Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
20 min listen
This week on Spectator Out Loud, Oliver Basciano warns that we should brace ourselves for a coup in Brazil (00:53). Then, is three – or more – a crowd? Mary Wakefield discuses this in her Spectator column (08:41), before Fiona Mountford tells us about the sad demise of church pews (14:55). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
New Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s first ‘fiscal event’ was always going to be quite provocative and exciting. But in the end it went quite a lot further than expected. Far from pulling back when faced with the practicalities of being in office, Truss’s new administration did everything it had signalled, controversial or not, then threw in some even more controversial policies just for good measure. The centrepiece is the huge energy price package. The government estimates that this will cost £60 billion over the first six months. But since the policy involves capping wholesale prices and government subsidies to make up the difference, that £60 billion estimate is entirely subject to
Massive tax cuts. A huge budget deficit. And a wild dash for growth, stoking a short-lived boom, before it all ends in a spectacular crash. As the new government unveiled the widest ranging tax cuts since the 1980s, along with a huge increase in the budget deficit, City commentators and the wiser sort of newspaper pundit are already comparing it to the ‘Barber boom’ of 1972 or the ‘Lawson boom’ of 1988. Both of those ended very badly. In their dreams, Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are probably already fantasizing about an ashen-faced Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng calling in the IMF for an emergency bail-out – before getting
I was at an end-of-summer party for the Centre for Social Justice last night, with some politicians and others interested in the welfare-to-work agenda. The reaction to the budget was mixed. The various donors there were stunned to have been given the biggest tax cut of their lives – the biggest since Nigel Lawson cut the top rate of income tax from 60 to 40 per cent. These are philanthropists, by and large, highly likely to give a chunk of their tax cut to causes they support. That’s why Kwarteng’s budget will have gone down very well amongst the charity fundraisers who depend on such people. The Charities Aid Foundation
How are markets responding to Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget? A sharp fall in the pound today has plenty of critics arguing that the tax-slashing announcements have already proved a failure. Sterling fell this afternoon to $1.09, bringing the currency to another 37-year low against the dollar. This is more than a 3 per cent dip in just one day. The euro took a hit too, but a smaller one at 1.5 per cent. It’s difficult to separate this new record low from today’s announcements – but also near impossible to draw direct correlation, as the pound and euro have both been in freefall against the dollar for weeks now. With the
The left needs to shake off its ‘bourgeois environmentalism’. It needs to distance itself from the ‘bourgeois environmental lobby’ and make the case for fracking and the building of new nuclear power stations. Who do you think said this? Some contrarian commentator? A right-winger irritated by eco-loons? Nope, it was Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB trade union. In an explosive intervention in left-wing discourse, Smith has accused Labour of a ‘lack of honesty’ and of ‘not facing reality’ on the energy question. We are living through a severe energy crisis and yet still Labour is sniffy about fracking and down on nuclear power, he says. All because
As if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had not already presented quite enough dilemmas for other countries, suddenly there is another one. How sympathetic a reception should Russian men trying to avoid call-up in their home country be granted abroad, and specifically in the UK? This quandary has arisen following Vladimir Putin’s announcement of what he called a ‘partial mobilisation’ of reservists to serve in Ukraine. The predictable response to the announcement, made at 9 o’clock Moscow time on Wednesday, was a surge of younger Russians trying to leave the country by any means and to any country where they had a chance of being let in. Direct flights to a
I used to write about bond markets, so I speak with some authority when I say this: bonds are boring. Really, most normal people find talk of gilts and yields extremely tedious. Likewise, terms like debt and deficit are off-puttingly technical and easy to mix up. Basically, the public finances are hard to get excited about. But getting people excited about bonds and debt could well be a vital factor in deciding the next general election. Today, Tories are feeling chipper. They think the Truss-Kwarteng non-budget frames the next election as a stark choice between exciting Tory tax cuts and boring Labour managerialism and taxes. Missing from the debate today,
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Kwasi Kwarteng has today announced what has been dubbed as his mini-Budget, but looking at the scale of the package it is far from small. The Coffee House Shots team take us through what has been revealed. Who are the winners and who are the losers? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Levelling Up secretary Simon Clarke described today’s fiscal event as a ‘game changer’ for Britain’s economy. Was he right? The announcement from Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was not so much an ‘event’ as a major Budget, which ushered in £45 billion worth of tax cuts – the ‘biggest tax cutting event since 1972’, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It’s a remarkable tax-cutting Budget, with praise coming in thick and fast from the free-market think tanks All that was expected was announced: the National Insurance levy brought in for health and social care – which came in back in April – will be scrapped from 6 November. The planned corporation tax
Oh dear. Liz Truss’s team were hoping for a welcome reaction from the markets as Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled a whopping £45 billion in tax cuts from the dispatch box this morning. The Chancellor is placing a bet on growth with this mini-Budget, and hopes that this will take the edge off increases in government borrowing. Mr S wonders though whether the Treasury’s keenness to find silver linings may have ended up backfiring. As the pound rallied against the dollar this morning while Kwarteng announced his tax cuts, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Chris Philp declared that it was ‘Great to see sterling strengthening on the back of the new UK Growth
Labour has a populist argument against Liz Truss’s spendaholic plans to borrow money from the international money markets and direct it into the bank accounts of the privileged. ‘What do you get?’ Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer will ask the public. ‘And who picks up the bill?’ For the overwhelming majority of the population the answer to ‘what do you get?’ is ‘not much’. And to ‘who picks up the bill?’ is ‘me, people like me, and our children and grandchildren’. The Conservative class interest in rewarding its supporters looks like a gift to the opposition. But the gift is not as generous as it appears. For two months now,
George Osborne dreamed about it and Rishi Sunak told friends that he’d like to do it if everything went well and he was feeling brave. But this morning Kwasi Kwarteng has gone ahead and done it. The ‘additional rate of tax’ – set up by Gordon Brown as a trap for the Tories in 2009 – has just been abolished. Right now, those earning more than £150,000 per year will pay 48.25 per cent on every pound they earn (45 per cent income tax plus 3.25 per cent National Insurance). From April next year, it will fall to 42 per cent (40 per cent income tax plus 2 per cent NI).
Rachel Reeves’ response to the not-a-budget was one of the best Budget responses a shadow chancellor has produced in Labour’s 12 long years of opposition. It helps that the ‘Plan for Growth’ was so striking and ideological: not only does it create a clear dividing line with Labour, it also creates a division with the Conservative governments that preceded it. Reeves got to her feet remarking on a ‘comprehensive demolition of the last 12 years’, something Kwasi Kwarteng himself signalled repeatedly, including in his announcements that he would repeal legislation introduced in 2017 and 2021. Labour will have to compete with that backbench Tory opposition in order to be heard
Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss are a Chancellor and a Prime Minister in a hurry, they know they have only got 18 months to get the economy growing if they are to win-re-election. So, they went all out in today’s non-budget Budget. Not only did they cancel the corporation tax rise and reverse the National Insurance increase but they abolished the higher rate of tax and brought forward the cut in the basic rate of income tax. This is all against the backdrop of an energy price guarantee that the Chancellor said would cost £60 billion over the next six months. This and the tens of billions of tax cuts
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has just announced a surprise 5p cut to the top rate of income tax and a 1p cut to the basic rate of tax. Together with stamp duty cuts and others, it will reduce tax by £45 billion by 2026-27 according to the Treasury’s analysis. The IFS says this is the biggest tax cutting event in half a century. Kwarteng confirmed that the National Insurance rise will be reversed, with the tax going down from November. Stamp duty will also be cut. Kwarteng argues that this will put money back into the economy and kick start growth, but without an OBR forecast there is no formal assessment of the actual
‘Russians are fleeing their country in droves’. That’s how Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, partners in life and journalism, sum up in seven words one of the many tragedies of Russia, from which they too have fled – further than most, to Britain. Had they stayed, Soldatov at least would be in jail, charged with spreading ‘fake news’ – or, as he puts it, ‘contradicting the state narrative’. An arrest warrant was issued against him in April, and in May, he was put on an international wanted list. A trial – in absentia – is expected in October. Soldatov and Borogan are part of an exodus larger than any since
30 min listen
Louise Perry is a journalist, campaigner and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. It offers a new guide to sex in the 21st century – rather than herald sex positivity as a good thing for women, she argues it has had negative consequences. Her work has been published in multiple news outlets including The Spectator, Daily Mail and the New Statesman. As a campaigner, Louise began her career working in a rape crisis centre and most recently, co-founded the think tank, The Other Half, a non-partisan organisation that champions the voices of women and families not heard in Westminster. On the podcast, Louise talks to Katy about her
16 min listen
With hours to go till the Chancellor’s fiscal statement, we’ve heard today that the National Insurance hike will be scrapped, as promised during Liz Truss’s leadership campaign. This comes as the Bank of England increases the base rate to 2.25 per cent. How much further will Kwasi Kwarteng go, and just how willing is the Truss government to be unpopular? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.
Putin has been preparing for this war for a long time. I first began writing about Putin and Nikolai Patrushev’s [head of the Russian security council] doctrine in 2009. It was based on the fact that these two, these scoundrels, thought that they had come up with a way to beat the West using blackmail – audacious, cynical blackmail – by threatening the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This was despite being inferior to the West in every way: economically, in terms or civility or conventional warfare. The scenario they envisaged for war, not only with Ukraine but with the whole of the West, with Nato, was spoken about and analysed repeatedly