Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Thursday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Justine Roberts Edition

26 min listen

Justine Roberts is the CEO and founder of Mumsnet. A website that makes parents’ lives easier by pooling knowledge, advice and support on everything from baby names, and household tips, to who they’re voting for in the next election. On the podcast, Justine talks about being a young girl from Surrey, mad about Liverpool football club and spending her years at Oxford University on the sports field.  She worked as an investment banker and journalist before having a light-bulb moment on holiday with her one-year-old, which inspired the inception of Mumsnet. Produced by Matt Taylor and Natasha Feroze.

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

How likely are the lights to go out this winter?

Britain will make it through the winter without the lights going out. That’s the view of the National Grid, which is responsible for Britain’s energy system. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise based on the BBC’s headline: ‘Homes face winter power cuts in worst-case scenario, says National Grid’. But Fintan Slye, executive director of the grid, offered some words of reassurance:  ‘Under our Base Case we are cautiously confident that there will be adequate margins through the winter period.’  In other words: the lights won’t go out. In the scenario considered most likely, we’ll be left with a small margin of six per cent – or just under four gigawatts (GW) of unused

Dalibor Rohac

Many Europeans continue to yearn for British leadership

Liz Truss’s mind was probably elsewhere when she arrived in Prague for the inaugural summit of the European Political Community (EPC) today. After precipitating a financial panic, backtracking on tax reform plans, and seeing her approval rating plummet to -37 within a week, the Prime Minister has a lot on her plate. It would be a mistake, however, for the PM not to seize the opportunity to strengthen the leadership role the UK is currently enjoying among much of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Nordic states. Despite its French DNA, the idea of an EPC is a sound one. There is an urgent need for an intergovernmental platform where EU members

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Opec’s oil cut spells more bad news for Brits

Liz Truss joins other European leaders in Prague today at the first meeting of the European Political Community. Truss’s presence is sensible, a reminder of Britain’s point that it left the EU, not Europe as a whole. It should also help relations with Emmanuel Macron given how much he has invested in this project. One of the subjects discussed will be energy. The conversation will focus on Putin’s weaponisation of energy and how to keep the lights on this winter. But the anti-Russian alliance has suffered a blow after the news that the Opec+ countries, which include Saudi Arabia and Russia, are going to cut oil production by two million

Ali Ansari

Iran’s leaders are fighting a losing battle

Iran’s rulers are holding firm. The country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has expressed sorrow at the killing of Mahsa Amini – who died last month after being arrested by the state’s morality police – while squarely, and unsurprisingly, blaming foreign agitators for the protests that have followed. Ominously, Khamenei has said the protestors are not ‘real Iranians’ – a statement which echoes his crocodile tears in 2009 before he unleashed a bloody crackdown. Protesters have a key advantage over the regime Hundreds died during those and subsequent demonstrations, in 2017 and 2019, as state security forces struck back against ordinary Iranians who had taken to the streets. In the coming weeks, it seems depressingly

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Crash course: how the Truss revolution came off the road

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng wanted to shake things up. They were radicals in a hurry, keen to show that Britain was under new economic management. Theirs would be an unapologetic pro-growth agenda: no more genuflection in front of failed orthodoxies, no more being paralysed by fear or criticism. As a sign of this, they abolished the 45p tax rate for the highest earners: a move that many Tories longed to make, but did not dare. It seemed Truss and Kwarteng would leap in where other Conservatives feared to tread. This lasted just ten days. As the tax plan was reversed and No. 10 licked its wounds, there was much

Wednesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will the free-market cause ever recover from Liz Truss?

In theory, I should be delighted about the Liz Truss project. She is saying the things I’ve been arguing for years: talking not just about lower taxes but about basic liberty and how it relates to everyday life. She’s passionate about these ideas – and sincere. I remember watching her deliver a rallying cry, a salute to the ‘Airbnb-ing, Deliveroo-eating, Uber-riding freedom fighters’. This was just over three years ago when she was a Treasury minister. Her speeches were getting punchier and her one-liners becoming newsworthy and memorable. She was turning into one of the most recognisable faces of classical liberalism in Britain – a development which clearly delighted her.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Could it be Rishi by Christmas?

What was supposed to be a recovery moment for the Conservatives instead looks like a collective nervous breakdown. The Prime Minister has been forced to U-turn on her flagship tax plan. Her cabinet is in open rebellion. Tory party conference resembled a civil war. The latest polling suggests the party is heading for electoral extinction. And that’s after just four weeks of Liz Truss’s premiership. ‘I know we have had a series of crises but this one really feels like the worst yet,’ says one seasoned government aide. Some Truss supporters are showing signs of buyer’s remorse. ‘I didn’t know it would be this bad,’ says one MP who backed

Douglas Murray

Things can always get worse

As I was saying, way back in July, it is hard to love the Conservative party. Every time it tries to navigate another bend in the road it ends up causing a disaster even its most ardent critics could not have foreseen. ‘Things can’t get any worse,’ said rebels in the party while Boris Johnson was still PM, before the summer. Then we were introduced to Liz Truss. Now, within weeks of her taking office, you can hear members of the parliamentary party saying with vigour: ‘She has to go.’ At which point I feel the country wanting to place our collective heads in our hands, yell and walk away.

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

How should the West respond to Putin’s threats?

Vladimir Putin clearly wants us to worry that he is crazy enough to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. This fear was intensified this week when images surfaced that some – possibly in error – believed showed a train operated by the secretive nuclear security forces moving towards Ukraine. Despite this, many believe the likelihood of a nuclear attack remains extremely low. Yet it is a plausible enough threat for the West to be considering how it should respond if Putin were to unleash one. Russia has an estimated 1,900 non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs), from artillery shells to warheads for missiles; their yields range from a mere 0.5 to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Suella Braverman: ‘Brexit isn’t a revolution – it’s a restoration’

During her leadership bid, Suella Braverman positioned herself as a Tory maverick – a firm believer in Brexit, a campaigner for low taxes, and a defender of controlled immigration. Once her campaign ended, she backed Liz Truss because, she said, she wanted to join a team that would change things. When Kwasi Kwarteng announced he would abolish the 45p rate of tax on highest salaries, she was delighted. And when Michael Gove and others rebelled against the plan, she accused them of orchestrating a ‘coup’. We meet a few hours after her remarks, at a Spectator event at the Tory party conference in Birmingham. She’s a little late, given the

The Spectator

Who has the most nuclear weapons?

Out of office Could Liz Truss end up being Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister? She would have to remain in office until 2 January to outlast George Canning, who was PM from 12 April 1827 until his death on 8 August of that year. Like Truss, Canning had served as foreign secretary, where he was credited with boosting trading opportunities for British merchants. However, he became leader of a divided Tory party, which split between his supporters and those of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington. Tax returns Some countries by the top rate of income tax: Japan 56% Denmark 55.9% Sweden 52.9% Belgium, Israel 50% Netherlands 49.5% Ireland

Peter Mandelson

I feel sorry for Kwasi Kwarteng

In Singapore last week, I was asked: do ministers just come in, reach for the dumbest available policy and go ahead without asking anyone what the consequences will be? I explained the mindset. They do not ask because they do not want to hear the reply. In their minds, they are up against old thinking that just wants to keep Britain on the same declinist path – or ‘cycle of stagnation’ as Kwasi Kwarteng described the record of his Tory predecessors – and if you want to break new ground, don’t ask the people who will always say no. This is what Labour’s far-left Bennite wing think. Labour ministers didn’t

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Tory party conference, gas supply warning and Denmark’s royals stripped of titles

Home Liz Truss, the Prime Minister, came up with a message for the Conservative party conference: ‘Whenever there is change, there is disruption… Everyone will benefit from the result.’ Her words followed a decision not to abolish, after all, the 45p rate of tax, paid by people who earn more than £150,000 a year. Backbench Conservative MPs had let it be known they would not vote for it. ‘The difference this makes really is trivial,’ said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank. But the pound rose and the government was able to borrow a little more cheaply. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Is Liz Truss a real grown-up?

Tough call today for Liz Truss. She had to relaunch her premiership at her very first conference as leader. She walked on stage to the sound of the disco hit Moving On Up and for a horrific moment it looked as if she might do the Maybot dance. Luckily she remained still. To greet the applauding Tories she wore a smirk that seemed curiously poised between self-doubt and self-love. ‘I quite can’t believe I’m here – but I’m fabulous anyway.’ She’d chosen a stylish frock of mud-brown and sported the notorious necklace – with a zero dangling from its gold rivets – which is said to reflect her chances of winning a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is Truss back on track?

13 min listen

Liz Truss has today delivered her speech to the Conservative Party Conference where she set out the vision for her government. It was arguably the best moment of a difficult week for the party. Has she succeeded in calming Tory nerves? Who are the ‘anti-growth coalition’ that she is taking on?  Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.  Produced by Max Jeffery.

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Liz Truss’s cliché-ridden speech was saved by Greenpeace

Liz Truss has, if nothing else, been working on her delivery. Her first speech to conference as Prime Minister was only about seventy per cent as stilted as usual. She occasionally, though just occasionally, sounded like she was speaking to the audience rather than reading something off an autocue. She remembered to smile. She even had a go at pointing matily into the crowd when she was saying nice things about her ‘dynamic new chancellor’ or her ‘fantastic deputy prime minister’. And – which was the most she could have hoped for – she got through it without dropping any sort of clanger. The speech itself, perhaps deliberately, was a

The Spectator

Give Liz Truss a chance

Conservative governments have a habit of self-destructing: they die not in battle with political enemies but as a result of vicious infighting. It’s been less than three years since Boris Johnson’s triumphant 80-seat election victory, which seemed at the time to come close to condemning Labour to oblivion. Yet this week in Birmingham it was the Conservatives who have looked doomed, posing a far greater threat to each other than to Keir Starmer. In her conference speech, Liz Truss laid out a confident and coherent agenda. She is correct about the need to harness the power of free enterprise to kickstart growth, but she failed to prepare the ground for

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Truss’s workmanlike conference speech

Liz Truss’s speech at Conservative party conference was workmanlike; she performed the task she’d set out to do. It was helped by a brief protest in the middle by Greenpeace, which allowed the Prime Minister to drive home her point about an ‘anti-growth coalition’ to a hall that was united in willing her on and booing the protestors. The Prime Minister is not the most rousing public speaker. Indeed, the standing ovation at the end of the address felt a little uncertain, almost as though the audience was wondering if this was the start of a more energising peroration, not the payoff. She looked awkwardly at the autocue throughout, almost

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Liz Truss’s speech was the highlight of a troubled Tory conference

Liz Truss’s speech was a reminder that she regards ‘freedom’ as the defining Tory value. Her emphasis throughout was on economic growth, and her belief that cutting taxes would help deliver it. The speech was a straightforward elucidation of what Truss believes: it had an argument. But the challenge for her now is twofold.  First, obviously, it is to deliver the growth she talked about. Getting through the supply-side reforms that might really make a difference will not be easy – particularly with Tory MPs reluctant to vote for anything controversial given the state of the polls.  The second is to explain to people how they will benefit from this