Liz truss

Liz Truss may have been a Remainer but she has learned the political lesson of the EU referendum in the way that her genuine Brexiter opponent has seemingly failed to do.  The point is that in today’s milieu, and especially with an electorate of 160,000 largely Brexit-supporting Tory members, power is with the insurgent. In pinning her colours to at least £30 billion of immediate tax cuts, against Sunak’s steady-as-we-go no-tax-cuts-till-prudent mantra, she has defined herself as the crusader against alleged stultifying Treasury orthodoxy. Every time a credible economist accuses her of risking financial ruin – by pushing up national debt and inflation – all she has to do is

Most Tories are focusing on the leadership race but for some there are other concerns. Take the five MPs who last year were sanctioned by the Chinese state. Tom Tugendhat, Neil O’Brien, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Nusrat Ghani and Tim Loughton were among a group of nine UK citizens to face sanctions in March for raising awareness of China’s human rights abuses against Ughur Muslim. Having banned this group from entering China, there are fears that Beijing will now try to seek revenge on them through other means too. One possible mechanism is by the exploitation of Interpol, the global police agency now feared to be acting in Chinese state

After the last televised leadership debate was cancelled when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak pulled out, we asked the remaining three candidates if they would come on SpectatorTV to face questions before Tory MPs’  final vote. (Since going to press the contenders will have been whittled down to two.) This is an edited transcript of their answers. Do you propose tax cuts? If so, how would you pay for them? PENNY MORDAUNT: On the current trajectory Rishi’s set us on, we are going to be one of the most uncompetitive nations in the OECD and that cannot be allowed to happen. We have to be able to compete. So there

I’m not sure that the Conservative party wants to win elections. Tom Tugendhat was knocked out of the leadership contest on Monday, and Liz Truss is now the bookies’ favourite to be the next Prime Minister. Any party that thinks the latter beats the former cannot say it is serious. There are several reasons for Conservatives to ignore me on this topic. First, I’m not a Conservative. Second, Tugendhat and I are friends. Third, I take a view of party politics that seems to be utterly out of fashion these days. That view is that politics works better when parties try to win the other side’s votes. When Conservatives pursue

Fights! Drama! Blue-on-blue attacks and not-so-subtle jibes! Last night’s Conservative leadership debate had it all. But perhaps it was the sheer level of exposure on Channel 4 and ITV which has convinced two of the Tory candidates not to repeat the experience. For this morning, both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have pulled out of the final leadership debate on Sky which was scheduled for tomorrow evening. The broadcaster has now cancelled the debate as a result. Both rivals were thought to have concerns about the prospect of knocking yet more lumps out of each other on national television. One source on Team Truss told the Huffington Post that: It

‘If you’re still watching this debate, well done,’ said Mordaunt, bizarrely, in her closing statement. ‘I wish tonight had been less about us and more about you.’ She obviously scripted that comment before she had any idea how the evening was going to pan out and her own contributions were certainly forgettable. But the others made for an interesting night. Tom Tugendhat quite rightly said the whole evening’s discussion – tax, defence etc. – was about the country. ‘We need to restore confidence in our government and in ourselves,’ he said. I’m not sure Britain needs its self-confidence restored: it’s the Tories who are having a collective breakdown. Rishi Sunak

Having urged her supporters to back Liz Truss yesterday, Suella Braverman has now been forced to, er, do the same again today. Team Truss are doing their damnedest to try to lock up the right-wing vote by sending out leading figures like Lord Frost and Simon Clarke to urge rival candidates to stand aside. Unfortunately for the Foreign Secretary, thus far the Badenoch camp seem noticeably reluctant to do just that. While not all of her supporters still think she could make the final two, others have their doubts about Truss and her electoral prowess. Braverman’s latest appeal therefore is an attempt to remind right-wingers that, unless they unite sharpish,

Can Liz Truss gather momentum behind her leadership bid? That’s the challenge facing the Foreign Secretary today ahead of the second round of voting in the contest. Truss is vying for votes among the right of the party along with Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch. Of the three, she came out on top in the ballot on Wednesday with 50 MP nominations to Badenoch’s 40 and Braverman’s 33. There is now a push to get these MPs to rally around one candidate. As a supporter of Truss remarked last night: ‘Lots of people need to do some soul-searching.’ When asked why she hadn’t resigned from Johnson’s cabinet, she responded that

Today’s the day in the Tory leadership race where it starts to look less like a fun run with anyone and everyone taking part. By this evening, candidates need to have the backing of at least 20 of their MP colleagues. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat are the only candidates out of a field of 11 (and possibly still growing) to reach the threshold. It means today will be a frenzied round of conversations in the corridors of power, with half of Conservative MPs still to give their endorsements (read the full list here). Liz Truss isn’t far off reaching the threshold, but she is competing with Suella

Liz Truss has become the tenth candidate to enter the Tory leadership race. Announcing her intentions in an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary has promised if successful to ‘fight the election as a Conservative and govern as a Conservative’. As for her pitch to MPs and members, Truss joins the list of Tory leadership hopefuls promising tax cuts. She says she would take ‘immediate action to help people deal with the cost of living’ which would mean cutting taxes from ‘day one’. A supporter of Truss goes further: ‘Liz is the tax cutting candidate who can actually lead the country from day one, help ensure Putin loses

Liz Truss has been in Madrid this week, talking tough on Taiwan. In the face of continued Chinese aggression, Truss is keen to support the island republic, such as by boosting arms sales there. Yet when pressed this morning on LBC, Truss struggled to add more detail, suggesting that ‘the defence that Taiwan need is already being provided through commercial providers by a variety of nations.’ It comes after a mixed performance at the Foreign Affairs committee on Tuesday, in which Truss appeared baffled about reported delays to the UK’s China strategy, which was supposed to be passed to the cabinet last week. Her top official, Sir Philip Barton, claimed