Politics

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

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

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Liz Truss’s speech disrupted by climate activists

Liz Truss’s Conservative party conference speech has been disrupted by climate protesters. The demonstrators stood up during the Prime Minister’s address and unveiled a banner with the words: ‘Who voted for this?’ The pair were booed by Tory members in the conference hall before being ejected by security. ‘Later on in my speech I’m going to talk about the anti-growth coalition’, the PM said. ‘I think they arrived a bit too early.’

The Spectator

Full text: Liz Truss’s Tory conference speech

My friends, it’s great to be here with you in Birmingham. It’s fantastic to see the cranes across the skyline building new buildings, the busy trams coursing down the streets and the bull standing proudly at the heart of Birmingham. My friends, this is what a city with a Tory Mayor looks like – it’s positive, it’s enterprising, it’s successful. And Andy Street is a human dynamo, delivering for the people of Birmingham. And our Teesside Mayor Ben Houchen is also delivering new jobs and investment. This is what modern Conservatism looks like. Let’s get Tory mayors elected in London, in Manchester, in West Yorkshire and right across the country. We gather

Richard Ekins

What went wrong with policing at Tory conference?

Events in Birmingham this week reveal a crisis in the policing of public protest. It was no surprise that protestors would make their views loudly known outside the Conservative party conference. In exercising their rights to assemble and to speak, protestors play an important role in a democracy. But some of those attending the conference, exercising their rights to assemble and to speak, were, at times, subject to verbal and physical abuse and intimidation. They have also been exposed to levels of noise that, in certain parts of the conference centre, made it difficult for speakers to make themselves heard. The police have been curiously reluctant to act to protect

Tim Stanley

The Conservatives know they are beat

The mood at the Tory conference is grim to funereal, and for good reason. They know they’re beat. There’s a sense that something has changed in British politics and we ain’t going back. Labour is revived; the Tories are divided and unpopular. But it’s about more than just a 45p tax cut, which was a bad idea, or the U-turn, which was suicidal (if a centre-Right government can’t pass a tax cut with an 80-seat majority, it’s dead in the water). The reality is that Britain doesn’t want what the Conservative party is now selling. Their economic message is actually sound; it’s infuriating that they can’t seem to articulate it.

Steerpike Steerpike

James Cleverly blames the media for 45p tax cut U-turn

Conservative party conference has turned out to be a great opportunity – for Tory MPs and ministers alike to point the finger that is. Since Monday morning, the biggest blame game doing the rounds in Birmingham has been over who is responsible for Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s embarrassing climb-down to reverse the cut to the 45p income tax rate. This morning Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has thrown another name into the mix: ’twas, in fact, the media what done it. Speaking to Kay Burley on Sky News, he said: ‘You guys were constantly talking about the 45p tax rate which is why we had to take it away.’ Clearly surprised Kay fired back:

Tuesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What did Kwarteng say to the free market think tanks?

When Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng entered Downing Street, laser focus was not only applied to them, but also to the free market think tanks they had worked with over the years. This evening, Kwarteng paid a visit to two of them, as the Institute of Economic Affairs and The Taxpayers’ Alliance hosted the Chancellor at Conservative party conference for one-on-one conversations. Similar to his speech yesterday, Kwarteng used the opportunity to try to take some heat out of his mini-Budget. When asked if market reaction was part of the Treasury orthodoxy he and Truss had been taking aim against for weeks, he shook his head and pointed to the