Liz truss

Thursday

Katy Balls

What foreign policy would look like under a PM Truss

When Tom Tugendhat announced he was backing Liz Truss for prime minister, his former supporters were dismayed. He was the candidate for the ‘One Nation’ caucus of moderate MPs, who defined themselves against the Tory right. ‘Anyone but Truss’ was their mantra – and they lined up behind Rishi Sunak. Yet here was their former poster boy supporting their nemesis. What could Truss and Tugendhat possibly have in common? The answer can be summed up in a word: China. For better or worse, Truss is an instinctive politician. On foreign affairs, she was held back by Boris Johnson, who was more cautious on China. If she becomes prime minister, which

Wednesday

Steerpike

Will China hawks match words with deeds?

In the Tory leadership race both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have been keen to talk tough on China. Truss has pledged a ‘crack down’ on Tiktok and announced a ‘New Commonwealth Deal’ to unite nations against Beijing. Sunak wants a ‘new Nato-style alliance’, an end to Confucius Institutes at UK universities and has dubbed the country the ‘biggest-long-term threat to the world’s economic and national security.’ Such tough talk has given heart to campaigners, who want China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region of the country to be officially classed as ‘genocide.’ To date, the Foreign Office, under Truss, has refused to countenance this, by acknowledging

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

Sturgeon isn’t an ‘attention seeker’

There is a lot of pearl-clutching over Liz Truss’s dismissive remarks about Nicola Sturgeon. Much of it involves conflating a dig at the leader of the SNP with a grave insult to Scotland. This is symptomatic not only of the fetid culture of grievance that permeates Scottish politics but of the steady merging of the party of government and the state itself. Were Emmanuel Macron to brand Boris Johnson an ‘attention seeker’, these same guardians of the public discourse would scoff at the suggestion it represented a slight against the British people. In fact, they would regard anyone proposing such an interpretation as a hysterical ideologue and perhaps even a

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Is Liz Truss too comfortable?

After England scored their first goal last night, the team visibly relaxed and had a spell of playing happily until Germany equalised. Liz Truss was in the crowd and saw that sudden surge in confidence up close. Tonight we saw the same from the frontrunner. She enjoyed the latest hustings in Exeter, making jokes about how all the popular misconceptions of her were true. At times it seemed as though the interviewer (Seb Payne, formerly of this parish) and the audience were trying to find out more about what she’d do when she was in No. 10, not if. By contrast, the questions to Rishi Sunak were more about why

Steerpike Steerpike

Team Sunak gear up for ground war

With most signs pointing to a Liz Truss triumph, team Sunak have been pulling out all the stops in a bid to make up lost ground. Tory membership ballots go out this week and although the rules technically allow members to vote a second time online if they change their mind, neither camp expects this to play a big factor. This means the next few days will be critical to the final result, announced on 5 September. And now that the ‘air war’ of TV debates and initial hustings has concluded, it means that the ‘ground game’ of face-to-face meetings with members matters all the more. Rishi Sunak has therefore

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The real difference between Sunak and Truss’s tax policies

The Tory leadership race is becoming a test of patience. Today Rishi Sunak has laid out his plan to slash tax: not in a matter of days or weeks, as Liz Truss has pledged to do, but by the end of the next parliament. He’s promised to reduce the base rate of income tax by 20 per cent, by taking 1p off income tax in 2024 (as already pledged) and an additional 3p over the next parliament. As Fraser Nelson notes on Coffee House, the timing of this announcement is working against him: it’s easily characterised as a u-turn on tax cuts, when in truth the former Chancellor is far

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sunak is running out of time

This could be the biggest week of the Tory leadership campaign: postal ballots will start arriving on members’ doormats in the coming days and the chances are that most will fill them in and send them back pretty sharpish. Both candidates to be Prime Minister are consequently extremely busy: Rishi Sunak has been making tax cut promises (of the ‘not yet ‘variety: more on that from Fraser here) this morning, while Liz Truss has been talking about help for farmers suffering post-Brexit labour shortages. They’re both in the south west of England today ahead of the latest hustings in Exeter tonight, with visits to members and in Truss’s case, a

Saturday

Steerpike

Poll: Tory voters prefer Truss over Sunak

The Tory leadership races is a tale of two approaches: Liz Truss appears to be campaigning to win the party membership, but Rishi Sunak is is campaigning to win a general election. And its’ Truss’s approach that appears to be working, given YouGov’s survey of the Tory grassroots which shows her leading by 20 points. And now Mr S has more bad news for team Sunak: it’s not just the Tory membership turning against him but 2019 Tory voters too. For, according to a poll done by The Spectator by Redfield and Wilton, those who backed Boris Johnson at the last election now think Liz Truss is more likely to

Friday

Steerpike

Tom Tugendhat endorses Liz Truss

Yesterday it was Ben Wallace who backed Liz Truss: tonight it’s Tom Tugendhat. All the big-name endorsements are coming out and at the moment there’s only one candidate they’re supporting. In a piece for the Times, Tugendhat praised Truss’s economic policies, writing that her plans to cut taxes were ‘founded on true Conservative principles.’ The endorsement is notable for two reasons. First, Tugendhat was himself a candidate and has a good standing among the ‘One Nation’ caucus of moderate Tory MPs and supporters. And secondly, Tugendhat and Truss have history together so it’s a sign of just how much momentum is behind the Foreign Secretary that he has (belatedly) chosen

Coffee House

Andrew Neil’s interview with Rishi Sunak – as it happened

Rishi Sunak was interviewed by Andrew Neil on Channel 4 tonight. He was quizzed on inflation, the NHS backlog and more. Liz Truss, the bookies’ favourite, declined to take part in an interview with Neil. 8.50 p.m. – Did Sunak’s gamble pay off? Kate Andrews writes… Rishi Sunak took a major risk tonight, agreeing to a one-on-one interview with Andrew Neil on Channel 4 news. As Katy Balls says on our reaction podcast, more often than not politicians come crawling out of Neil’s interviews. At best, they hope to survive them. All things considered Sunak did indeed survive tonight’s interview. But is survival enough? He agreed to the grilling in an effort to kickstart his

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: Liz Truss’s youthful escapades

One of the more amusing aspects of the Tory leadership race has been various reminders of Liz Truss’s misspent youth. Whether it was leafleting for the Liberal Democrats, running for the party’s student executive or causing trouble at the university, Truss certainly had something of a political journey before opting for a conventional route into Conservative politics. And, still, the greatest hits keep on coming. For tucked away in the LSE archives are copies of the Free Radical – the former newspaper of the Lib Dem youth wing. And who should author an article in the summer 1994 edition making an impassioned case for the lowering of the voting age?

Steerpike Steerpike

Truss tells Tories: copy Don Revie

Liz Truss was widely perceived to have won last night’s LBC hustings with Rishi Sunak. The Foreign Secretary impressed with her tough talk on Putin, China and defeating Labour’s Keir Starmer. And she certainly knew how to play to the Leeds crowd, making the most of her upbringing in the area and dropping in plenty of local references. But it was her praise for the city’s most famous football manager which raised some eyebrows among the commentariat. Truss told activists that: ‘I do want us to channel the spirit of Don Revie because we need to win.’ Revie, of course, presided over the all-conquering Leeds side of the 1960s and

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Sunak still has it all to do

Tonight’s membership hustings in the Tory leadership contest showed both candidates – but particularly Liz Truss – relaxing and even enjoying themselves a fair bit. But they also underlined what the two of them feel they have to say in order to get a hearing with their selectorate.  Both had to commit to more grammar schools because this is a policy that – in spite of abundant evidence suggesting it does not improve social mobility or educational excellence in the way the two claimed tonight – the membership and indeed many Conservative MPs get misty-eyed about. Both will also have been very aware of quite how angry many members in the

James Heale James Heale

Ben Wallace backs Liz Truss

It was the endorsement that they were all after. Ben Wallace, the most popular member of Boris Johnson’s cabinet has finally named his preferred candidate to be Britain’s next Prime Minister: Liz Truss. The current Defence Secretary, who has won plaudits for his handling of the Ukraine crisis, has given an interview to the Sun in which he extols Truss’s virtues. Wallace, who has worked closely with Truss to counter Russia’s aggression, told the newspaper that: What you see is what you get with Liz and that is what the public wants more than ever at this moment. She’s authentic. She’s honest. And she’s experienced. I’ve sat next to Liz

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Rishi’s mad dash: can he catch up with Truss?

Just a couple of weeks ago, Rishi Sunak was the clear bookies’ favourite in the Tory leadership contest. He had the largest parliamentary support and was set to top every round of MPs’ voting. He had 20,000 volunteers, a well-organised team, a slick launch – and (he thought) all of August to convince party members that he was the real deal. His strength, his supporters argued, was a firmer grasp of policy and better verbal dexterity than his opponents. So the final format – a dozen head-to-head debates – would give him time to win. Then, disaster. The Tories became paranoid that the unions could sabotage the process with a

Prue Leith

Why Liz Truss shouldn’t be PM

Two and a half years ago I joined the Tory party to vote for Boris, then unjoined as soon as I could. I’ve never been a Tory voter but I believed in Boris and never thought of him as a cliquey, old-school Conservative. Now I’d like to rejoin to keep Liz Truss out. She seems to want to be PM just for the sake of being PM – we’ve had enough of that. But I’m hoist on my own petard. The party has wised up to tactical joining and you need to be a member for six months to vote. One of the many reasons we have a chronic staffing

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Trussonomics doesn’t add up

I’ve been lucky enough in my working life so far to hold a string of jobs that have allowed me – if not actively encouraged me – to be critical of government. Coming up through Westminster thinktanks in my twenties, I had great fun putting out press releases that tore apart bad public policy. When I had the opportunity to speak to MPs, they’d remind me of the ‘political realities’ that tied their hands and prevented change. In other words, check your policy privilege. Thinktank wonks, commentators and journalists can make all the punchy points they want; they don’t face re-election. But there was one politician who over the years

Wednesday

Steerpike

Truss gambit outflanks Sunak on China

Talk about a tale of two campaigns. China has been one of the dominant themes this week in the Tory leadership race. Both candidates knocked lumps out of each other in BBC’s Monday debate, with the Foreign Secretary suggesting she could even ban TikTok. But tonight, the issue has reared its head again twice within a few hours. First, Rishi Sunak was left embarrassed by a leaked Treasury paper which suggested he was close to signing a deal with Beijing to ‘deepen trade links’ earlier this year. It boasted 47 pages of ‘policy outcomes’ for closer ties in 20 areas. They included inviting a huge Chinese sovereign wealth fund to

Steerpike Steerpike

Liz Truss’s failed Lib Dem bid revealed

She is the current favourite to be our next Prime Minister but Liz Truss hasn’t always been such a staunch Tory. Throughout the current Conservative leadership race, the Foreign Secretary has faced numerous reminders of her student past, back when was a card-carrying Liberal Democrat. There was the footage of a fresh-faced Truss calling for the abolition of the monarchy at the 1994 party conference in front of a watching David Steel. There was the Newsnight package which showed her canvassing Brighton locals that same year. And there have been images of the-then Oxford University Lib Dem president protesting Michael Howard’s Criminal Justice Bill to clamp down on raves that

Monday

Steerpike

Will Liz Truss dare to face Andrew Neil?

It’s six weeks to go until voting closes for the Tory leadership and polls suggest that Liz Truss is the firm favourite of the party grassroots – on a two-to-one ratio. Rishi Sunak has to do all he can to make up lost ground, something that has likely motivated the former Chancellor to accept a challenge from one of Britain’s most formidable interviewers. For it has today been announced that Andrew Neil, the longtime bête noire of politicians across the land, will grill Sunak this Friday night on prime-time Channel 4. The move is of course a gamble by Sunak: Neil gave him one of his tougher interviews last year