Tory leadership race

Sunday

Glen O’Hara

Why prime minister Truss might surprise us all

Many Labour supporters are quietly allowing themselves to celebrate: if Liz Truss does win the Tory leadership, a Labour government, they think, is much more likely. It may well be so. Among the general public, Truss is on many measures the least popular of the last three Conservative contenders who fought it out last week. YouGov found that even Tory members preferred Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt to the Foreign Secretary. The reason is obvious, and personal. Truss comes across as by turns slightly eccentric, a bit vacant and – well, there’s no easy way to say this – just a tad weird. Truss has failed to win over even

Robin Ashenden

Tory MPs will regret giving Badenoch the boot

If the chaos of recent weeks in British politics has clarified anything, it’s the almost complete schism between Conservative MPs and the party’s members. That Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have made it to the final round of the Tory leadership contest, ahead of their more popular rivals, paints the Conservatives as a party that no longer wishes nor deserves to win. Not since a close ally of David Cameron’s described Tory activists in 2013 as ‘mad, swivel-eyed loons’ has contempt for the party’s grass-roots membership – or rather, complete indifference to their wishes – been so marked.  Were there a credible opposition, this would not matter so much. Yet one has

Saturday

Robert Peston

What Liz Truss learned from the Brexit referendum

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

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Rishi Sunak heal the NHS?

Rishi Sunak’s big pitch this weekend is to grip the NHS waiting list crisis. It makes political sense, given the terrifying size of these lists now, with some trusts declaring their waits ‘unmanageable’. By the time of the next election, the crisis in the NHS is going to seem monstrous. Ethical concerns tend to end up fading whenever a government has failed to do the long-term planning it could have done The former chancellor is worried that the surge in people seeking private treatment is ‘privatisation by the back door’. James and I discuss the wider context of this on our latest Coffee House Shots podcast, agreeing that if people

Andrew Lilico

In defence of Liz Truss’s ‘fairytale economics’

One of the key dividing lines of the current Tory leadership contest concerns economic policy. The gap between the candidates is not actually very large, but of course political arguments often magnify small differences. And in this case there quite an important philosophical difference that could have significant consequences over the longer-term. Broadly speaking, Rishi Sunak is the candidate of economic continuity – how could he be otherwise, given that until a couple of weeks ago he was in charge of economic policy as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His plans involve large tax rises. Even before inflation raced ahead of expectations his plans scheduled the total tax rate rising to

Thursday

Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak has a mountain to climb to beat Liz Truss

It’s day one of the national campaign of the Tory leadership campaign – and Rishi Sunak has a mountain to climb. The former chancellor has already admitted that he is the underdog in the race, with the majority of membership polling indicating Liz Truss will be selected as the next prime minister. A YouGov poll released today confirms the current state of play. Can Sunak turn things around or is it a done deal for Truss? When Tory members were asked on Wednesday and Thursday who of Truss or Sunak they would back, the Foreign Secretary came out on top at 62 per cent, with the former chancellor 24 points behind on 38

Steerpike Steerpike

Tom Tugendhat gets roasted

The One Nation brigade were out in force last night and Tom Tugendhat was the talk of the town. He may not have not made it into the final two but the former leadership contender received a hero’s welcome at summer receptions for both the Tory Reform Group and Conservatives in Communications. Flanked by a phalanx of fans, Tugendhat was all smiles at the latter event, telling Mr S about the ‘huge’ after party his team threw following his defeat on Monday: ‘it went on until 4 a.m.’ But it was another Tory politician who stole the show at Tugendhat’s event, delivering a witty, self-deprecating speech that made some (well-received)

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Do Truss and Sunak’s spending pledges add up?

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have only a few weeks to make their case before postal voting begins on 1 August. Sunak has vowed to be ‘the heir to Margaret Thatcher’ in a comment piece in the Daily Telegraph today, in which he promises to deliver a ‘radical’ set of reform, without expanding much on what that reform would look like. Meanwhile Truss joined BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning to double down on her plans to grow the economy, admitting that ‘twenty years of economic policy haven’t delivered growth’, even if the majority of this time has been under Conservative leadership. But there’s a big economic elephant in the room:

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Why I’m coming round to the idea of Prime Minister Truss

The prospect of Liz Truss becoming the United Kingdom’s third female prime minister is antagonising all the right people. Almost the entire Remainer establishment – including state-sponsored leftist comedians, professors of European studies, AC Grayling, senior figures at the Times newspaper, Irish government insiders – is recoiling at the thought. It is only partly as a result of this that I find myself thawing towards her – if not quite warming – and hoping she defeats Rishi Sunak when the votes of the wider Conservative membership are counted in early September. This is a U-turn on my part. Anticipating this contest as a distinct possibility I wrote a somewhat prophetic

Steerpike Steerpike

Penny hits back at her critics

It’s been a bruising week for Penny Mordaunt. Six days ago she was the favourite to be Prime Minister; now she’s out of the running after a series of searing criticisms from colleagues and the press. A repeated line of attack she faced was the suggestion that she wasn’t entirely across her brief, with Lord Frost claiming he had to request Mordaunt be transferred off the Brexit negotiation One of those making such a criticism was Anne Marie Trevelyan, the Secretary of State for International Trade. She said of Mordaunt, her departmental junior, that: ‘there have been a number of times when she hasn’t been available, which would have been

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The high price of failure

I was listening to a rich bastard on the radio explaining why he was feeling disinclined to give any more of his money to the Conservative party. The term ‘rich bastard’ is the one which I was habituated to use when I was a member of the Labour party and which I have disinterred now to give my opening sentence a little more punch. It was axiomatic to us that anyone with sufficient dosh to consider squandering a few hundred thou on a political party must be a bastard and was both immoral and undeserving of his wealth. Wealth in any shape or form appalled us in an almost Freudian

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Last ones standing: the leadership finalists on taxes, net zero and freedom of speech

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

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Liz Truss is no Margaret Thatcher

The late Senator Lloyd Bentsen was 26 years older than the young Senator Dan Quayle when in 1988 they crossed swords in a debate in Omaha, Nebraska. Their exchange became famous. Quayle had been comparing himself with the late John F. Kennedy. Old Bentsen hit back: ‘Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.’ As it happens, I’m 26 years older than Liz Truss. So it’s a temptation to which I yield to quote that exchange, now that Ms Truss, explicitly, both in her wardrobe and the photo opportunities she contrives, is inviting comparison with the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Record-breaking heat, a summer of strikes and a warning for snake-owners

Home In the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party, Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi were the first of the eight contenders to be eliminated, followed by Suella Braverman, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch. After two televised debates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the frontrunners, refused to take part in a third, which was cancelled. The debates were bitter and accompanied by negative briefings. Lord Frost said he had ‘grave reservations’ about Penny Mordaunt, and had ‘had to ask the PM to move her on’ when she was his junior during Brexit negotiations. After parliament rose for the summer two names were to be put before party members in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The future of the Tories is at stake

To govern is to choose. So leadership contests for a party in government tend to come down to a key policy question. In 2019 it was how to break the Brexit deadlock; this time it is what to do about the economy. Should the new prime minister prioritise tackling inflation or delivering immediate tax cuts? The candidates have been divided on this issue. Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, who I have been friends with for years, argues inflation makes everybody poorer and so getting control of it must be the primary objective. On the other side is Liz Truss. The Foreign Secretary wants, as she tells Isabel Hardman in this

Hamish Badenoch

My life as a political spouse

When I was a teenage Tory activist in the mid-1990s, I hoped one day I’d be part of a leadership election campaign team. The energy and the intrigue looked so exciting. Eventually, I did end up right in the thick of it – but as a political spouse. These races have changed a lot since then. Michael Portillo’s plan to run against John Major was rumbled when his allies were found to have installed dozens of phone lines in a campaign headquarters: that was how you did it back in the 1990s. Now, it’s all done in WhatsApp groups. Kemi and I joke about what we would have made of

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The Tories abandon fiscal conservatism at their peril

And then there were two. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss now go to the membership. There’s much talk today about how brutal this contest will be. Penny Mordaunt’s supporters were arguing this morning that people should vote for her to avoid pitting these two against each other. But that would be false comfort. The argument between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak is one that the Tory party needs to have. Fiscal responsibility has been the Tories’ anchor for years On one side stands Sunak, who I have known for many years. He cleaves to the old Thatcherite position that the first thing to do is to get inflation under control. He believes

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The economic battle between Sunak and Truss

The Tory grassroots have got themselves a real economic debate this summer: Rishi Sunak’s ‘Thatcherite’ economic philosophy vs Liz Truss’s ‘Reaganite’ plans to boost growth. It’s not the most obvious distinction, given the former prime minister and president were great free-market allies. Both also cut tax. But it’s about the order of priorities: like the Thatcher years, Sunak believes that the most important task is getting inflation under control, which was reporting this morning to have hit a 40-year-high, rising by 9.4 per cent on the year in June. This is how he justifies the tax hikes he ushered in as chancellor, comparing them to what Nigel Lawson did in

Coffee House

Sunak and Truss make final two – as it happened

Britain’s next Prime Minister will be either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss. Refresh this page for the latest developments. 4.45 p.m. – Truss vs Sunak will be a philosophical war Kate Andrews writes… The Tory grassroots have got themselves a real economic debate this summer: Rishi Sunak’s ‘Thatcherite’ economic philosophy vs Liz Truss’s ‘Reaganite’ plans to boost growth. Both will have questions to answer. While Sunak’s line that ‘nothing comes for free’ is bound to resonate with Tory members, the tax burden has risen to a 72-year-high under his watch, as well as the introduction of a windfall tax on oil and gas companies that is very hard to explain

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Penny Mordaunt doesn’t understand the internet

Penny Mordaunt’s flip-flopping over gender self-ID makes it difficult to know where she stands. But on another issue she has made things abundantly clear: Mordaunt doesn’t understand how the internet works. If she makes it to the final round of the leadership contest this afternoon – and indeed to No. 10 – Mordaunt has vowed to make the likes of Facebook and Google pay when news content appears on their sites. This half-baked plan makes a fundamental misunderstanding. Mordaunt says: ‘We will create a news bargaining code, similar to the law that has been passed by the Australian government. This will mean that major online platforms like Google and Facebook will