A short account of the final days of Prime Minister Liz Truss. A diary by Sage Vals.
20th of September 2022
It Begins
With Her Majesty the Queen safely laid to rest and His Majesty the King on his way to Balmoral for the week, attention now turns to our (almost) new ruler, Liz Truss.
On what is her first day, for all intents and purposes, as our new Prime Minister, she is off to the United Nations shindig in New York, which nobody cares about. But while on her way she admitted that there was no prospect of a UK-US bilateral trade deal any time soon. Not that this was a surprise. As the orange former President wanted to have a deal, there is no chance of the current old man in the White House agreeing to a deal. Orange man bad, of course.
Truss has a sneaky trick up her sleeve. The UK could simply join the Pacific Trade Partnership with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – which Trump didn’t want the US to join. So, Biden will want the US to join that. Orange man bad works both ways. It may take a little time, but it will work if Joe stays in the White House long enough.
How will Liz Truss get on between now and the next general election, due in 2024 at latest? This blog will find out…
21st of September 2022
Bailout Announced
Liz is at the UN today, but at the time of writing, hasn’t made her speech yet. In any case, tomorrow’s news from this event will be mostly about Ukraine and the war with Russia. President Zelensky having made a speech by video link this evening.
But Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg has been announcing Government support for businesses’ energy bills. Obviously, he did not announce this in Parliament: that would never do as MPs are too busy swearing loyalty to King Charles III and his heirs and successors. Instead, the announcement was made by press release. I’m not sure exactly what Rees-Mogg announced, but broadly speaking the Government will fork out about half of business’ energy costs for the next six months or so. There’s similar help for schools, hospitals, and charities and the like. Hopefully this will save a few pubs and greasy spoons from closing too, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Obviously, all this – not to mention the already announced support for us ordinary folks in subsidies for household fuel – will cost a fortune. Not to mention the tax cuts expected to be announced on Friday. So, His Majesty’s Government will be borrowing loads from the markets over the next few years. We shall see what the Bank of England does to borrowing costs at its meeting this week! That will stuff the Treasury as much as it does those paying mortgages.
22nd of September 2022
Bank Rate Rises
Shocking news! The Telegraph reports that one Sir Tony Blair has been helping the Government with the problem of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Basically, he’s lobbying both the US government and the EU to try to get them to understand the problems that the Protocol is causing to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Presumably Blair is getting paid for this. But how can the Government trust the Head Remainer-in-Chief over such a politically sensitive issue?
The Government is now going to allow fracking for oil and gas to start in the UK. It had been banned by Boris as a sop to the NIMBYs, but now Jacob Rees-Mogg has given the get-go as a way to improve the nation’s energy security. There was much fury from Labour’s Ed Milliband – architect of the Climate Change Act – and more significantly, a bunch of NIMBY Tory MPs, who should know better. Chances are that nothing will come of this announcement. Too many folks think that there’ll be earthquakes and tsunamis, poisoned water and fire coming from taps. It’s been alleged that Putin is behind this science-denial, but why should he bother? In Britain, the NIMBYs always win.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates to 2.25%. Not high enough, I think, to do much about inflation. It may help to shore up the pound for a bit. It might well be enough to get rid of a few ‘zombie’ businesses. But mostly it will raise the Government’s borrowing costs.
23rd of September 2022
Not a Budget
Finally, the day of the not-a-budget budget arrived. ‘Have some money,’ said Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, cutting taxes for all and sundry, but especially for those earning (relatively speaking) pots of cash.
And this is on top of the bailouts for businesses, schools, hospitals and the like, for energy costs. Not to mention the money subsidising us mere mortals so we can pay our gas and electricity bills.
The immediate reaction of the market was to boost the pound – for about five minutes – just long enough for some junior minister to make a fool of himself on Twitter. Then it crashed down to a $:£ rate not seen for many a year. I expect that this will recover soon, but one can never be sure.
It wasn’t really a budget. Much of the tax changes were cancelling stuff that hasn’t happened at all yet, such as the proposed rise in Corporation tax. The other bungs – such as the reduction in income tax rates – won’t come in until next April. There’s lots of time to have a proper budget and a Finance Bill before then, and there almost certainly will be one in March next year
So, it was a political announcement. Liz and Kwasi setting out their stall for the next General Election. If she lasts that long.
24th and 25th of September 2022
Annoying Nearly Everyone
The non-budget has annoyed all the right people. Christina Patterson, speaking on the Sky papers review, says she is ‘terrified’. So, it must be the right thing to do. But what will annoy some people – other people – is that the ‘growth’ policy might require more immigration of ‘bright people from top universities’. This is obviously a ‘good thing’, but until the Government stops all the boat people coming in illegally it will be a hard to sell policy for many voters. Obviously, the need for this policy at all is all due to Brexit and we wouldn’t need to do it all if we had remained…
The idea that the tax cuts proposed in the not-at-all a budget will benefit ‘the rich’ (which it will) is causing the most upset. It is a tin-eared policy at face value, but as part of a package to reduce overall taxation, it has to happen. The UK is heavily taxed compared to recent historical levels. This shouldn’t continue. But these cuts in taxation don’t do much to really reduce the overall tax-take. The problem really is that the Government spends far too much. And the almost-but-not-quite budget doesn’t do anything about this at all.
The Labour conference started this weekend. The singing of the National Anthem, in honour of Her Late Majesty, was the first item of controversy. Which turned out to go quite well, apparently. Keir Starmer might actually be in charge!
26th September 2022
Speculation and speculations
The day’s trading on the money markets started with a collapse in the value of the Pound versus the US Dollar. It recovered a bit but stayed low. Just like nearly every currency against the dollar, including the Euro, which fell below parity again today.
It is a bit strange. Some – probably most – of Kwasi’s tax cutting was well known before Friday’s non-budget, but the markets were thrown because no matching cuts in spending were announced. Or any suggestion that cuts might be forthcoming. So, the Government is borrowing a lot to fund tax cuts and continuing spending on energy and all else. This did not inspire confidence.
Interest rates will almost certainly go up again as a way to stabilise the Pound, but I doubt there will be any emergency meetings at the Bank of England to do this. It will wait until the regular meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee to do any raises needed. I’m guessing that rates will rise to 5%, but the markets seem to expect higher rates than that soon, if not next time.
The Government has announced that it will do more. Another not-at-all-a-budget ‘fiscal event’ will be held at the end of November. This is supposed to set out the medium-term strategy. But there’s some speculation amongst the more excitable parts of the media – and some Rishi Sunak supporting Tory MPs – that this will be to undo parts of the last one that have become too politically difficult – such as the change to the highest income tax rate of 45%.
27th September 2022
Confidence
It was the Leader’s Speech at Labour Conference today. Starmer did OK according to media accounts. The hall was reasonably on his side, and he got 16 standing ovations! There was great support for the idea of a government owned and run energy company, running ‘renewables’, but somehow without nationalising the existing UK energy companies at all. The idea is that renewables, being ‘cheap’, should help keep energy costs down. Will this new start-up do nuclear power? What will it do about extant wind farms and the like? It is unclear and I suspect the plan is just waffle. It certainly needs working up. Can we really expect a nationalised industry to do anything more cheaply than a private company? It seems unlikely to me.
The Pound ended the day at about $1.07. There is still a lot of media panic about this, but the biggest concern seems to be interest rates, with several mortgage lenders withdrawing offers until the Bank of England makes some kind of announcement.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now saying that it is ‘closely monitoring’ what is going on in the UK, which has the media arm-waving in alarmist fashion. What is the IMF’s opinion exactly? But they are just monitoring something or other. The IMF have no real influence unless a bailout is needed, so does it really matter? But Moody’s, the credit rating agency, is talking about downgrading UK Government bonds. Let’s see if they do.
28th September 2020
Calming the Markets
The Bank of England stepped in today to ‘calm the market’ by buying up a load of longer-dated UK Government bonds. This sort of thing used to be called ‘market operations’, but I suspect this is on a much larger scale. It is ‘quantitative easing’ as we’ve learned to call it, and in theory it is inflationary as it increases the money supply. And this is happening when the Bank is supposed to be stopping quantitative easing to help curb inflation. So, there we are.
Apparently, a lot of pension funds are exposed to problems with Government bonds. Probably because these are supposed to be calm and secure investments for the pensioners’ money, but now aren’t. The Bank therefore thought it necessary to shore up bond prices to keep the pension fund managers calm and bonds secure, so pension funds don’t go under. Thankfully my pension fund is in less ‘safe and secure’ shares. They may tank, but they’ll also come back up again, won’t they? At the time of writing, the FTSE is down less than 5% over the last month. Not great, but not a massive issue: and much of that fall was before the mini-not-a budget.
Things are not looking good for Kwasi though. There are some rumours that he will be sacked as scapegoat for the current difficulties. An act which would be sure to calm the markets! Perhaps Truss should bring back fatty-puff Ken Clarke (aged 82), the best Chancellor of his generation.
29th September 2022
A Bad Morning
Truss had a bad morning. She was doing the round of local radio after a few days of doing no media at all. The local radio interviewers – no doubt trying to make names for themselves on the national stage – did not give her an easy ride. She struggled to answer their questions, took far too much time to do so, and gave formulaic, wooden responses.
This played into the hands of those who are snobby about local radio: if she can’t deal with the Alan Partridges of this world, how can she cope with being PM?
The opinion polls do not look good for the Tories either. Can Truss last until Christmas? Or even until Halloween?
30th September 2022
Budget Responsibility
The Pound recovered pretty much today, closing at around $1.14, but the markets are expecting a pretty substantial interest rate rise soon. If that’s not forthcoming, things may go back to a wobbly Dollar/Sterling rate again.
Truss and Kwasi met the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) today. Many are blaming the deliberate lack of an OBR report to go with last week’s almost-nearly budget for the lack of market confidence this week. The OBR is to give the Government a draft report on 7th October and will publish a proper one for the next almost-a-budget[1] now due on 23rd November 2022. Of course, everyone is demanding that the draft one be released to the public on the October date, just to show the world how bad the mini-budget actually was. But the Government has already said that that’s not going to happen. Cue the mainstream media calling it a cover-up. Which, of course, it is. It would have been better if they had let the OBR to say something last week. But communications and media management does not seem to be Truss’ forte.
Rumour has it that some Tory MPs are speaking to Labour about overturing the scrapping of the 45% tax rate levied on ‘the rich’. But as there won’t be a vote on this – or on much else that there was in last week’s announcement – until the Finance Bill, probably in March, it all seems to be premature plotting. If, indeed, there is a plot of this sort at all, which frankly I doubt.
1st and 2nd October 2022
Tory Party Conference
Michael Gove is on manoeuvres at the Tory Party conference, which started this weekend. He’s the named attraction at 9 fringe events – more than anyone else – and has been taking part in the media round on Sunday. And he’s certainly not going about supporting Liz Truss.
His main gripe seems to be the poor optics of the removal of the 45% tax band for the highest rate taxpayers on the widely shared argument that this doesn’t look good when everyone is tightening their belts. Except for the wealthiest who don’t need to. But this doesn’t look one bit like ‘withdrawing from front line politics’ that Gove had promised to do. It could be that he’s just bored and lonely following his split from his wife and hasn’t much else to do. Ibiza isn’t the best place at this time of year, but surely, he can find some raves in and around Birmingham to attend?
Of course, Liz herself accepts that the mini-budget hasn’t gone down well, admitting that it could have been better sold. She also seemed to blame Kwasi for deciding to announce that the 45% rate would go. It now also seems that the rest of the Cabinet didn’t know about it in advance either.
This conference could be make or break for Truss. What are the chances of Gove being PM by Christmas?
3rd October 2022
Not Mrs Thatcher
‘U-turn if you want to… the lady is definitely for turning’. And as if by magic, Truss and Kwarteng give up on the idea of abolishing the 45% income tax rate. Surely this was the most economically insignificant part of the almost-nearly-not-quite budget from last week, but perhaps the most politically difficult bit.
This turnaround was all decided at the conference sometime late last night. The news was broken by Harry Cole of the Sun. It seems that 1922 Committee chairman, Sir Graham Brady told Truss that she couldn’t get it through Parliament. Shouldn’t the whips have told her that?
Several people are given credit for forcing the U-turn. One was Gove. Others included various less well-known Rishi supporters, such as Mel Stride, although these ‘others’ were mostly not actually at conference. Jacob Rees-Mogg seemed to be indirectly crediting Gove, describing him as ‘The Conservative Party’s version of Peter Mandelson’. So, Gove is the new ‘Prince of Darkness’. Who would have thought it?
Anyway, the upshot is that Liz Truss is no longer the new Maggie. She has flip-flopped and U-turned for sure. And the Truss doubters in the Tory party will no doubt know that they, and not Truss, now really run things. And some of those doubters are probably in the Cabinet.
4th October 2022
No entry
No blog entry for this date.
5th October 2022
Trump to the Rescue
Truss is saved! Donald Trump, yes, THE Donald Trump, has expressed his support for Liz and her tax cuts[2]. Now that is a coup. Make Liz Great Again!
It was the day of her keynote speech at Tory Party conference. I didn’t see the speech, but I read it. It really was just a typical conference speech. No great announcements, just a load of one-liners put together. Proper paragraphs don’t appear in conference speeches. Each line is a potential soundbite. So, an argument, if there is one, has to be made in a series of disjointed declaratory sentences with the main thrust made of repeated motifs throughout the text.[3] This was just such a speech, designed to emphasise ‘growth’ and to settle the Tory faithful. Otherwise, well, it was ‘meh’, ‘so what’. Sympathetic commentators called it ‘workman like’. In other words, no better than Kier Starmer might have been expected to do. So, the speech was not a game changer. Unlike the Trump endorsement, obviously.
The only highlight was an interruption by some Greenpeace activists, which prompted a put-down line about ‘those opposing the growth agenda’. But how did these people even get into conference with their banner? What on earth was security doing?
Or was it a prearranged false-flag protest? I’m guessing that it actually was, but will we ever find out?
6th October 2022
Green Blob
Liz went to some European event today. A shindig for something invented by French President Macron for European countries both inside and outside the EU. The point was to talk about energy security in the context of ‘Putin’s War’ and the fact that much of Europe has destroyed its energy independence on the altar of ‘net zero’ or some such attempt to save the planet.
Meanwhile, OPEC has decided not to increase production at the moment, so keeping prices high. This is despite calls to do so by US President Joe Biden. But then Putin is part of the ‘OPEC+’ grouping, so it’s no wonder they took the decision they did. And Joe won’t remember it tomorrow anyway, so why should they care?
But long-suffering Brits may have to care. OFGEM has suggested that, in order to save gas, the UK may have rolling power cuts over the winter to save on gas. The Europeans won’t have enough energy to sell to us over the interconnectors, and as it’s winter, our solar farms won’t produce electricity – especially at night – and in the coldest spells, the wind probably won’t blow either. So, no electricity from wind farms either. And we don’t produce enough of our own gas these days, and too little nuclear energy. Another win for Greta and the Green Blob is on its way!
7th October 2022
Scandal
The first scandal of the Truss Premiership has broken. Some junior minister – who I think I may once have heard of – by the name of Conor Burns has been accused of some sort of ‘inappropriate behaviour’. Unlike, say Boris, who would have prevaricated for weeks, Truss has sacked the guy from his position in Government and the Tory whip has been withdrawn. Firm action. Burns denies it all and says he doesn’t even know what this is all about. But someone complained. Rumour has it that this was something that happened at conference, but nobody seems to know for sure.
In a surprise intervention, former Spice Girl Mel B, says that Conor Burns once said something to her in a lift, but as she doesn’t elaborate on her Twitter feed, we know nothing more.
Anyway, it looks like PM Truss does not mean to put up with any nonsense from the Parliamentary Party. So that’s her majority down by one.
8th and 9th October 2022
A Starmer Future
Considering the difficulties that the Government has got itself into since the not-so-mini mini budget, it was a quiet weekend really. As far as I can tell, only Nadhim Zahawi was wheeled out for the cameras on the Sunday shows, trying to appear supportive of Liz Truss, and to say that he thought winter power cuts were very unlikely. This is because of all the marvellous things that this Government is doing to improve energy sustainability, whatever that is. Too little too late, I should say, if there’s a cold winter with little wind blowing – or the war in Ukraine turns up a notch or two.
Some Cabinet members have been writing pieces in the papers encouraging MPs to back Truss, or else face a Starmer future. Indeed, some have rumoured that Truss may ask the King for a dissolution if she has too much trouble in Parliament over the next few weeks. As Nadine Dorries has said, that would be madness. And that way you would get a Starmer-led Government. But perhaps there’s something to be said for that from the Tories’ perspective. Starmer would be lumbered with the entire mess. And serve him right.
In other news, the EU is set to struggle due to the lack of power over the winter. They are in very deep trouble, much more so than the UK. Mark my words!
10th October 2022
Don’t Panic!
It’s surprisingly difficult to find anything going on today that is of any great interest in the Truss inspired decline and fall of the Tory party. Perhaps it’s because I’m so used to great panics over the last few years and months – Brexit; Climate Crisis; Covid; Nuclear War in Ukraine; Cake-gate – the difficulties of Truss seem mundane as compared to these earth-shattering scares.
But the economy tanking due to the so-called mini budget has been scary enough for Kwasi to bring forward his next batch of pronouncements from 23rd November to Halloween. As Harry Cole noted, headline writers for the tabloid press have much to be thankful to the Chancellor for. Horror story incoming.
Truss herself is remarkably quiet in the media. It seems she is working on her backbenchers to try to persuade them to be on her side. The threat being that they’ll all fall together if they divide now. The latest split seems to be over benefit payments. Should these rise with inflation or average pay? Looks like, for this year at least, Truss will be forced by the back-bench Tories, including Iain Duncan Smith himself, to go with the higher, inflation-linked rise. But what about the workers?
The Pound is down against the Dollar again. Gilt yields are rising again. All after the Bank of England intervention last week.
11th October 2022
Less Confidence?
Kwasi spoke to the House of Commons today. It didn’t do much good. The Bank of England has announced that it will stop buying gilts on Friday as planned, although today it did buy up some indexed-linked Government bonds. This means that, from Friday, pension funds will have to get their own houses in order. But the markets aren’t ‘stabilised’ yet. They didn’t like that the Bank was going to stop, so the Government’s cost of borrowing rose and the Pound – Dollar rate declined again.
I don’t pretend to understand fully what the above actually means, and I’ve probably got it wrong. But it isn’t particularly good for the Government or anyone else. Basically, the Bank needs to stop quantitative easing to get inflation under control, but the market’s lack of confidence in the Government means it has to keep going. Or something.
Today’s auction of new Government gilts went reasonably well. About £900 million was sold, although that is a drop in the ocean as far as Government debt is concerned. At least it was sold. What on earth it all means, I really don’t know.
12th October 2022
1922
Received opinion seems to be that Truss had a better-than-expected Prime Minister’s Questions today. While the Tories were in a very subdued mood, Kier Starmer was not having one of his best days, and didn’t really land a punch. Really, Starmer is a gift to the Tories at the moment and if there was a good commons operator as PM, he wouldn’t stand a chance. But there isn’t. Anyway, apart from an unfortunate pause – she wasn’t clear – which allowed some jollity on the Labour benches, she coped. If there was any effective opposition, she would have had a really difficult time of it.
The 1922 Committee later was a different story. Originally billed as being Kwasi as the main attraction, it was the PM who got up to address the disgruntled masses of Tory backbenchers, all of whom had read the opinion polls and expect to lose their seats in the not-too-distant future. This is supposed to be a private meeting, so we shall never know for sure what happened, but the PM did not succeed in calming nerves, and had very few supportive questions. They all think she is toast and those who want to give her a chance are few in number.
One thing that came out was her insistence that there would be no cuts in public expenditure. Of course, that may mean no cash cuts, so inflation will make the real term cuts for her, but it seems that the next fiscal statement on Halloween may not satisfy the markets.
13th October 2022
U-turn incoming
More tales about last nights 1922 Committee suggest that proceedings were rather more difficult for Truss than my notes from yesterday suggest. Of course, this could be spin on the part of her opponents which seem to include the vast majority of Tory MPs – die-hard Borisites, Sunak supporters and the Remainer rump – so one can’t be sure what actually happened. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good for the Prime Minister.
Today has brought rumours that the entire not-so-mini budget will be overturned, except for the energy price cap bits, which are what might actually blow the Government’s budget. The tale goes that Corporation tax will go up as Sunak (when he was Chancellor) had proposed, although perhaps by not quite so much (say to 23p rather than 25p). As is already known, the 45p higher rate income tax band stays, but the proposed cut to the standard rate might also be dropped. A good thing that the mini budget was more of a statement of intent, as the intent has changed. U-turn.
This policy change is made all the easier as Kwasi is out of the UK at the moment and Truss can play about without him. Although he does know that somethings afoot. He went on the telly and refused to confirm or deny anything. My guess he will resign soon, before he is pushed. The markets will love that!
14th October 2022
Oh dear, oh dear
‘Oh dear, oh dear’ as King Charles said ahead of his weekly audience with the PM this week. Oh dear indeed.
Kwasi flew back to the UK from some meeting in the US, He came back a day early to tackle the continuing economic fallout from the maxi not-quite-a budget only to be told he’d been sacked whilst he was somewhere over the Atlantic. It seems that he did have a meeting with Truss on his arrival, but by then it was all too late. He’s a goner, and, to add to his humiliation, he was replaced by Jeremy Hunt. Hunt, if you recall, was a long-term Health minister who prepared the NHS for a possible pandemic by buying a load of PPE which was out of date and unusable by the time a pandemic actually turned up. He was later chair of the House of Commons committee for health when COVID arrived, blamed the Government for the poor state of NHS preparedness and advocated Chinese-style lockdowns. Not a good track record for any would-be Chancellor in times of crisis.
Truss then went to do a ‘press conference’ about it. She didn’t attempt to answer any of the very few questions and didn’t even let Beth Rigby ask a question at all.
When I began this blog, I thought there would be possibly a couple of years of it to do. Now it seems unlikely that this blog will last a couple of months. Plots are afoot. A Sunak/Mordaunt dream team may be on offer. A coronation before Christmas seems likely, and I don’t mean that of King Charles.
15th and 16th October 2022
Chancellor Hunt
It was Jeremy Hunt who got rolled out to do the Sunday political shows. He claimed that Truss was in charge, and not him, and that she would continue as PM. But clearly there are changes afoot. He would not rule out spending cuts and tax rises. Basically, apart perhaps from the fuel price caps, all the Trussonomics has been thrown out of the window. We can expect Osborne-style austerity for the next few years, I suppose.
But that assumes a lot. The next fiscal event – still pencilled in for Halloween – will be, more or less, a proper budget, with OBR reports and things. This might help put things back on an even keel. If the present administration even gets that far.
Some MPs are putting their heads above the parapet and positively calling for Truss to go. There are three so far – the usual suspects – wets and splitters all of them. But many others agree with them from all sides of the Conservative party. Mel Stride seems to be key figure in all of this.
Meanwhile, the TV whingers, such as Zoe (Guardian) Williams and Christina Patterson want a general election NOW! They’ll be lucky.
17th October 2022
Early Doors
At some ungodly hour this morning, new Prime Minister Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced to the markets that there was no need to panic as he would very soon make a statement which would soothe their nerves, and they would not have to wait until his Commons statement, due in the afternoon.
And so, he did make an early announcement. Basically, that Kwasi had got it all completely wrong on September 23rd, and apart from a few bits that had already passed through the Commons and the energy bailout, everything was scrapped. It’s almost as if the last three and a bit weeks hadn’t happened. How Rishi Sunak’s supporters cheered.
Sir Kier Starmer wanted to know why Truss had sacked Kwasi Kwarteng. So, he asked an urgent question in the Commons. Liz was ‘too busy’ to answer, so Penny Mordaunt was sent instead, saying that Truss was prevented from coming to the House due to other very important matters. Only for Truss to turn up just in time for the next bit of business in the House – Hunt’s repeat performance of the morning’s announcement for the benefit of MPs.
So, what was Truss’ very important business? It was a ‘routine’ meeting with Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, who presumably was wearing his best grey suit and telling her to resign. She hasn’t. Yet.
18th October 2022
Unpopular
The support for energy prices – originally intended to continue until well into next year – will stop after 6 months, when it will be reviewed by the Treasury. Also worthy of note is that taxes on alcohol will be increased next year after all. It was supposed to be frozen to help the hospitality industry and good honest boozers everywhere. No surprise really. As Health Secretary – and afterwards – Hunt was well known as a nanny-statist. Anyway, that was all yesterday’s news. What happened today?
Not a lot really. Much digestion of yesterday’s proceedings. It has not gone down especially well with the voters. Even Tory members, according to polling, want Boris back. They certainly don’t want Truss anymore. Nor Jeremy Hunt. Sunak’s rating has gone up but is hardly through the roof. But it doesn’t matter. Tory members won’t get a choice once the MPs remove Truss. It will be a coronation for somebody.
The war over spending cuts has begun. At least one minister has openly said he’ll resign if defence expenditure isn’t increased soon, as Truss had once promised. More are expected to follow suit. The idea to end the ‘triple lock’ on state pensions is attracting much resistance too, although to be fair, the Government haven’t suggested it will be ended. They’ve just not promised that it won’t.
Liz seems to have little chance of survival. She’s the most unpopular PM ‘since records began’.
19th October 2022
Frack it!
What a day. After a tolerable PMQs, given the circumstances, things went from bad to worse. The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, resigned or was sacked. Officially, she resigned after sending a government e-mail via her personal e-mail account. This is in breach of the ministerial code and is not allowed (Hillary Clinton knows about such things). So, she resigned saying that if one makes mistakes, one should resign. Or she was sacked following a stand-up row with Liz Truss about immigration policy. Truss wants more immigration and Suella wants less, to put it very simply.
Whatever the reason, Braverman is Home Secretary no more. And we have Grant Shapps in place. Another substitute comes off the bench and enters the Cabinet. Some will see the fine hand of Jeremy Hunt in all this. Braverman will surely stick the knife in tomorrow when she makes a resignation statement to the House of Commons[4].
Next there was an opposition day vote about fracking. It’s too complex to explain here, but basically the Government said that it was not just a three-line whip, but a vote of confidence issue for Tory MPs to oppose the Labour party’s motion. In other words, Tory MPs might lose the whip if they voted the wrong way on this. Chaos followed. A lot of Tory MPs have NIMBY constituents and so they don’t want to even seem to vote in favour of fracking. So, a brutal whipping operation was put in place. Only for some government minister to say at the end of the debate that it wasn’t a confidence vote after all.
To cut a long story short, the Chief Whip Wendy Morton and her deputy resigned, probably because they’d been led up the garden path. There were all sorts of rumours. One was that Liz Truss was chasing the Chief Whip around the voting lobby to try to get her not to resign, and this meant that Truss herself did not get around to voting. It was also rumoured that the Chief Whip herself voted the wrong way. I suspect that none of this is true, but Labour’s Chris Bryant said that some Tories were bullied and manhandled into the lobby to support the Government. Whatever actually happened, the Government did win the vote by a reasonable margin. Boris Johnson was on holiday.
It now seems that neither whip has resigned, and all is peace and light in the whip’s office, but I suspect that we’ll hear more of this tomorrow. Needless to say, many backbenchers are appalled at this massive cock-up. And who can blame them.
20th October 2022
No Grey Suits
The Men in Grey Suits turned up today. Well, Sir Graham Brady did, wearing what looked like a dark blue suit, which was disappointing. He arrived at Number 10 this morning, apparently at the request of the PM (which I doubt). He was followed not too much later by the Party Chairman Jake Berry. I don’t know if he had a grey suit on, but I expect so[5].
In any case, Liz was soon out at the Number 10 lectern in Downing Street, saying that she had phoned the King and told him that she was going to resign, having been unable to ‘deliver the mandate on which she was elected’.
There’s now going to be another leadership race. Nominations will close on Monday and candidates will need at least 100 nominations from Conservative MPs to progress. This means that a maximum of 3 candidates are possible. One will be eliminated by MPs, leaving two to go to the party member’s vote, which will be held online. If online voting isn’t too open to hacking by Mr Putin’s bot farms. Anyway, we will have a new PM by Friday next week.
Early favourite is a relative unknown by the name of Boris Johnson. Second favourite is Rishi Sunak. Boris will win if he actually puts his name forward, which I doubt as he can make more money elsewhere. Liz could stay on as PM until next week, so its not farewell just yet.
21st October 2022
Boris on the Way Back?
Only Penny Mordaunt has officially declared her candidacy. Yet. But as I write this, Boris and his family are on their way back from holiday in the Caribbean.
According to Guido, and others who track these things, Rishi – should he run – has already got enough support to continue to the members’ stage of the competition. Boris has some way to go, but it appears that he might get there. Again, Boris has not officially declared, but his supporters say he will definitely be in the running.
Penny could manage to get 100, but at this stage it seems very doubtful. I don’t think that she’ll make it. The contest is already too polarised, so it will be Boris v Rishi for the members to choose from. Unless it all changes by Monday afternoon. I now think that this will go to the party members. I can’t see either of these two dropping out for the sake of ‘party unity’ or a dream team of both of them. They hate each other too much and there is too much at stake.
22nd and 23rd October 2022
Boris is Out
Rishi is running. Boris isn’t. Penny hasn’t got enough nominees unless there’s a sudden rush of Boris fans to support her, so it’s a coronation tomorrow and that’s that.
Boris decided that he was too divisive and couldn’t carry the Parliamentary party with him. He claimed that he did have the minimum 100 supporters in Parliament to get him onto the members’ ballot, but I doubt it[6]. Guido certainly didn’t have that many MPs publicly declaring support for him, and while there were enough undeclared MPs to account for this difference, I suspect either Boris or his supporters were lying, or MPs were lying to him. Either way, he’s out. My guess is that Sunak will be party leader and de facto PM tomorrow, but it may be Tuesday by the time he sees the King.
Speculatively, I expect Hunt to stay as Chancellor. Boris could get something relatively minor, like DCMS, but Rishi has no need to give Boris anything. Truss will not be invited to stay in Cabinet, but I wouldn’t rule her out forever.
24th October 2022
It’s Rishi!
As expected, Penny Mordaunt didn’t get enough support – just short by one or two – and so followed Boris out of the door. So, at 2 pm Sir Graham Brady declared Rishi Sunak duly elected as Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and hence Prime Minister elect.
A lot of Twitter Borisites are very upset about this, claiming that Tory members should have had the chance to vote for ‘anyone but Rishi (globalist stooge) Sunak’. But these people either weren’t party members to begin with or resigned some time ago. I don’t think the average current member cares too much. They had their chance a month or so ago, voted for Truss and so messed it all up. They’re probably quite glad not to have any responsibility. I remember when members had no vote whatsoever – and the party membership was much higher than it is now.
Rishi has not seen the King yet, neither has Truss. I expect that these formalities will happen tomorrow. No word from Liz herself today. A few words are expected from her in the morning, after which I expect that she’ll be joining Boris at some holiday resort for the next few weeks.
25th October 2022
The End
It was all made official today. Liz saw the King and resigned as PM. Rishi saw the King and became PM. The Cabinet reshuffle began. Larry the Downing Street cat stays as Chief Mouser. And that’s the end of this Liz Truss blog.
A short sequel on the historic significance of the Truss premiership will have to wait for at least 10 years. I wouldn’t want to do one now. Time will be needed before a true judgement can be made. But I will say that most of her problems really began under Boris – and Rishi as Chancellor – with their ridiculously high spending on COVID – test & trace, Lockdowns, Furlough payments, ‘Eat out to help out’ – all costing billions. When the war in Ukraine started there was nothing left in the war chest. Then add on the cost of the cap on energy prices and Government finances were clearly wobbly. Proposing major tax cuts on top with no proposals for savings to cover the cost – it was hopeless. Perhaps best to let Rishi, in lieu of Boris, sort out his own mess.
[1] The ‘Fiscal Plan’.
[3] They really are set out this way on paper – or autocue- for the speaker to read out.
[4] She didn’t bother for reasons that will become obvious.
[5] He wasn’t. What is the world coming to?
[6] Sir Graham Brady later confirmed that Boris had got over 100 nominations. So, I was wrong. Again.
Sage Vals 