not be able to lay in stores for the winter. This means that Vladimir Putin will constantly try and use energy as a weapon in the coming months, threatening to cut off supplies completely if the West does this or that in support of Ukraine.

Katy Balls

Will it be a Truss vs Sunak final?

The last stage of the parliamentary rounds of the leadership contest is here. This afternoon, MPs will vote to decide which two out of Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak progresses to the final round, in which they are whittled down to one by the party membership. The new leader will be announced at the beginning of September. Although Mordaunt came out in second place in yesterday’s ballot, there is a growing consensus among MPs that the most likely result today is a Truss vs Sunak final. The fact that Kemi Badenoch was knocked out in the fourth ballot means that the right of the party ought to be able to unite around the Foreign Secretary as their preferred candidate.

Patrick O’Flynn

Kemi Badenoch will be the new Tory leader’s secret weapon

There was an unmistakable whiff of an Addams Family portrait about the cabinet photocall that marked the final gathering of Boris Johnson’s top team. Surrounding the departing Prime Minister were many ministers who will have suspected that they are not going to be in the same ministerial positions, or perhaps any ministerial position, when 10 Downing Street is under new management. To what extent, for example, can Nadhim Zahawi put together any kind of economic agenda, given his disastrous first fortnight as chancellor? His first few days in office saw him pledge an arbitrary tax-cutting timetable before his leadership hopes promptly collapsed amid reports that his own tax affairs were under investigation.

Douglas Murray

The ruthless inefficiency of the Tory party

It is hard to love the Conservative party. But one reason it has at least always commanded a certain amount of respect is thanks to its reputation for ruthless efficiency. Personally I have found that reputation to be only half true. It is true that the party can be ruthless, but only in being ruthlessly inefficient. Look at the mechanism by which it removed the Prime Minister who brought it its largest majority since Margaret Thatcher. True, Boris Johnson had his faults. But did the party not know these in advance? Why was it not able to add the stabilisers so obviously needed to keep a rickety, not to mention rackety, figure in the top job once it had placed him there? It should cause no surprise.

Steerpike

Mordaunt: Truss or Sunak will ‘murder’ us

Throughout the leadership race, Penny Mordaunt has sought to portray herself as the cleanest candidate of them all. She has bemoaned the 'toxic politics' and 'smears' of others and bewailed how 'this contest is in danger of slipping into something else'. She, by contrast, has pledged to run a 'truly clean campaign' and 'committed to a clean start for our party' - away from all from the attacks, lies and backstabbing of the past. Mordaunt even told Steerpike's colleague Isabel Hardman on The Spectator podcast just yesterday that: I have conducted my campaign in a way that I think is needed and has been the right thing to do. Now more than ever. We've got to restore some positivity and some professionalism to what we do...

Matthew Lynn

Soaring inflation could tank Rishi Sunak’s Tory leadership bid

Wages are rising. The economy is growing. The stock market is on the way up, and exports are booming. As he prepares for a long summer trying to persuade the membership of the Conservative party to make him prime minister, Rishi Sunak probably wishes he could be transported to some parallel universe where he could boast about his record as Chancellor. The trouble is, he is stuck with this one: and the news is relentlessly bad. This morning, inflation was up yet again, hitting a 40-year-high of 9.4 per cent. Yesterday, it was real wages falling sharply, as workers' income failed to keep up with rising prices. Over the next six weeks, as Sunak is out on the hustings hustling for votes, it is only going to get worse and worse.

Steerpike

Penny attacks Truss over China

Dividing lines and clear blue water –  in any election it's crucial for candidates to find and exploits the distinctions between themselves and their rivals. Could China perhaps be one? It was the subject which Liz Truss chose to quiz Rishi Sunak about on Sunday and is seen by allies of the former as a weakness for the latter. The Foreign Secretary is keen to appear more hawkish than her rival; under Sunak's Chancellorship the Treasury tried to restart multiple high-level financial dialogues with Beijing. And it's not just Truss pushing this line, for Penny Mordaunt has now decided to jump on board the China train. She declared last night that 'We have been too soft on China.

Robert Peston

Kemi Badenoch’s role in the Tory leadership race isn’t over yet

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leadership contest's Emma Raducanu, finally lost momentum. She put on just one vote to secure 59 backers, and is out. But that's not the end of her story in this battle to find Britain's next prime minister. Where she and her supporters now place their votes will determine which two Tory MPs are whittled to one by the votes of 160,000 ordinary members of the Conservative party. It would be extraordinary if Badenoch threw her weight behind Penny Mordaunt, given her highly personal charge that Mordaunt as equalities minister was too liberal in her policy towards trans people. It's a charge that Mordaunt has rejected, but there's no hint of forgive and forget on either side. What about Badenoch's highest profile supporter, Michael Gove?

Isabel Hardman

The Online Safety Bill won’t survive the Tory contest

At yesterday's Spectator hustings for the final three Tory leadership candidates, each one of them ended up committing to overhauling the controversial Online Safety Bill. The Spectator and many Conservative MPs have expressed serious concerns about the impact of this legislation, drawn up with the best of intentions, on free speech. Each acknowledged that there was a real problem with the current drafting, which creates a new definition of ‘legal but harmful’. Kemi Badenoch, who was knocked out yesterday, had described this as cracking down on free speech to prevent ‘hurt feelings’, which is something none of them fully accepted.

Stephen Daisley

The Union is in trouble whoever wins the Tory leadership race

It’s not a question that has enjoyed much play in the Tory leadership election but it’s a pretty important one: Should the United Kingdom continue to exist? That is essentially what Isabel Hardman tried to tease out of the three remaining candidates in The Spectator hustings, which comprised separate head-to-head interviews. Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss were interviewed in person at The Spectator offices while Rishi Sunak spoke to Isabel down the line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wfx5sWsl0I None of the candidates had any great insight into how to preserve the UK.

Tuesday