Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
10 min listen
Boris Johnson finally departed Downing Street early this morning, but left the door slightly ajar on the prospect of a comeback. What will this mean for Liz Truss? Also on the podcast, as Truss makes her way to Balmoral to meet with the Queen, what will the rest of the day look like for the new prime minister? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls. Produced by Max Jeffery and Oscar Edmondson.
While Boris Johnson used his farewell speech to praise the ‘vital symmetry between government action and free market capitalist private sector enterprise’, the formerly free market Liz Truss was busy briefing out price caps on energy. There are only three possible explanations for this sudden change of heart: No. 10 is haunted by the malign ghost of Clement Attlee, the building is riddled with lead piping, or the electoral incentives facing the Conservative party are so perverse that when push comes to shove, even free marketeers are willing to abandon the free market in the race to expropriate from the young to pay for the old. Given that Truss has
Liz Truss will kiss hands with the Queen today and become Britain’s 56th Prime Minister, with a number of Boris Johnson’s ministers not expected to serve in her new government. Already the Home Secretary Priti Patel has signalled she will return to the backbenches, with Nadine Dorries also standing down as Culture Secretary. Below is The Spectator’s list of confirmed names who are either in or out of Truss’s new cabinet. OUT: Priti Patel as Home Secretary Nadine Dorries as Culture Secretary Nigel Adams as Foreign Office minister, attending cabinet Dominic Raab as Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Grant Shapps as Transport Secretary Steve Barclay as Health Secretary Johnny
It is not unusual for promises made during an election campaign to fail to survive a headlong impact with reality, but if, as expected Liz Truss, announces an energy price freeze tomorrow, it will leave many Conservative party members who voted for her feeling somewhat cheated. For most of the leadership campaign Truss denounced the idea of government help with energy bills and insisted she would tackle the problem with tax cuts instead. Taxing people and then giving them some of their money back in handouts, she said, was ‘Gordon Brown economics’. Yet it now seems that not only will she spend large amounts of money to bail out householders’
Even though Liz Truss won’t start forming her government until after she has seen the Queen at Balmoral, many of the top roles are already nailed down. The latest dead cert is Thérèse Coffey, who will be Health Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister. The seniority of this role tells us a number of things. One is that Truss wants her strongest supporters close to her. Not only was Coffey pro-Truss from the outset, she is also one of her closest friends in politics. Linking the deputy and health jobs also signals that the new Prime Minister is taking the NHS backlog seriously. It would be a bizarre choice for a
The Duchess of Sussex has been busy. In the past fortnight Meghan has treated us to two new episodes of her podcast as well as a lengthy spill-all interview in the Cut magazine. And now here she is in Britain, making her first speech since leaving the Royal Family. Battles over security apparently resolved, Meghan addressed the One Young World Summit in Manchester. As far as public appearances go, they do not come much easier than this. One Young World combines the slickness of lavishly funded corporate events with feel good vibes about making the world a better place. Meghan’s association with the NGO stretches back almost a decade. Last
Just what do you do with the rest of your life if, aged 58, you have been prised out of the biggest job in Britain? It is a question that Boris Johnson, having delivered his valedictory speech outside No. 10, is now having to answer. The possibility of him returning to Downing Street, as has been mooted by some supporters, is so unlikely that it can be dismissed. He said this morning: ‘I am like one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function and I will now be gently re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly into some remote and obscure corner of the Pacific.’ Yet for him to disappear from public life into obscurity seems too remote
Boris Johnson’s farewell speech was a classically boosterish affair. He emphasised the government’s achievements, argued that Putin was wrong if he thought he could dent public support for Ukraine by using energy as a weapon and called on the Tory party to unite. Johnson quipped that if Dilyn the dog and Larry the cat could put their past disagreement behind them, then so could the Conservative party. The departing Prime Minister’s anger about his departure was there, albeit hidden behind humour. He quipped that this parliament had turned into a relay race unexpectedly and that the rules had been changed half way through. He did call on the Tory party
Well, this is it folks. Thanks to all of you for coming out so early this morning. In only a couple of hours from now I will be in Balmoral to see Her Majesty the Queen and the torch will finally be passed to a new Conservative leader. The baton will be handed over in what has unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race – they changed the rules half-way through, but never mind that now – and through that lacquered black door a new Prime Minister will shortly go to meet a fantastic group of public servants: the people who got Brexit done, the people who delivered the fastest vaccine
It’s Liz versus Liz today as the Queen prepares to kiss hands at Balmoral with Britain’s 56th Prime Minister. While attention will focus this morning on Boris Johnson’s imminent resignation statement, it will thereafter shift to his successor, as she becomes Her Majesty’s 15th First Minister of her 70 year-long reign. But Truss is slightly different from Elizabeth II’s previous 14 premiers: she’s the only one to openly call for the abolition of the monarchy. Archival footage remains of Truss delivering a fiery speech to the 1994 Liberal Democrat conference in which she talked of canvassing outside the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and (ironically) finding no support for the royals.
Nobody knows what they think about Liz Truss. Not literally nobody – those of us with a wholly unusual level of interest in politics of course have our pet theories – but nobody in the sense of the broad sweep of the general public. As Tony Blair noted in his memoirs: ‘For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog.’ That is, in fact, a pretty good description of the last month of a Conservative leadership race that tested the appetite for politics of even the nerdiest among us. Not since John Major’s rapid rise-without-trace to succeed Margaret Thatcher has a new arrival in 10 Downing Street been
It seemed fitting that, for her return to Britain, Meghan Markle was joined at the One Young World summit in Manchester by none other than Sir Bob Geldof. The presence – on a Monday, no less – of the Boomtown Rats hitmaker-turned-all-purpose humanitarian was designed to show the worthy company that the Duchess of Sussex keeps these days. But it also ran the risk of suggesting that she, too, is in danger of repeating her single greatest hit all too often. Does Meghan still have a loyal audience, or is her schtick in danger of wearing thin? She decided to be emollient. Although recent press interviews with her have trotted
Here she is, then. Liz Truss is Britain’s third woman Prime Minister and she’s already suffering from the not-so-soft bigotry of low expectations. Almost everyone is looking at this woman the Tory membership has chosen to lead us all and feeling glum. She is someone widely seen in political and media circles as a lightweight and an embarrassment. The overly drawn-out and stale leadership battle between her and Rishi Sunak hasn’t helped either. Can Liz Truss ever hope to win a general election? But most new leaders enjoy a popularity bounce upon entering high office. Remember May mania? She experienced a five per cent surge in the polls in her
Keir Starmer tonight told the weekly parliamentary Labour party meeting that ‘we will never underestimate Liz Truss’. The Labour leader added that ‘she is a talented politician who has got to the top through hard work and determination’ and that ‘she will do whatever it takes to keep them in power’. He warned that ‘the polls might tighten and her plans might create some buzz’. It was a reminder to the party, which often struggles to accept female Tory leaders, not to fall into the trap of mocking Truss or feasting too much on the Tory civil war. How will Labour approach the new PM? Starmer will be asking her
Priti Patel has announced she is standing down as Home Secretary and returning to the backbenches ahead of an expected reshuffle tomorrow. Patel had made her pitch during the leadership campaign to stay in government, saying ‘my record in that time speaks volumes’. But it had become very clear in briefings about Liz Truss’s planned reshuffle that the new Prime Minister didn’t agree, with Suella Braverman expected to take over at the Home Office. Patel is leaving on her own terms. In her resignation letter to Boris Johnson, she writes: It has been the honour of my life to serve our country as Home Secretary for the last three years
24 min listen
After a long summer of hustings, Liz Truss has finally been confirmed today as the next leader of the Conservative party. As she gets the keys to Downing Street, she’ll finally be able to carry out her vision of Sino-British relations. But what is that vision? On the latest Chinese Whispers, I speak to Sam Hogg, editor of the must-read Beijing to Britain newsletter, about what we know about Truss’s views on China so far. Will she declare a genocide in Xinjiang? What is an acceptable level of trade with Beijing? The difficulty for Truss is that she has never had to balance her opinions on China with the wider
Any Prime Minister who takes over mid-term has to contend with a certain set of problems. Liz Truss will wish she had been propelled through the front door of No. 10 by the momentum of a general election victory. The first difficulty is that you have no personal mandate. This doesn’t just affect your relationship with the electorate, but your own MPs too. Boris Johnson benefitted from a sense that he was a winner, which made MPs more prepared to trust his judgment. Liz Truss will have to go that much further to persuade MPs of her political calculations. It also means MPs will be more jumpy if the polls are bad.
Quick, nurse! Those boss-eyed Brit-bashers at the New York Times are at it again! The antics of America’s least reliable news source continue to amuse and irritate in equal measure, with the NYT concocting an image of Britain for its readers that seems strikingly at odds with reality. In the fevered imaginations of the average NYT reader, the UK is a quasi-dictatorial kingdom, where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of London, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps. That is thanks to a series of bizarre editorial choices by the NYT, including the continued employment of former Russia Today star Tom Walker, better known as fictitious news reporter
What does deliver, deliver, deliver mean? Liz Truss had it as her payoff on accepting the leadership of the Conservative party this afternoon, so clearly it means something to her. She told the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre: My friends, we need to show that we will deliver over the next two years. I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy. I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills, but also dealing with the long term issues we have on energy supply. And I will deliver on the National Health Service. But we will all deliver for our country, and I will
Unless Her Majesty throws us all a curveball, Liz Truss will be the next prime minister. So let’s knock something on the head here and now: she is under no obligation to call an election before January 2025. The replacement of one prime minister with another in the middle of a parliamentary term is not a democratic deficiency. It is parliamentary democracy in action. The prime minister and their cabinet colleagues are the Queen’s ministers and when one ministry replaces another, power does not transfer directly but through the sovereign. It is the Queen who issues an invitation to form a government in her name and she does so on