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My post last Friday was about Liz Truss’s 4,000 word essay in The Telegraph, her 49-day premiership and the support her mandate for growth subsequently received.
There is still tension among conservative and Conservative voters about the direction of Rishi Sunak’s premiership, especially with Jeremy Hunt installed as Chancellor in the last days of Truss’s time in No. 10. Jeremy Hunt is a man no Conservative Party member ever wanted to see in either No. 10 or No. 11 Downing Street. Since October 2022, he seems to be running the country.
Even worse, Conservative Party members were denied a vote for Truss’s successor. The Parliamentary Conservative Party elected Sunak and were delighted to crown their man without input from people they consider as plebs. That said, not every Conservative MP was happy with the new Prime Minister.
Public sentiment is not in Sunak’s favour, as this poll from December 19 shows. Liz had far higher ratings in September:
Guido Fawkes wrote (red emphases his):
New polling from Ipsos MORI continues to show the dire state of Rishi Sunak’s party. The poll puts Labour’s lead at 26%, up 7% on November, with the Conservatives’ trust on the economy falling. On public trust to secure economic growth specifically, Rishi’s ratings are now significantly lower than Liz Truss managed. Liz had a lead of 15% over Labour, Rishi is level.
Economic statistics paint a similar picture. The economy outperformed other months in October, registering 0.5% growth in the one month Liz was PM. It seems the public had good reason to initially back Liz’s pro-growth message.
This might seem like ancient history, but Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Budget is due in March. He presented his Autumn statement in November.
On November 19, Liz Truss’s favourite economist Patrick Minford wrote an analysis of Hunt’s budget for The Telegraph. The opening and closing paragraphs follow:
Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement has presented us with big tax rises and spending cuts in order to avoid a large “fiscal hole” created by the need to have the debt-to-GDP ratio falling by 2027-28 – the new “fiscal rule”. But it will worsen the recession and ironically will also wreck the public finances.
In short, the Autumn Statement is a wrecking ball – worsening recession, damaging growth, degrading the long-run public finances and even raising inflationary wage costs. Commons amendments are needed to restore sanity to these plans.
He had a much better critique for non-economists on November 5. While he disapproved of Truss’s and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget delivery, he wrote (purple emphases mine):
The danger now is serious. Sunak and Hunt are set on a course that will turn a stagnant economy into a shrinking one, with unemployment rising, firms folding and the quality of public services declining even more.
The whole notion of a growth agenda has tragically been rendered toxic. The track we are now on – fiscal tightening (tax rises and spending cuts) plus monetary tightening (high interest and mortgage payments) – has been tried before and invariably leads us further on to the scorched earth of more tax rises, more spending cuts and a slump in living standards.
Politically, for the Conservatives, the outlook is grim. If Sunak and Hunt press ahead in the November 17 Autumn Statement with their triple whammy of tax rises, spending cuts and higher mortgage rates, the country is unlikely to forgive them.
That same day, The Telegraph released results of an Ipsos UK poll showing that voters were deeply unhappy with Hunt’s tax increases:
Tory MPs have told The Telegraph that the decision by Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, to raise Britain’s tax burden to the highest level since the Second World War on Thursday was the “economics of a madhouse” that has made the party “more Labour than Labour”.
Polling conducted for The Telegraph by Ipsos UK shows the statement has also failed to reassure voters, with almost half of the public reporting they feel more concerned about the economy and their personal finances than they did beforehand …
In the wake of the Autumn Statement, three Conservative MPs told The Telegraph they had visited constituency associations and been met with hostility from members about the tax increases.
“I had an association dinner the day after the Kwasi and Liz mini-Budget – everybody was full of enthusiasm, they were excited again, they could see Conservative policies coming over the hill and they were cheering,” said one backbencher. In contrast, the atmosphere at a dinner following Mr Hunt’s statement was “unbelievably subdued”, they said.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, said: “Conservative members are fretful, I think it’s fair to say. They are loyal but fretful.
“They want to support Rishi [Sunak] and they want him to do well, but they are concerned about where we are on the economy.”
Sir Bill Cash, the veteran Tory MP, said there was a “sense of bewilderment by some people at seeing things brought forward that are not at all Conservative economically or politically”.
Another senior Tory MP said the party’s supporters were “furious” about the statement, which they described as “the economics of a madhouse”.
“Our voters feel as if frankly we’ve abandoned them and that we’ve become more Labour than Labour,” they said.
On November 20, Liam Halligan, GB News’s economics editor who also writes for The Telegraph, wrote, ‘The Chancellor is taking us for fools with his cynical stealth budget’:
This Autumn Statement was based on a false premise: that the UK is on the brink of fiscal implosion and set to be shut out of international bond markets.
As a result, Chancellor Hunt is imposing very substantial tax rises at precisely the wrong time, which risks driving an already shrinking economy deeper into recession and undermining our public finances even more.
Hours before Jeremy Hunt stood up in the House of Commons on Thursday, the 10-year gilt yield – the annual interest the Government must pay on a new decade-long loan – was 3.14pc.
Ahead of the now notorious mini-Budget in late September, that same yield was 3.49pc – considerably higher.
It’s not as if Britain is so much more indebted than other comparable countries. While our national debt stands at 97pc of GDP, the figures in France, Canada and the US are 115pc, 116pc and 132pc respectively. Across the G7, only Germany has less public debt than the UK.
But prior to the measures proposed by then Prime Minister Liz Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, no-one was seriously questioning the UK Government’s solvency.
They weren’t before this Autumn Statement either, as illustrated by the fact that – partly because of measures Hunt already implemented since becoming Chancellor – gilt yields had fallen by a third in little more than a month.
As such, was it really necessary, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, to drive the tax burden even higher? Government revenue as a share of GDP – 33.1pc as recently as 2019 – is now heading for 37.1pc, the highest sustained level since World War Two.
… no other major economy is imposing sharp tax rises in the face of a slowdown.
The UK is heading “into a storm”, as Hunt said. But while he attempted to come across as humane – the word “compassion” appeared five times in a speech lasting less than an hour – the Chancellor came across as rather cynical …
It’s as if he thinks we are fools and won’t notice we’re paying much more if most headline tax rates stay put.
When Nigel Lawson introduced the 40p rate of tax in 1988, it was paid by only the highest earning 1.7 million workers. Now, those paying income tax at 40pc or more will soon number almost 8 million – a fifth of the workforce …
This is the kind of fiscal management typically associated with Labour, not the Tories. And that could turn out to be ironic – given the voter anger that will be generated as this Autumn Statement sinks in.
Meanwhile, on another front, Rishi Sunak was undoing Truss’s plan for a streamlined, more controlled No. 10. ‘SpAds’ below means ‘special advisers’. I note that Sunak’s welcome into No. 10 was much more muted than Liz Truss’s:
Sunak also rejected Truss’s plan for more affordable childcare.
On New Year’s Day 2023, The Telegraph reported:
Rishi Sunak has shelved plans for a major overhaul of the childcare system aimed at saving parents money and helping them back into work.
Liz Truss had been looking at increasing free childcare support by 20 hours a week and ending mandated staff-child ratios in what her team described as a “big bang” shake-up of the system.
But The Telegraph understands that the policy drive has been postponed indefinitely, with the scale of reforms now being considered expected to be much smaller. Any proposed changes to the rules around childcare provision are not expected for months – a much later timescale than Ms Truss’s push for announcements before Christmas …
The cost of childcare is often named by MPs as a major concern for constituents, with backers of reform arguing that better, cheaper provision would allow more parents to return to work, boosting the economy.
A stark drop in the number of facilities offering childcare has been a trend for years, with an overall fall of 10,600 providers since August 2019 in England – a 14 per cent drop.
Two days later, The Times reported, ‘Don’t ditch my childcare reforms, Liz Truss tells Rishi Sunak’.
Here we see Conservative MP Simon Clarke appearing. He will be a Trussite force with which to be reckoned this year. He was also a Treasury minister when Sunak was Chancellor:
Liz Truss has warned Rishi Sunak not to scrap her childcare reforms amid growing frustration from Tory MPs over the “unaffordable” costs facing parents …
Supporters of Truss, including Simon Clarke, the former levelling up secretary, are among those who have publicly criticised Sunak’s plans.
Truss herself is understood to disapprove of the prime minister’s reluctance to embrace significant reform.
A source close to Truss told The Times: “Excessive bureaucracy is making childcare in England increasingly unaffordable for many parents. The system needs to be reformed in order to boost growth and opportunity. Junking Liz’s plans for this critical policy area seems economically and politically counterproductive.”
Kit Malthouse, the education secretary under Truss, urged Sunak to “push the go button as soon as possible”.
“The current system is a complicated Heath-Robinson affair that means no one, parents or providers, is happy. It’s fundamental for economic growth that parents are supported in work and my team and I had formed up a ‘Childcare Big Bang’ plan to do just that,” he said …
Amid concerns from Tory MPs over the spiralling costs of childcare, the education select committee will launch an inquiry into the problem.
On January 5, The Times‘s Katy Balls told us more about Simon Clarke’s mobilisation of Trussite MPs:
Shortly before Christmas, in a darkly lit Chinese restaurant near the Home Office, a scene played out that would alarm any government whip. There, in a corner of Ma La Sichuan, was Liz Truss, dining with three of her allies. Simon Clarke, her one-time levelling up secretary, and Ranil Jayawardena, her environment secretary, were present. They were joined by her former parliamentary private secretary Rob Butler. None of them have prospered under Rishi Sunak.
… Clarke has already opened hostilities with Rishi Sunak, pushing to overturn the ban on new onshore wind farms. He’s backed by Truss and Boris Johnson. He’s also setting up a new group of Tories dedicated to that Trussite watchword: growth …
The less-than-edifying circumstances of Truss’s ejection from Downing Street mean that both she and members of her cabinet have been keeping largely quiet …
But as the Trussites emerge from a period of reflection, they could pose the bigger threat in an ideological fight. They did, after all, triumph over Sunak in the argument with Tory members. “These MPs haven’t suddenly changed their worldview,” says a former adviser to Truss. As Clarke put it in an interview with The Spectator this week, “There is a real risk that with Liz’s eclipse comes the wider rejection of an entire school of Tory thinking.” He warns that “a battle for the soul of the Tory party is underway”.
The good news for Sunak is that as things stand, a large chunk of these MPs don’t want to throw another prime minister out of Downing Street. Free market Tories in marginal seats, such as Clarke and Jacob Rees-Mogg, will be nervous about more leader volatility ahead of the next election. But they also don’t want to sit back and do nothing for two years. Instead, they want to see Sunak expand his ambitions for growth across housing, childcare and work …
Clarke’s new outfit — Next Generation Tories — is aimed at bringing younger voters to the party, a cause few would disagree with. But it is ultimately free market with a focus on housebuilding and planning.
Truss could join the fray next. She has hired a press chief and there are talks about the possibility of her fronting or taking a role with a think tank. Not everyone thinks it is such a great idea. “I think silence is undervalued,” says a former aide …
The Truss project didn’t survive long enough for her to publish her growth plan, but a draft of the eight-page document offers a taste of the kind of policies this group is likely to advocate. They include mobile phone planning reform (relaxing planning regulations to extend 5G coverage across the country) which aides predicted would cause a parliamentary row over the digging required for new cabling. On childcare, easing restrictions for childminders; on farming, slowing cuts to subsidies to give the average farmer an extra £7,000 over two years; and on immigration, removing students and temporary workers from the net migration statistics as part of a looser policy to bolster the economy.
… while some MPs undoubtedly backed Truss for careerist reasons, plenty more regard her reform pitch as the right one. “If they pick their fight well, they’ll start a debate on direction,” says an MP who backed Sunak.
Katy Balls, who also writes for The Spectator, revealed Truss’s growth plan in the magazine on February 9. It is eminently sensible and achievable. Truss planned for much of it to be achieved in 2023. Readers may peruse it at their leisure, as there are several tables to examine.
Returning to January 2023, the Financial Times took issue with Conservative efforts to reduce the deficit. They really have moved ever leftward over the years:
It also became clear that Truss wasn’t such a bad PM after all. The UK’s GDP results for November 2022 were better than expected:
On January 31, The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley wrote that the IMF owes Liz Truss an apology. He reminded us of their previous critique in light of their new forecast:
Conservative Greg Clark made one very good point: this is only a forecast. The IMF has been known to get those wrong.
Moreover, it’s the same clever-clogs IMF that advised us not to cut tax last year that now tells us our economy is in a nosedive because we raised taxes. Somebody owes Liz Truss an apology.
The Telegraph should apologise, too, for putting words in Truss’s mouth when headlining her 4,000-word essay of February 4, their grand exclusive. The problem is that people who didn’t read the essay, probably among them Andrew Neil, repeated the headline:
The day after Truss’s essay appeared, her Conservative Party chairman, Red Wall MP Jake Berry, told the BBC that voters in the North had enough of the status quo and wanted a new way forward, i.e. Truss’s policies. Guido Fawkes has the video:
That day, Grant Shapps told the BBC that Truss’s instinct to lower taxes was correct in principle, but she collided with reality. A Twitter user pointed out Shapps’s error. Truss’s policies would have kept the UK second only to Germany in debt-to-GDP ratio of the G7 nations:
James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner mogul, would strongly disagree with Shapps. On January 19, The Guardian recapped an article he wrote for The Telegraph in which he criticised the lack of UK growth:
The founder of the eponymous vacuum cleaner firm said “growth has become a dirty word” under the current leadership and that on current trends, the average British family will be poorer than their Polish counterpart by 2030.
Dyson, a prominent supporter of Brexit, criticised the government’s “ever higher tax bills” for the private sector and regulations, saying it is imposing “tax upon tax on companies in the belief that penalising the private sector is a free win at the ballot box”.
“This is as shortsighted as it is stupid,” Dyson wrote in the Telegraph on Thursday. “In the global economy, companies will simply choose to transfer jobs and invest elsewhere. Our country has an illustrious history of enterprise and innovation, born of a culture which we are in the process of extinguishing. We have got through the worst of Covid, but risk wasting the recovery.”
Dyson said the government’s failure to get workers back to the office after the pandemic had “badly damaged the country’s work ethic”, arguing face-to-face interaction was important, including for the training of new and young employees. He also claimed the growth of his business, which makes vacuum cleaners, fans and hairdryers, had happened largely “despite government, rather than because of it”.
However, he concluded that “it is not too late for Britain to shake off its Covid inertia” if the government acts fast. “Starting with the spring budget in March, it must incentivise private innovation and demonstrate its ambition for growth,” Dyson wrote.
The government is under pressure to reduce taxes for households and businesses in the spring budget to avoid a damaging and long-lasting recession.
On Sunday, February 12, John Redwood, who has been an MP since the Thatcher years, made an appeal on Sky News for more tax cuts, beginning with corporation tax (Guido has the video):
The following day, he wrote more about it in his online diary, pointing out that high corporation tax has caused AstraZeneca to renege on future expansion in the UK. Instead, the company will be moving to Ireland:
The decision by Astra Zeneca to put a major new investment into Ireland where they charge 15% business tax compared to our new rate of 25% shows just how stupid our high tax policy is. Instead of getting 15% of a good stream of profits over many years alongside income tax and VAT on all the well paid ,jobs they bring, the UK has settled not to have any of it. 25% of nothing is nothing.
The same folly is evident in the North Sea. In a rush to get a bit more revenue this year with high and erratic windfall taxes, the government has delayed or lost important investments in new gas and oil fields. Instead of generating more well paid jobs and plenty of tax revenue on the output over the next decade or two, we opt to import and to pay huge taxes away to foreign governments on all the imports. Just one of the fields not currently going ahead would generate a gross £25bn over its life, with a lot of that passing directly to the Treasury in taxes.
Ireland makes my case perfectly. With a much lower rate of business tax than us Ireland enjoys a much higher proportion of its revenues from business tax because so many businesses go there to set up an HQ and to invest in plants and offices. Ireland has a much higher per capita national income than us thanks to all the foreign investors congregating there to create jobs and spend money. The UK should copy them with a 15% tax rate as Jeremy Hunt himself proposed last summer. We too would get more revenue and have higher per capita average incomes. Enthusiasts for the EU are always urging us to align more with our Irish neighbours. This would be a great way of doing just that.
When Margaret Thatcher and her Chancellors cut higher rate income tax from 83% to 60% and then to 40% the amount of income tax paid by the better off rose in cash terms, rose in real terms, and rose as a proportion of total income tax. What’s not to like for all involved? When George Osborne drove UK corporation tax down gradually to 19%, the take from company tax went up, not down. So why do OBR and Treasury models tell Ministers any cut in tax rates will lead to a reduction in tax revenue we cannot afford? History and modern experience suggests otherwise.
Last week, economic growth continued to be a hot topic. On February 24, The Telegraph published two letters from their readers on the subject.
One reads:
SIR – For many years we have believed that we live in a rich country – one that can afford top-class services such as the NHS, social support and good roads, railways and other infrastructure, and can buy whatever food it needs from abroad rather than growing it.
Sadly this is no longer the case. Britain does not generate enough wealth to support its needs, and has been borrowing ever more to make up the shortfall. Unless we make a fundamental change and start to grow our economy, we will not be able to afford the things we think we are entitled to.
The other says:
SIR – When will the Chancellor and Prime Minister remember that taxation discourages whatever it falls on, and that, in many cases, raising tax rates leads to lower overall receipts?
… we have ended in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative government – a Conservative government – scuttling around raising corporation tax at precisely the moment it should be lowering it in order to encourage businesses to set up and invest in our economy.
Meanwhile, the wagons have been circling from both the Sunak and the pro-Boris camps.
On the Sunak side, Lee Anderson is now the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party and, on February 21, another Red Wall MP, Brendan Clarke-Smith, was appointed to succeed Anderson as leader of the Blue Collar Conservatives. While both will do brilliantly, is it just a cynical move from Sunak to keep Red Wall voters onside with no policy changes from Downing Street?
On the pro-Boris/Liz side of the equation, David Campbell-Bannerman, a former Conservative MEP and head of the new Conservative Democratic Organisation, says that Conservative associations across England are prepared to de-select MPs who resigned when Boris was PM so that he was himself forced to stand down. They are also angry that they voted for Liz Truss and found her similarly deposed within a few weeks.
On February 23, The Telegraph‘s Christopher Hope reported:
Members are particularly irked that they chose both Mr Johnson and Ms Truss, only for MPs to force out both and eventually appoint Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister. During the Conservative leadership campaign last summer, members voted by 57.4 per cent to 42.6 per cent for Ms Truss over Mr Sunak.
Last weekend Damian Green, the former de facto deputy Prime Minister under Theresa May, was not selected to fight the Weald of Kent seat at the next general election. There were reports that this was because of anger at his criticism of Mr Johnson when he was prime minister, although this was disputed by friends of Mr Green.
Scores of MPs are facing votes on whether they will stand at the next election before July 23 – known as “vesting day” in Conservative Central Office – because of a shake-up of constituency boundaries.
There were suggestions in Westminster that Sir Richard Graham, who was critical of Mr Johnson, might not be readopted by his party at a meeting of local Tories in Gloucester on Friday. Sir Richard urged Conservative colleagues to focus on defeating Labour rather than party disunity …
Mr Campbell-Bannerman, a former Conservative MEP, told The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast: “I get the feel of a reckoning – MPs being held to account. MPs have caused this chaos by bringing down Boris.
“There were about 60 MPs who signed letters or resigned or said Boris should go. There’s more than that, maybe 150, who didn’t want Boris. I’m not saying Boris was flawless. He certainly wasn’t. But look at the disaster that has followed getting rid of him. Surely they should have toughed it out, got him to improve performance?”
He added that “potentially” dozens of these MPs could now find that they are not adopted as candidates by their local parties, adding: “A lot of MPs will be coming up for selection and they will be held to account.
“I’m not advocating it, but what I’m advocating is the members have the right and the power to do this. Central Office should back off and they should be allowed to make their decisions.
“We don’t have a hit list or a target list. We’re not operating like that. But we support members and I think we’ve empowered members to take back control, to say hang on, this isn’t good enough. We’re not getting a good enough choice here. We want to do it our way.”
He said MPs were “being held to account for plunging the party into crisis”, pointing out that the Tories had plummeted in the polls.
“We’ve really gone down badly, due to the chaos. And you can point fingers at Liz Truss, but Liz Truss would not have been there if they had kept Boris and Rishi wouldn’t be there if they had kept Boris,” he added.
Good! Well said!
Liz Truss stood by Boris all the way until the end. Her South West Norfolk Conservative association awarded her with reselection for the next general election:
An indirect compliment came Liz’s way from Labour’s Keir Starmer. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. He, too, is touting a growth-led economy — for now, at least:
An exciting year lies ahead, one that will make or break either the Conservatives or Labour ahead of 2024’s general election.
Yesterday’s post looked back at Liz Truss’s leadership campaign during the latter half of August 2022.
As September started, most ordinary conservatives were happy to know that Liz was likely to be the next Party leader.
On September 3, the veteran journalist Janet Daley wrote an empathetic column about her for The Telegraph, ‘Ignore conventional wisdom: the new prime minister is not doomed’.
CCHQ — Conservative Party headquarters — had not yet finished counting the members’ votes, but Daley thought that people would give Liz their support in the face of the cost of living crisis (emphases mine):
Given that virtually everyone in the country accepts that the current dilemma is both desperately urgent and, in the short term, utterly hopeless, Liz Truss will begin her premiership with the lowest possible expectations and, given the inherent fair mindedness of the British population, even a little sympathy …
Whether Daley realised it or not at the time, she hit the proverbial on the head in the second paragraph:
Standing up in the House – or better, at that podium in Downing Street – to address a nation that has been terrified out of its wits by predictions of the devastation that is to come, will look like an act of singular bravery and resolve. Most of the country, apart from sworn partisan enemies (the most pathologically vicious of whom are inside her own party), will be willing her to succeed in whatever terms success can be measured, against the impossible odds. She will not have a honeymoon as such, but she can gain points for rigorous resolve and determination – especially if she seems to be in touch with the justifiable fears of real people. That will be the key to it. Every word, every pronouncement, every policy will have to be communicated with infinite humaneness: genuine compassion for the impact that this crisis is having on daily life and future prospects …
Although this was Daley’s prediction at the time, this is how things played out with most fair-minded voters:
Ordinary people who do not have an ideological dog in the fight know that this is uncharted territory. What disagreements there are – and will continue to be – over the right way to proceed will be accepted as reasonable argument and not necessarily discrediting to the sitting government providing that it remains proactive and committed.
I particularly liked the next bit, which posited that, as the year went on, things might turn out to be less gloomy than forecast during the summer:
… there is the possibility of some good (or less bad) news in the coming months. What if the combined efforts and ingenuity of the Western economies produce more optimistic projections for energy subsistence sooner than was expected? Already we hear that gas storage in Europe is exceeding expectations and, as a result, commodity prices are beginning to fall.
However, Daley, for all her brilliance, did not foresee the savage attack from Liz’s fellow MPs.
North of the border, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was still seething that Liz had called her an ‘attention seeker’ during the campaign:
During her premiership, Liz never did contact Nicola Sturgeon.
On Monday, September 5, these were the main news stories. We could rely on The Independent for negative stories about our new Prime Minister:
The Mail on Sunday‘s Dan Hodges was thrilled. He had predicted Liz’s ascendancy on Boxing Day 2021:
His article says that Liz’s rise began when she replaced Dominic Raab as Foreign Secretary. During his time in post, he said that all ministers (MPs) serving under him were to be called Junior Ministers (JMs) rather than Ministers. The MPs were none too happy with that move.
Then, when Biden’s sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan took place in mid-August 2021, Raab was on holiday in the Mediterranean with his family. Boris replaced him with Liz:
On her first day in the job, she issued a note to her officials ordering the JM designation be dropped.
‘Liz gets it,’ a Minister said. ‘She knows how to treat her colleagues properly. It’s one of the reasons she’s been so successful.’
Spectacularly successful. 2021 has been Liz Truss’s year …
She’s now in charge of masterminding the final fraught stages of Britain’s EU exit.
And – were Boris to suddenly fall beneath a heavily laden wine-and-cheese platter – favourite to replace him in No 10 Downing Street.
At the time Hodges had written his article, Boris was becoming more embroiled in Partygate allegations, which had begun in November 2021.
We thought that Boris had a diverse Cabinet. It was nothing like Liz’s, however:
The Mail reported:
Ms Truss is expected to make long-term ally Kwasi Kwarteng chancellor, with Suella Braverman moving to the Home Office and James Cleverly to the Foreign Office.
If selected, Mr Kwarteng would be the fourth non-white chancellor in a row, directly following Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak and Nadhim Zahawi.
And Ms Braverman would become the third minority home secretary, after Priti Patel and Mr Javid.
Mr Cleverly, currently the Education Secretary, would become the first ever non-white foreign Secretary.
Cleverly continues in post today under Rishi Sunak, as does Kemi Badenoch, International Trade Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities:
Would the media — our diversity champions — give her, our third female Conservative PM, any credit? Never:
On a related note, Liz gave us a Health and Social Care Secretary with a fondness for cigars, the likes of which we had not seen since Kenneth Clarke in the 1990s. Here is Thérèse Coffey, one of her close friends, pictured at a Spectator summer party a few years ago:
However, just as important were the people no longer in Cabinet. This is worth noting. Some said later that this is where Liz’s premiership became unstuck, that she should have held on to some opponents:
There is expected to be a clear out of Rishi Sunak and his supporters after a bitter blue-on-blue campaign in which he seems almost certain to be defeated.
Into the political wilderness too will go Michael Gove, after serving under the three previous PMs. Dominic Raab, the First Secretary of State, and Boris Johnson himself, are expected to return to the backbenches. Both have question marks over whether they can hold on to their seats at the next election.
I think she did the right thing. We’d seen enough of all of them over the past three years and, in Gove’s case, much longer than that.
They would not have been friendly:
Other backbench Conservative MPs were unfriendly, too:
Rishi was unaccustomed to being on the backbenches, and his first opportunity to participate in a debate came that Tuesday afternoon. Guido Fawkes reported:
Backbencher Rishi Sunak making a debate intervention today on “unavoidably small hospitals“:
Thank you for accommodating me at a late stage in this debate. I hadn’t planned on speaking but this morning I saw the order paper and it turns out I had more time on my hands than I anticipated.
Tuesday’s Mail pointed out the Conservatives have had three women PMs. Labour have had none, not even a female Party leader:
We were also entering a new generation of PMs who were younger than we:
Liz’s supporters in the media were hopeful:
James Johnson’s Politico article said:
The main qualities the public look for from their leaders in the 2020s are honesty, strength and authenticity. It will require care and calibration, but Truss has a path to come closer to these than Starmer.
If she stands in Downing Street on Tuesday and levels with the public about the challenge ahead and tells them to judge her on results in two years’ time she will not only create a reputational shield for herself but also have the opportunity to make a novel mark on the public — many of whom will be tuning into her for the first time — as someone who gives it to them straight.
Some have suggested that her more libertarian instincts and views, such as decrying a focus on redistribution, make her unelectable. But voters, especially those new Tory converts in the Red Wall, value consistency — a quality they feel is so lacking in modern politicians — as much as an individual policy position. Focus group attendees praise Thatcher and Blair when asked if there are any politicians they admire not because they agreed with them on everything, but because they felt they held beliefs and stuck with them.
One of Truss’ biggest applause lines in one of the early debates was that she is not the slickest media performer, but she gets things done. If she successfully harnesses that sentiment, the ideological gap between her and the public on specific issues or an awkward communication style may matter less …
It could all come undone, of course. Moments in the summer would have been similarly disastrous for Truss in a live election campaign environment. The calibre of her team will be crucial …
There is a pathway for the Conservative Party. If followed, the optimistic scenario for Liz Truss is underpriced.
Like the aforementioned Janet Daley, James Johnson underestimated the opposition on the Conservative backbenches.
After flying back from Aberdeen, the closest airport to Balmoral, Liz gave her first address as Prime Minister. Heavy downpours punctuated the afternoon. The weather, combined with London’s rush hour traffic, delayed her. The rain let up long enough for her to give her speech, in which she borrowed a line from Churchill, ‘Action this day’. Her husband, Hugh O’Leary, stood on the sidelines:
Liz’s first call to a foreign leader was to Volodymyr Zelenskyy to reassure him that the UK would continue to support Ukraine:
One of her economic advisers, Gerard Lyons, was confident that a low-tax economic plan would help to stave off recession:
The cost of living crisis made Wednesday’s papers, September 7. These front pages show Liz’s husband:
The Telegraph borrowed words from her speech, ‘We can ride out the storm’:
Wednesday saw Liz’s first Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs). This is the full half hour:
She managed to lob a few witty grenades Keir Starmer’s way.
To roars of applause from Conservatives, Liz pointed out that there is nothing new about a Labour leader wanting tax rises:
Guido noted that the comment painted Starmer the same colour as his predecessor, the very left-wing Jeremy Corbyn (emphases his):
It only took a free marketeer PM to bring out Starmer’s inner Corbynite…
Directing her aim at both Starmer and Corbyn, she asked aloud why Labour can’t find a leader who lives outside of north London, home of the metropolitan elite. She also wondered why there had been no female Labour Party leaders (video):
After PMQs ended, Guido said that Liz’s Cabinet was more diverse than Labour’s shadow team, although you cannot see that in the photo that he posted. He calculated:
… up to seven BAME members: 23% of the total.
By Guido’s reckoning, Labour’s shadow cabinet has six ethnic minority members, or a mere 20%.
Meanwhile, Labour continue thrashing the Tories on gender and state school educations. All completely irrelevant, but nonetheless, interesting to note …
That evening, The Telegraph analysed Liz’s first full day as PM.
Madeline Grant provided a sketch of PMQs:
Therese Coffey, radiating gung-ho enthusiasm, looked ready to crack out another celebratory cigar. A dazed Suella Braverman wandered into the Chamber via the Westminster Hall route used by most MPs, then remembered she is Home Secretary now and hot-footed it to the “VIP entrance” at the back.
Notable by their absence were Rishi Sunak, and, predictably, Boris Johnson, though Sajid Javid was there …
A huge roar enveloped Liz Truss as she sashayed in, looking sleek in a blue pantsuit – shades of Keeley Hawes in the Bodyguard. The Tory troops, clearly desperate for things to go well, cheered raucously no matter what she said or did. Yet again beating Labour in the identity politics stakes seemed to have sparked particular joy. When Sir Keir Starmer congratulated Truss on her appointment, a Tory backbencher snarled “3-nil!”. James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, brandished three fingers and jabbed them in the air.
Theresa May also congratulated Truss on becoming Britain’s third female prime minister. “Why does she think it is that all three female prime ministers have been Conservative?”, she asked. Truss positively beamed at her. “I look forward to calling on her advice,” she said. (Oh no).
“There does seem to be an extraordinary inability of the Labour Party to find a female leader,” continued Truss, “or indeed a leader who doesn’t come from north London.” The Tory hordes roared at this, and even Starmer repressed a chuckle.
Her presentation was as wooden as ever:
But her replies were assured, refreshingly direct. There were even a few one-word answers – no to a windfall tax, for instance – a quasi-mythical event in Westminster. It was almost as if the sphinx was at the despatch box. All of this seemed to flummox Keir Starmer, who is more used to spending PMQs trying to prise answers out of Boris Johnson – occasionally wincing as if pulling out his own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers.
Truss’s true-blue rhetoric seemed to bring out Starmer’s inner Corbyn too. He railed against “excess profits” with the wild-eyed conviction of a politburo member sounding off about Kulaks. “Same old Tories… There is nothing new about the Tory fantasy of trickle-down economics”, he scoffed.
The Times‘s Quentin Letts noted Liz’s calm demeanour:
The Tory benches mooed when they saw her but once Truss started answering questions, the composure was striking. Most of all it was the slower pace that one noticed, and the evaporation of most of the performance-venom that tarnished the late Johnson era. Where Boris used to gabble, Truss spoke slowly. The voice, which seems to emanate from near the tip of her nose, was clear. It may pink a little, like a novice musician’s recorder, but it is strong enough to cut through a full Commons …
Truss referred to “my chancellor” and “my new health secretary”. She was asserting her power. There wasn’t a quiver visible in her fingers and she maintained a consistent tempo, andante rather than allegretto. Talking slowly makes you sound more authoritative and means you need not say so much. Helen Hayes (Lab, Dulwich & West Norwood) essayed a zinger. Would the government’s response to some report be published by the end of the year? “Yes,” said Truss, and she slowly, serenely resumed her seat, suffused with calmness. One should not over-interpret this performance. PMQs debuts usually go well. But the story is not quite conforming to the catastrophists’ narrative.
Returning to The Telegraph‘s articles, Daniel Martin told us that Liz wanted proper dress in Downing Street:
The Prime Minister has made it clear she wants to re-introduce a dress code, with officials told to wear shirts and ties as part of a new, more formal style of government …
One government source said Ms Truss had made her views plain when she arrived back to Admiralty House from her victory party in the City of London, the night before she became Prime Minister.
The source said: “This is all born from Liz coming back from winning and telling the staff in Admiralty House that ties were back.”
We also found out that she wanted a leaner operation:
Ms Truss has also ordered a wider operational shake-up at Downing Street, including a new economic unit whose role is to help her take on “Treasury orthodoxy”.
She has brought in Matthew Sinclair, the former director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, as her chief economic adviser …
In a bid to strengthen the relationship between Ms Truss and her most important ministers, new offices are being created in Downing Street for both Wendy Morton, the new chief whip, and Thérèse Coffey, the Deputy Prime Minister.
An aide told The Spectator: “We’ve blown up the No 10 floor plan”, saying the idea is to create a leaner, nimbler operation.
Allister Heath was fully behind Liz and her plans:
I’m optimistic about the Truss Government. Yes, of course, nobody can possibly know how well it will do – whether it will outwit the Blob to push through genuine improvements. But it is absurd to state, almost as self-evident fact, that it is bound to collapse, that it cannot last even two years, based in part on an insulting dismissal of the credibility and intellect of all of the members of the new Government.
It is astonishing that pundits with no understanding of economics dismiss the Prime Minister’s ability in this area: she actually worked as an economist for Shell (ideal in the current climate) and as an economic director for Cable and Wireless. The first accountant ever in No 10 – she holds the qualification from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants – she is more financially literate and comfortable with complex policy matters than almost all of those who patronise her. The fact that she is reflexively written off as lightweight, a dilettante even, is more a reflection of the bizarrely misogynistic and classist minds of some of her more extreme critics than of any objective reality.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor, holds a PhD in economic history from Cambridge, perhaps the ideal qualification for the moment; his War and Gold and Ghosts of Empire remain timely. Thérèse Coffey, Truss’s deputy, is another PhD: in her case, in chemistry, showing how much more intelligent she is than the ignoramuses who hate her.
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, is an extremely competent, bright and personable lawyer who drives the Left crazy. Kemi Badenoch holds degrees in engineering and law, and is fiendishly clever. Jacob Rees-Mogg, with his background in finance, is the perfect pick for Business (and Energy), given the technical and intellectual complexity of his mission. Kit Malthouse, the Education Secretary, another accountant, has experience running a medium-sized business; Chris Philp, the Chief Secretary, has a degree in physics.
The list goes on. Of course, some ministers are weaker than others, but the average quality is a great improvement on many past governments. Matthew Sinclair, one of Truss’s advisers, is the best free-market economist of his generation in Britain today.
The paradox is that it is a policy that I’m uncomfortable with that is likely to send the Government’s poll ratings surging, discrediting its Leftist critics. Truss’s energy plan is rightly a big bazooka; it is regrettable that, for a variety of practical and political reasons, she appears to have decided to freeze all energy bills, rather than to opt for targeted subsidies to small firms and the bottom half of earners. The Government’s bill will be at least 5 per cent of GDP, with enormous potential liabilities. This is the biggest welfare programme in British history, one that helps the well-off as much as the needy.
But we are where we are. The Government felt that an alternative, non-universal plan could not be targeted correctly, that the cliff-edge from means testing would be too extreme, that the public’s allergy to high prices had become too toxic. Truss feared she would be destroyed on arrival if she didn’t go for broke. Her gambit is that the scale of this intervention will cripple the Left: it’s a statist umbrella protecting her free-market reforms …
Our new Prime Minister likes economic growth, not merely because she values material prosperity, but because she buys into the very idea of progress, of improvement. Boris Johnson agreed in theory, but didn’t understand what to do. Unlike Theresa May, Truss is inherently anti-Malthusian: her Chancellor talks of growing the economy, rather than arguing about how to redistribute a stagnant pie, the vanishing “proceeds of growth” taken for granted by David Cameron.
Yes, Truss will address our immediate crisis via costly, short-term policies. But she’s deadly serious about principled long-term measures to accelerate the economy by boosting energy output, housebuilding, private investment, scientific innovation and entrepreneurship. It will be tough, but the Twitter Lefties are entirely wrong to be betting so emphatically against her.
The Telegraph‘s main editorial compared her to Margaret Thatcher:
Opinion polls indicate that Labour’s windfall levy is popular, but Ms Truss is right to identify the flaws in this approach. Her declaration that we cannot tax our way to higher growth could have been uttered by the first woman prime minister 30 years ago.
Balancing short-term expediency with long-term economic requirements will require skill and determination. Ms Truss has set out her position and is clearly intent on sticking to her guns, even if the polls are tempting her to abandon them. It was an encouraging start.
The Mail provided us with short takes from the more left-of-centre broadcasters, who also thought Liz did a great job at PMQs. These were not her natural allies.
The BBC’s Chris Mason noted:
As Prime Minister’s Questions finished, there appeared to be a warm, one-on-one brief chat between Liz Truss and Keir Starmer.
I think Starmer said “well done” to his opponent: all party leaders regularly acknowledge that PMQs is a tough gig …
It felt less personal, much less theatrical and more ideological …
TalkTV’s Tom Newton Dunn said:
Liz Truss is not a legendary orator, and some Tory MPs lived in terror at the thought of her robotic despatch box style.
But that was a very strong debut …
The Mail had several more comments, so I will end with this one from the i newspaper’s Richard Vaughan:
If Liz Truss’s aim for her first PMQs was to kill the usual heat and rancour in the Commons chamber, then she succeeded. It was a solid, no-frills performance.
… Ms Truss’s arrival onto the front bench was greeted with cheers, but it was by no means a deafening welcome by backbenchers to their new leader – perhaps a portent of things to come.
On the evidence of her no-nonsense opening appearance in her new role, they would be wise not to underestimate her. Her next trick will be to try and inspire those on the benches behind her.
Aye, there’s the rub.
To be continued tomorrow.
Before going into Rishi’s win in last weekend’s leadership contest, a few items of current news follow.
Wednesday, October 26 saw Rishi at the despatch box for PMQs, which he handled well. Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer was still going around in circles with his six questions, achieving nothing, as usual.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s security breach dominated PMQs and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper asked an Urgent Question about it.
This morning’s Telegraph editorial said (purple emphases mine):
There is something about Mrs Braverman that seems to drive the Left borderline hysterical. Her robust views on issues such as controlling the borders and tackling crime put her in the mainstream of public opinion. Somehow that is enough to earn her the sobriquet “hard-Right” among her Leftist critics.
In the Commons, Mr Sunak defended Mrs Braverman’s return to the Home Office, saying that she had made an error of judgment but that she had recognised that and accepted her mistake. Her resignation last week also took place amid a row within government over immigration levels: Mrs Braverman is a firm advocate of cutting numbers.
Many Conservative voters will be reassured that she is back in office. Mrs Braverman has the right political instincts, taking a hard line for instance on the need to clamp down on disruptive climate protesters. In her previous roles, she has shown that she has the ability to master the details of complex policy areas, including on sensitive matters such as transgender rights. Now, she should be given the time and space to get on with the job.
A retired Squadron Leader wrote the Telegraph to say:
SIR – Congratulations to the new Prime Minister and to Suella Braverman on her return as the Home Secretary.
… The situation in the English Channel, with migrants entering Britain with impunity and without permission, at a cost of millions of pounds a day for hotel accommodation alone, cannot go on.
In 2021, 28,526 migrants landed in Britain without permission. This year, more than 38,000 migrants have arrived so far, with a projection of up to 50,000 by the new year.
Mrs Braverman would seem to have the answers to this problem. One can only hope that her return to the Home Office will make a difference, and quickly.
Another issue Braverman will have to deal with are alleged Chinese ‘police stations’ in two Glasgow restaurants.
Today — Thursday — the Times reported:
Ministers have been called on to intervene after China was accused of operating a “shadowy and chilling” secret police hub in the heart of Glasgow.
A report compiled by a human rights organisation claims that the Chinese government is operating a global network of undeclared “police stations”, which are being used to intimidate and silence dissidents.
The Home Office said the claims were “very concerning” and would be taken “extremely seriously”. A spokesman said: “Any foreign country operating on UK soil must abide by UK law. The protection of people in the UK is of the utmost importance and any attempt to illegally repatriate any individual will not be tolerated.”
Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based civil liberties group, alleges one of the outposts is running from 417 Sauchiehall Street in central Glasgow, alongside two others in London. The address houses the premises of Loon Fung, one of the city’s oldest and best-known Chinese restaurants …
A spokesman for Safeguard Defenders:
claimed the Scottish Fujian Chamber of Commerce, registered at the premises of Sichuan House, another Chinese restaurant based on Sauchiehall Street, also had links to the Chinese state.
The Times attempted to confirm the allegations:
The Chinese consulate in Edinburgh did not respond to a request for comment …
Loon Fung has strongly denied any involvement. “There’s no secret police here,” a spokesman said. Sichuan House did not respond to a request to comment. A man who answered a mobile number published online as being the contact for the Scottish Fujian Chamber of Commerce hung up when The Times introduced itself.
Returning to Braverman, on Wednesday night, Sir Jake Berry MP, the short-lived chairman of the Conservative Party under Liz Truss, gave an interview on TalkTV’s Piers Morgan Uncensored, on which Nadine Dorries MP was a guest host, Morgan being on holiday.
The Times reported what Berry said, in part:
From my own knowledge, there were multiple breaches of the ministerial code …
That seems a really serious breach. The cabinet secretary had his say at the time. I doubt he’s changed his mind in the last six days but that’s a matter for the prime minister.
Also:
Asked whether Braverman had rapidly owned up to the mistake as she claimed, Berry replied: “I wasn’t in the meeting but as I understand it the evidence was put to her and she accepted the evidence rather than the other way around” …
Berry’s comments are likely to prompt further questions about the circumstances of Braverman’s re-appointment as Sunak completes a reshuffle of the government’s junior ranks.
Hmm. Interesting.
Berry’s interview was up for discussion this morning in the House of Lords. Labour peer Baroness Smith of Basildon, leader of the Opposition, asked an Urgent Question about it. Baroness Neville-Rolfe, responding for the Government, gave a brief statement in support of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, which was met with audible groans from many of the peers. Several of them, including a Lord Spiritual (Anglican bishop), asked questions for several minutes.
Labour will continue to press this issue, it seems.
Guido Fawkes caught up with Sir Keir Starmer on Wednesday:
Guido wrote (emphases his):
Finding himself behind Keir Starmer in a coffee-queue this afternoon, Guido took the opportunity to ask the Leader of the Opposition about his future attack lines on the Government. The case of Suella Braverman, the Labour leader said, “wasn’t going away.”
It was a relatively inconspicuous item in his PMQs: “Have officials raised concerns about his decision to appoint her?” It caused a frisson among those who know how important process is, and how deadly the advice given by officials can be …
Obviously no PM is going to answer such questions, nor will he willingly surrender written advice given in ministerial confidence. However, there is a route to get it. By a Humble Address (a procedural device resurrected from ancient obscurity by the previous Speaker, John Bercow), documents of all sorts, including electronic, can be demanded by an Opposition Motion.
Labour has had next week’s Opposition Day nicked by the SNP. But the issue will probably fructify rather than decay over time. It may be a little early in the new administration for 35 Tories to defy the Whip and vote for the documents to be revealed – but if recent history is anything to go by …
Questions about Braverman continued in the House of Commons on Thursday during Cabinet Office Questions and, later, Business Questions to Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt.
A Telegraph article by Gordon Rayner said that recent Home Secretaries ended up doomed from the start:
Almost as soon as Rishi Sunak reappointed Mrs Braverman as Home Secretary, the civil service was letting it be known that there were “concerns” about whether she could be trusted with sensitive information. Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service, was “livid” about her appointment, sources said.
If the ultimate goal of the poisonous briefings by civil servants was to suggest the department cannot function with Mrs Braverman in charge, it will be a familiar scenario to previous holders of the post.
Priti Patel only just survived a concerted campaign to force her out by civil servants who accused her of bullying. Amber Rudd lasted two years before she was forced to resign for misleading a Commons committee, having been wrongly briefed by her department on deportation targets. As far back as 2006 Labour’s John Reid declared the department “not fit for purpose”.
In 2006, Labour was in power, by the way.
Gordon Rayner rightly includes Braverman’s allies in his analysis:
Allies of Mrs Braverman say that her enemies in the Home Office, and on the Left, have used a technical breach of the ministerial code as a convenient excuse to attack a woman with whom their true battle lies over immigration.
Conservative Party members are likely to support Braverman:
As the current “queen of the Right” in the Government, every carping comment from a Labour MP or BBC commentator simply reinforces her popularity with Conservative Party members and a significant chunk of MPs.
Rishi Sunak reinstated her at the Home Office because he knows that to stand any chance of uniting his party, he needs a figurehead of the Right in a senior position, and in Mrs Braverman he has a former chairman of the European Research Group of Right-wing Eurosceptic Tories.
It is significant that Braverman backed Rishi last weekend:
If, as has been suggested, a return to the Home Office was the price she demanded for backing his leadership bid (and effectively killing off Boris Johnson’s attempted resurrection) it simply proves the clout she now has within the Party.
Other news from Wednesday included a confirmed ban on fracking, overturning Liz Truss’s decision to allow fracking in communities that overwhelmingly allow it.
——————————————————————————————————————
Now back to the leadership contest.
In the early hours of Friday, October 21, Boris Johnson was leading Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt:
I left off yesterday with Stanley Johnson saying that morning that his son Boris was ‘on a plane’.
Meanwhile, Liz Truss made a brief return to Downing Street, probably to collect something. The Guardian‘s photos show her in sportswear, a heretofore unseen Liz.
‘Bring Back Boris’
Express readers opened their Friday paper to find an article by one of Boris’s main backers, Sir James Duddridge MP, a champion of the Bring Back Boris, or BBB, campaign:
I was his Parliamentary Private Secretary and stayed with him right until the end. It was a mistake to force him out but now is the time to bring him back.
He is the only one who can unite the party after the turbulent last few weeks and I trust him to right the ship …
He always remained hugely popular with the party’s grassroots and with large parts of the country.
There will always be socialists and angry Twitter mobs who rail against him but he is an election winner, twice in London as well as nationally.
My constituents regularly tell me they want Boris back and he still has a mandate from the country …
He has the star quality and inspirational leadership the country needs during the challenging months ahead.
It’s time to Bring Back Boris.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, Truss’s Business Secretary, declared his support for the former Prime Minister — ‘Boris or Bust’:
Pollster Matt Goodwin pointed out that while Rishi is more popular overall with British voters, Boris still leads those who voted in the 2019 election:
The video from 2012 showing Boris, who was then Mayor of London and promoting the Olympics that year, went viral:
However, The Sun‘s Harry Cole reminded everyone that Boris still had the upcoming Privileges Committee investigation to deal with. If it goes badly, he might have to resign as an MP:
Conservative MPs could schedule a motion to cancel the investigation. That would have to be approved by the Commons, but as the Conservatives have a current majority of 71, it could still be overturned. This Sun reporter thinks it is unlikely, however:
Truss’s Deputy Chief Whip Craig Whittaker requested that his name be removed from Guido’s list of Boris supporters. His post requires impartiality:
Emily Maitlis, formerly of the BBC, reacted characteristically to news that Boris was running in the leadership contest:
Guido has the audio and reported:
Emily Maitlis meanwhile learnt the Boris news live on her News Agents podcast. You’ll never guess her reaction…
Shouldn’t hurt Boris’s chances…
Rishi takes the lead
Maitlis needn’t have worried.
By 11 a.m. on Friday, Rishi had just edged past Boris:
A half hour later, Rishi’s momentum was beginning to build:
Boris backers hadn’t lost hope, however. The fact that Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, supported him was an added fillip:
That afternoon, Opinium posted their snap poll on who the public supported. Rishi was the clear winner. Even Penny beat Boris:
Boris gained support from more of the Red Wall. Teesside mayor Ben Houchen is a Party member and not an MP. Simon Clarke was Truss’s Levelling Up Secretary:
Guido excerpted their letter to the Telegraph …
Boris is the person we need to lead our country and our party.
He won the greatest election victory for years on a mandate to unite and level up the UK, and inspired millions of people who had never voted Conservative before to get behind a generous, optimistic vision of what Britain can be.
People on Teesside love Boris because he recognised that while talent is evenly distributed across the country, opportunity is not. Boris gave us that opportunity.
…
Teesside has had difficult times and is now levelling up because of Boris. We know that for us, like Boris, the comeback will be greater than the setback.
… adding:
Houchen is a real loss for Rishi…
By 3:45, Rishi was well on his way to 100 backers. Boris was now lagging behind, and Penny was stuck:
In the early evening, an MP from the 2019 intake, Antony Higginbotham, representing the traditionally Labour constituency of Burnley, came out for Boris:
Two hours later, veteran MP Bill Cash also announced his support for Boris:
It seemed that most Boris backers were traditional Conservatives and Red Wall MPs.
Guido pointed out the Red Wall loyalty:
By contrast, Matt Hancock felt the need to produce a lengthy statement explaining why he was supporting Rishi:
Saturday’s papers
Saturday’s papers were a mixed bag.
Not surprisingly, the Financial Times said that investors were alarmed at the prospect of Boris’s return:
The Telegraph reported that Rishi was expected to pass the threshold of 100 MPs:
The Star came up with an aubergine motif for Boris and couldn’t resist featuring Lettuce Liz again:
Their Thought for the Day was:
Haven’t we all suffered enough?
The lead paragraph reads:
Just when you thought all salad-based puns had been exhausted, posh aubergine Bozo Johnson has emerged as one of the favourites to replace Lettuce Liz as PM.
Rumours began circulating about joint talks between Rishi and Boris:
Two papers played to Boris supporters — the Express …
… and the Sun:
The paper’s veteran Trevor Kavanagh explored both sides of the Boris equation in ‘Boris Johnson is a political Humpty Dumpty with a giant ego who had such a great fall — but if he runs for PM, he’ll win’:
… Boris Johnson, the political Joker who makes half the nation smile while the rest are spitting chips, is gearing up for another pitch at the premiership.
He needs 100 MPs’ votes and may well get more.
If he runs, he wins — that’s my prediction for what it’s worth in this tumultuous here-today, gone-tomorrow blur of Tory leaders, challengers and assassins.
And even if he doesn’t win, what a pleasure to hear the screams of fury from Labour, Lib Dems and Scot Nats — amplified through the impartial BBC’s 100-decibel speakers …
These puce-faced wets don’t seem to realise they are fuelling the pro-Boris momentum which might propel him back into Downing Street and even produce another sensational election win.
Happily, their moans are drowned out by cheers from Red Wall Tory MPs who credit Boris with winning their seats in Parliament.
They want Boris back and so do millions of voters across the land.
It may be deeply irresponsible to say so, but this is diamond-studded 24-carat political entertainment and I for one am enjoying the ride.
Don’t get me wrong — I am not watching BoJo: The Movie through rose-coloured glasses, or even suggesting that it makes sense.
Boris Johnson must take much of the blame for the catastrophic mess the country is in, politically and economically.
But he won his 2019 80-seat landslide majority fair and square.
It was an almost entirely personal achievement beyond the reach of any other politician.
He used that majority to achieve great things, ramming Brexit through Parliament, the Covid vaccination triumph and leading global support for Ukraine.
He also blew it as the “Greased Piglet” PM who believes rules are for little people, not him …
It was such casual conduct that handed Labour grounds for a kangaroo court trial for lying to Parliament — a hurdle still to be cleared.
But for such careless affronts to good governance, Boris Johnson would still be Prime Minister right now.
The Pound would be steady, mortgages manageable, inflation past its peak.
We would not have seen the eye- popping political convulsions which turned Britain into a global laughing stock.
The soap opera is not over yet.
Whoever wins next week must choose a new Cabinet and pick a way through the ruins.
If it is Boris, it should at least end the clamour — choreographed yesterday across all BBC networks — for a snap General Election.
Boris won’t have to face the tricky question: “Who Voted for You?” …
Without Boris, the Conservative Party faces certain defeat by 2025.
Boris has the magical Heineken ability to reach voters other politicians cannot reach.
It’s a gamble, a glitterball Who Dares Wins test of luck and daring.
Even Netflix couldn’t make it up.
But for the Tories, it is the only game in town.
For the next 24 hours I had hope.
More on the contest will follow tomorrow.
Pity our Prime Minister Liz Truss.
The choice of Conservative Party members, the lady who wanted a Thatcherite premiership of low taxation and high growth, is now silent.
On Thursday, October 13, in her private weekly meeting with King Charles, he greeted her with ‘Dear, oh dear’:
He could have at least waited until the press were out of the way.
On Friday, October 14, she was forced to sack her Chancellor and good friend Kwasi Kwarteng.
The two of them were not playing the globalist game for high taxation and low growth.
Kwarteng’s brilliant mind
Kwarteng was elected as MP for Spelthorne in 2010, part of Prime Minister David Cameron’s fresh, youthful Conservative intake that year.
He worked on Brexit in 2019 as part of Theresa May’s government. Later that year, he was keen for Nigel Farage to stand down candidates in order for Conservatives to win convincingly in the general election — and get Brexit done:
Under Boris Johnson, in 2021, as Business Secretary, he became the first black — and first Conservative — Secretary of State. In that role, he refused to lift the moratorium on fracking. On the other hand, on July 6, 2022, he ensured that two coal plants are staying open to help ensure that the UK has adequate energy supplies this winter.
He was not a man in favour of high taxes, even in the wake of the pandemic, telling LBC radio on March 2, 2021:
Obviously we have to balance the books over time, but I’m a low tax conservative. The real key is to grow the economy. The best remedy for the deficit, the best remedy for the economy is to open up the economy, allow people to get on with their lives, allow businesses to start trading again.
In July 2021, he politely opposed the National Insurance tax hike.
In June that year, he supported the Government’s caution on lifting final coronavirus restrictions in England and sagely predicted that there would be no more lockdowns in England.
Once Liz Truss was made Prime Minister, we found out more about his friendship with her, which began when she, too, was first elected to Parliament in 2010.
On September 6, 2022, the Mail posted an old photo from earlier parliamentary days of the new Chancellor and the new Prime Minister with this caption:
The new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is a close friend of Liz Truss, so close that he lives 350 yards away in Greenwich.
The article also told us more about his towering height and intellect (emphases mine):
Although he is not widely known to the public, the 47-year-old MP for Spelthorne, Surrey, comes equipped with a solid academic background.
At 6ft 5in, Mr Kwarteng is a powerhouse physically and intellectually …
He speaks German, Greek and French, and writes poetry in Latin.
One friend recalled how, when the school introduced Italian to the curriculum, ‘the teachers were trying to teach rudimentary Italian but Kwasi learnt the whole language – the teachers were struggling to keep up with him’.
Like Boris Johnson, who attended Eton a decade earlier, Mr Kwarteng shone at the Wall Game, a hybrid of football and rugby, where he played First Wall, described by an Etonian as ‘an almost suicidal position that involved spending much of the match having his head scraped against brickwork’ …
He was a prefect at the school and is still, it is said, held up as an example of how to succeed in Oxbridge interviews.
He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge:
He excelled at Cambridge where friends described him as ‘supremely confident, but not arrogant’.
One said he ‘had quite a few girlfriends – he had catching up to do after his boys’ private school upbringing’.
Professor Tim Whitmarsh, who taught him Latin and Greek, was quoted as describing him as ‘a bit of a young fogey’, saying: ‘I once saw a 19-year-old Kwasi in full brown tweed bumbling around with a pipe in his mouth on a baking hot day.’
More recently:
Last year, Mr Kwarteng bought a Victorian villa just 350 yards from Miss Truss’s £1.5million four-storey townhouse in Greenwich, south London.
Now they are neighbours in Downing Street too.
At one point Mr Kwarteng was dating Amber Rudd, the former Conservative home secretary, but the pair split up.
He then met Harriet Edwards, 36, a former pupil of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and now a high-flying corporate lawyer specialising in advising private clients on ‘succession’ planning.
The pair married in 2019 and have a baby daughter, Ida, born last year …
Said to be a ‘pragmatist rather than an ideologue’, the free-marketeer’s ministerial office allegedly boasts a large whiteboard on which are scrawled the letters ‘MSH’, standing for ‘making s*** happen’.
With the multiple challenges facing the new chancellor, it is a mantra that may serve him well.
On September 7, The Telegraph had a profile of Kwarteng, which gave Truss supporters further hope.
We discovered that he wrote for the newspaper and had decidedly conservative opinions even in his 20s. The article featured a screenshot of his column of August 1, 1997 about higher education — ‘Don’t go to university, make money instead’:
The man appointed the 109th Chancellor of the Exchequer had been considered a rising star well before he entered Parliament and first made his name at the age of 22 with a column in The Telegraph.
From higher education to the rise of “lad mags”, Mr Kwarteng left a trail of published evidence showing his youthful thinking on the state of Britain.
According to Mr Kwarteng, universities were not just a waste of time for those hoping to make lots of money but “a trick of the mind”. They offered value of a sort as “a place for reflective thought, like the monasteries of the Middle Ages,” but were only really popular as a way of proving one’s smarts …
While universities might be conducive to research, on the whole, Mr Kwarteng thought, “the university added little to the talent which was already in them”.
For that reason, the MP for Spelthorne thought it “ridiculous” that everyone should go to university.
Also in August 1997, he also wrote about his scepticism of those who know best in ‘”Experts”: it’s the same old story’, wherein he expressed his doubts about climate change:
“We live in the age of the expert,” he declared, “of course, all these experts are invariably self-appointed, and they all contradict each other.”
Mr Kwarteng lamented the loss of Western “reason and objective investigation” and said that the witchdoctors of “simple peoples” had been “reincarnated in a modern, Western, suit-wearing capacity.
“They are the consultants, health gurus, constitutional experts, psychologists and sociologists who seem to spring from the ground at every opportunity.”
… In his column, he highlighted global warming as an example of “conjecture” dressed up as “granite fact”.
It’s a pity he later changed his mind. Perhaps he did it for political expediency. Who knows?
On at least one issue, however, Mr Kwarteng has clearly come to accept the views of the experts …
As Business Secretary, he has declared it essential for governments to intervene to tackle climate change.
The Telegraph article has several more of his columns to explore.
Kwarteng as Chancellor
A fortnight before he delivered his fiscal event to Parliament, he pledged that his focus on growth would be ‘relentless’. The Times reported:
The new chancellor has promised a shift in economic policy towards an “unashamedly pro-growth agenda” rather than worrying about redistribution.
Kwasi Kwarteng promised “to do things differently” as he acknowledged the need for higher borrowing over the winter to help households with their energy bills. However, he promised “fiscal discipline over the medium term” by ensuring the economy would grow faster than government debt, saying this would require deregulation and tax cuts.
After meeting key City figures, including the chief executives of Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds Banking Group and HSBC, Kwarteng said that he wanted to deal with economic problems through growth, with a goal of getting the underlying rate up to 2.5 per cent.
“The prime minister and I are committed to taking decisive action to help the British people now,” he said. “That means relentlessly focusing on how we unlock business investment and grow the size of the British economy, rather than how we redistribute what’s left.”
He and Truss needed to work quickly to come up with the fiscal event. The nation had been in mourning for the Queen from September 8 through September 19. Meanwhile, the Conservatives’ opponents were braying for a statement.
On Thursday, September 22, Kwarteng tweeted:
That day, The Spectator‘s Katy Balls explained that Truss wanted to move quickly:
Liz Truss is in a race against time. It’s not just the prospect of an election in two years. It’s the political problems – from party management to events outside of one’s control – that quickly clog up a prime minister’s in-tray. It’s why for all the efforts to play down Friday’s fiscal event as a mini-Budget, it is likely to be anything but small. Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng plan to push through as much as possible while their stock is highest …
Truss and Kwarteng have said their priority is to boost growth. In order to do that, they are undoing plenty of policies by their predecessors. The plan for investment zones – areas that could benefit from a lighter planning regime and various tax breaks – has already been briefed as a change of priorities compared to the former Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove. A government insider told the Financial Times this week: ‘The plans make Gove look like a socialist.’ There will also be further measures to undo more of the policies brought in by Rishi Sunak as Chancellor.
Coffee House understands one plan under consideration is the return of tax-free shopping for tourists. As Chancellor, Sunak axed the 20 per cent discount for foreign visitors – leading to an outcry from MPs who said it would make Britain less attractive to businesses. At the time, the Treasury defended his decision on the grounds that ‘this is getting rid of a tax cut that mainly benefits foreign billionaires.’ However, the sector has voiced frustrations that this has led UK business to drop off while European capitals have seen business go up.
How will all this go down? As the Bank of England raise interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 2.25 per cent in an attempt to combat inflation, already there are warnings about the effect of the government’s planned borrowing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the planned tax cuts are likely to push UK borrowing and debt to unsustainable levels. The hope in government is that rather than spark alarm, the markets will have already priced in the new direction they are taking, and what happened in August suggests they may well have done so.
‘The strategy is do everything now,’ says one person close to Liz Truss. ‘This government has balls of steel’. In adopting this approach, Truss and Kwarteng are taking a gamble – and it won’t be too long before it becomes clear whether or not it is paying off.
True conservatives cheered the package Kwarteng delivered to Parliament on Friday, September 23:
We felt as if Brexit would finally become the reality that would thwart Labour:
Our debt would remain the second lowest in the G7:
Guido Fawkes posted Kwarteng’s economic plan in full as well as a summary, excerpted below:
Price of Energy
-
- Government freezes household energy bills at £2,500
- Government will subsidise wholesale energy prices for businesses
- Total cost of energy package for 6 months from October will be approximately £60 billion
Inflation
-
- Government plan will reduce peak inflation by 5%
- Chancellor: Bank of England independence is “sacrosanct”
Growth
-
- Government will focus on growth target of 2.5%
Barriers to Enterprise
-
- Government will bring forward bill to unpick regulation and launch a review into decision making
- Increase disposal of government land to build more homes
- Government will remove cap on bankers’ bonuses …
Tax
-
- Planned rise in corporation tax is cancelled, it will remain at 19%
- Annual investment allowance will not fall to £200,000 as planned, will remain at £1 million
- Office of tax simplification abolished, tax simplification mandated in all government departments
- IR35 rules changed: 2017 and 2021 reforms scrapped
- Planned increases in duty for beer, wine and spirits cancelled
- VAT free shopping for overseas visitors
- Increases to National Insurance contributions cancelled
- Stamp duty threshold raised from £125,000 to £250,000; for first time buyers it will rise from £300,000 to 425,000
- Kwasi will abolish the highest 45% rate of income income tax. Top rate now 40%.
- Basic rate of income tax cut to 19% from April
Ahead of Kwasi’s statement:
FTSE 100 is at 7,120
£/$ 1.1163
£/€ 1.1435
10 year gilt yield 3.49%
That afternoon, The Telegraph‘s Allister Heath was over the moon:
This was the best Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by a massive margin. The tax cuts were so huge and bold, the language so extraordinary, that at times, listening to Kwasi Kwarteng, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, that I hadn’t been transported to a distant land that actually believed in the economics of Milton Friedman and FA Hayek.
But Liz Truss and Kwarteng are very much for real, and in revolutionary mood. The neo-Brownite consensus of the past 20 years, the egalitarian, redistributionist obsession, the technocratic centrism, the genuflections at the altar of a bogus class war, the spreadsheet-wielding socialists: all were blown to smithereens by Kwarteng’s stunning neo-Reaganite peroration.
Hardcore, unapologetic liberal Toryism is back. This fiscal statement is in some ways an even bigger deal than that previously greatest of Budgets, Lord Lawson’s extravaganza of 1988, so long ago that my generation cannot remember it. All the taboos have been defiled: the fracking ban, the performative 45pc tax rate, the malfunctioning bonus cap, the previous gang’s nihilistic corporation tax and national insurance raids. The basic rate of income tax is being cut, as is stamp duty, that dumbest of levies. There will be more reforms, more deregulation from a Chancellor explicitly committed to a flatter and simpler tax system.
It wasn’t merely the policies that were astonishingly good: just as remarkable was Kwarteng’s language, the arguments he deployed to explain his decisions, the lucid free-market philosophy from which they emanated. He spoke of the need to bolster incentives, to encourage business investment, to increase work, to reward savings. He explained that this meant that the returns on capital and labour had to be improved. He wants to usher in a new Big Bang in the City and launch dozens of new Canary Wharfs on steroids.
At a stroke of a pen, Britain’s competitiveness, its attractiveness to investors and top talent, has been transformed. Money and jobs will flow in, especially from the Eurozone. Britain’s central pathology is low growth, held back by faulty economic, fiscal, monetary and regulatory policies: higher spending begets higher taxes, which lead to a vicious cycle of even lower growth, and hence yet more taxes, and so on.
I watched Kwarteng’s speech to Parliament and the debate that followed. Allister Heath was right in everything he wrote.
On Sunday, September 25, The Sun wrote that its polls indicated the British public supported nearly all of Truss’s proposals that Kwarteng delivered:
DELIGHTED Brits overwhelmingly back Kwasi Kwarteng’s key income tax and stamp duty cuts, a poll found …
And PM Liz Truss says their radical plan will usher in a “decade of dynamism” …
A Deltapoll survey for The Sun on Sunday found many of his central policies have gone down a storm.
His pledge to slash the basic rate of income tax from 20p in the £1 to 19p from next April, benefitting 31million workers, got the backing of 63 per cent of respondents.
A majority of Labour and Tory supporters like the plan.
Meanwhile, the decision to ditch stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes worth up to £425,000 was approved by 61 per cent of respondents.
The move to reverse the 1.25 percentage point hike in National Insurance Contributions was liked by 59 per cent of the 1,553 people surveyed.
Some parts of the mini Budget, however, were far less popular. Just 30 per cent of voters backed the decision to scrap the bankers’ bonus cap.
And even fewer — 28 per cent — approved of the move to do away with the 45p top rate of income tax, which will put more cash in the pockets of society’s top earners …
Some delighted Tory MPs punched the air in delight after Mr Kwarteng detailed his mini Budget to the Commons.
One senior Tory said: “I am delighted. Finally, we have a proper Thatcherite budget.”
But others warned it was a punt that may cost the Tories the next election.
One minister crossed his fingers as he said: “It is a huge gamble. If we see growth then it will have worked. It’s a roll of the dice.”
The annual Labour Party conference convened that Sunday.
The Spectator‘s editor Fraser Nelson pointed out that their leader Sir Keir Starmer opposed only the abolition of the 45% tax rate:
The Sun‘s editorial that day reminded Britons that it was Gordon Brown who put the 45% rate in place — and that was late in his premiership, around 12 years ago. His predecessor Tony Blair had not. As such, Labour had no room to complain:
For too long — if partly by necessity of the pandemic in recent years — the Conservatives have been parked on the centre ground, often operating from a Blairite or Brownite playbook.
The spleen-venting over Mr Kwarteng’s most controversial call — ditching the 45 per cent top tax rate for those on over £150,000 — ignores the fact that, throughout the Blair years, it was the exact same as the new 40 per cent levy.
Nonetheless it’s true that the move does give Labour an easy line of attack, as does the Government’s reluctance to trumpet the fact that it IS already subjecting energy giants to a windfall tax — one which is raising around £30billion.
Yesterday Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer confirmed he would retain the vast majority of the Chancellor’s tax cuts if he gained power.
Already, however, the doomsayers, including Torsten Bell, were already weighing in, as Guido Fawkes wrote that day (emphases his):
… Labour have accepted two thirds of the personal income tax cuts. They are only rejecting one cut, the top rate cut…
So the the dividing line between the parties is: Will “new era” economics work and crank growth up to 2.5% before the next election?
Not a chance say Rachel Reeves and the assembled hardline-centrists of the broadsheet punditry, plus all the orthodox economists from the IFS, Institute for Big Government and gloomy Torsten Bell with his distribution charts. Kwasi and Liz say it will work. It won’t surprise co-conspirators that Guido thinks it is less of a gamble than the BBC’s Faisal Islam reckons. Barring oil going to $300 or some other catastrophe, it is far more likely to work than the doomsters would have you believe. If Kwasi and Liz fail to hit the 2.5% target they have set for themselves, they will deservedly lose the next election. The choice now is pull out all the stops and go for growth, or go into opposition…
At conference, two Labour MPs of colour criticised the Conservatives’ choice of Chancellor in Rishi Sunak, his successors and Kwasi Kwarteng. Guido reported on Rupa Huq’s words about Kwarteng, which earned her a suspension from the Party, despite her apology. Shadow Rail Minister Tan Dhesi said he wanted to see white males in the Conservative Cabinet rather that persons of colour:
Guido doesn’t consider Tan’s comments to be half as bad as Rupa Huq’s. His quote about Boris having an Asian do his dirty work for him, alongside Huq’s referral to Rishi as “a little brown guy”, is indicative that Labour somehow questions the legitimacy of non-white Tory Cabinet ministers. Does anyone get the sense Labour are slightly panicked about the Tories having a more diverse front bench than they do?
Fatal criticism despite global problems
But that was nothing compared to the big anti-Truss, anti-Kwarteng fallout that took place elsewhere that week.
On Monday, September 26, the IMF criticised the fiscal event.
Lord Frost defended Truss and Kwarteng in an article for The Telegraph:
The IEA’s head of public policy said that one of Margaret Thatcher’s budgets — that of then-Chancellor Geoffrey Howe — was similarly criticised and ended up being wildly successful:
On Thursday, September 29, Labour MPs were back at home but outside criticism of the Truss-Kwarteng plan continued from globalist sources.
The US Treasury had weighed in against the plan after the IMF had.
The markets wobbled that week.
It should be noted that the UK was not the only country suffering from jitters — it was every other main economy, too.
With regard to us, however, the Bank of England had to step in with a fortnight of measures, too complicated to explain here, that put an end to risky measures that British pension funds had been using for several years.
Nevertheless, Truss and Kwarteng got it in the neck.
The Telegraph had a running diary of events that Thursday morning. Excerpts follow, covering the period from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m.:
The Prime Minister is due to undertake a tour of regional BBC radio stations this morning when she will be grilled on her tax cuts and spending plans after they sparked economic turmoil.
Lord Clarke, the Tory former chancellor, has argued this morning that no other Conservative government would have made a “mistake” like Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget.
The Tory former chancellor told Times Radio: “If the pound sinks any further, then they will have to perhaps retract some of the measures because the more the pound goes down, the more inflation goes up.”
The Treasury has said Kwasi Kwarteng will deliver a follow up statement to the mini-Budget in November in which he will set out the Government’s medium-term economic plans.
But the Chancellor is under mounting pressure to deliver a statement to reassure the markets and the nation much sooner than that.
Chris Philp, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has defended the Government’s decision to scrap the 45p top rate of income tax.
Asked why it was necessary to make the move now, he told Sky News: “The top rate of now 40 per cent, reducing from 45, makes us internationally competitive, it puts us on a par with a number of other economies.”
After the Bank of England was forced to step in to calm the markets, Mr Philp told Sky News: “No one’s perfect but I’m not going to apologise for having a plan to grow the economy …”
Chris Philp, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has dismissed suggestions that Kwasi Kwarteng should resign as Chancellor over his handling of the mini-Budget.
Liz Truss has defended her mini-Budget plans as she said as Prime Minister she is prepared to take “controversial and difficult decisions”.
Liz Truss has said the world is facing “very, very difficult economic times” as she also insisted Kwasi Kwarteng is working “very, very closely” with the Bank of England.
Liz Truss said that “we have seen difficult markets around the world because of the very difficult international situation we face”.
Liz Truss has defended the decision to scrap the 45p top rate of income tax as she argued that lower taxes “help everybody”.
BBC Radio Bristol presenter James Hanson challenged Liz Truss over her repeated claim that financial markets around the world have been facing turmoil.
Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, has claimed Liz Truss is in “complete denial” following the Prime Minister’s morning media round.
The Conservative Party is due to meet in Birmingham from Sunday this weekend for its annual conference.
Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has called on the Tories to scrap the event.
Sir Ed said repeated his call for Parliament to be recalled.
Chris Philp, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was told this morning that the mini-Budget needs to be changed.
Speaking to LBC Radio, he said: “No, well, if you listen to the reaction of British business organisations to Kwasi Kwarteng’s growth plan on Friday, like, for example, the Confederation of British Industry, the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chambers of Commerce, they all strongly welcomed the growth plan, and they are the organisations that represent British business…”
The Bank of England’s £65 billion intervention in the UK economy yesterday is a “very targeted, time-limited intervention”, according to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. (You can read the full story on the bailout here) …
Chris Philp was asked during an interview on LBC Radio this morning if that bailout indicated the economy is experiencing “serious problems”.
He said: “Look, they were making a very targeted, time-limited intervention. There was a particular idiosyncrasy to do with the way that particular pension vehicles used long-dated gilts.
“It was a very targeted, very specific intervention to address that issue, which they’ve successfully done – independently, of course, the Bank of England act independently.
“And they’re not the only central bank to have had to make an intervention. Like I said, the Bank of Japan intervened in the Yen dollar market just a few days ago.”
Chris Philp, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has rejected the suggestion that the UK is now in the middle of a financial “crisis”.
Asked if he accepted it is a “crisis”, Mr Philp told LBC Radio: “Look, I don’t accept the word crisis at all. Look, in the last six to nine months… the financial markets have been in some volatility around the world.”
Sterling has fallen sharply again as former Bank of England governor Mark Carney accused Liz Truss of “undercutting” the central bank …
He said there was an “undercutting” of key City institutions, pointing to the lack of an OBR forecast, a lack of detail about costing and working at “cross-purposes” with the Bank of England.
Ms Truss later told BBC Radio Kent that she is “very clear the Government has done the right thing by taking action urgently to deal with inflation, to deal with the economic slowdown, and to deal with high energy bills”.
Were those accusations from globalists really true?
Was day-to-day business in Britain disrupted so dramatically? And wasn’t the Government helping Britons with their energy bills? As to the latter question, the UK has been providing the most assistance of any European government:
That week, Kwarteng was under much pressure to meet with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which, as I posted on October 6, has a lot of Torsten Bell alums from his charity, the Resolution Foundation.
On Friday, September 30, he met with the OBR. Guido reported:
The highly-anticipated meeting between the OBR and government wrapped up after 48 minutes. The OBR says they’ll deliver an initial forecast on the October 7, however the government’s readout of the meeting sticks to the line that it will be published alongside Kwarteng’s medium-term growth plan on November 23 …
Meanwhile, Labour were still banging on about the abolition of the 45% tax rate. The cost of subsidising Britons’ energy bills kept increasing, too. Naysayers were pumping up the total expenditure from £60bn to £100bn:
That morning, The Telegraph posted Kwarteng’s editorial defending his fiscal event, which ended with this:
Even in the face of extreme volatility in global markets, with major currencies wrestling an incredibly strong US dollar, we will show financial markets and investors that our plan is sound, credible and will work to drive growth.
By combining our immediate energy support with bold action to reset the fundamentals of the UK economy, we are helping households and businesses today – and putting the United Kingdom on a more prosperous, competitive path for years to come.
That evening, The Times reported that the Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said that Truss delivered what she had promised in the leadership hustings and reminded us that she and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak disagreed on how the British economy should proceed:
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland on Friday, Jack said: “When you say ‘huge shock’, over the summer [Truss] was very clear that her strategy was to reduce taxes.
“She and Rishi Sunak argued that out over the summer, he said one thing, she said the other, but it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone when she said she believed the strategy was to be more of an Asian tiger economy, where you keep your higher spending but you grow your economy, and she said to do that she would be cutting taxes.
“To anyone paying any attention to that leadership contest it was plain as day what was going to happen” …
In response to the plans announced by Kwarteng last week, the International Monetary Fund said it was monitoring the situation and urged a rethink, while the Bank of England began buying government bonds to avert what it described as a “material risk to UK financial stability”.
More controversy, ending with Truss’s sacking of Kwarteng, followed.
I will dissect the tragic conclusion tomorrow and, on Thursday, what it means for Truss’s premiership.
As I promised earlier week, there is a way that Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng can deal with the 45% tax rate.
Before I go into that, however, the hysteria from the past few weeks, beginning with Kwarteng’s September 23 fiscal event, has gone into overdrive.
Truss’s dresses
During the Conservative leadership contest in July and August, Liz Truss has worn a particular style of dress.
During last week’s Party conference, The Guardian went a bit mad and accused the Prime Minister of dressing like a dictator. One can only hope that whoever tweeted this looked at the reply with Liz Hurley wearing the same style of dress …
… which is very popular at the moment.
On October 5, The Telegraph wrote about the new ‘power dress’, a Karen Millen creation called Forever.
If Truss is dressing like a dictator, then so is Catherine, Princess of Wales (emphases in purple mine):
You may not be familiar with the term “inverted notch lapel”, or what it might look like. Until now, that is, after two of the country’s most high profile women stepped out wearing it.
The first was the new Princess of Wales, who wore the Karen Millen Forever dress in sunshine yellow for a visit to a maternity ward. Kate rarely puts a fashion foot wrong so, as PR opportunities come, this is the holy grail. The Kate Effect is as powerful as it was 11 years ago when she married Prince William and, at the time of writing, the dress is already sold out in every size.
The other person modelling this style, Prime Minister Liz Truss, wore a red Karen Millen dress for her leader’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. This in itself is not new; she has several dresses like this in different colours. For her, the inverted notch lapel is almost a style signature.
Truss’s look has gone viral on social media though, because it appears to be uncannily similar to the dress worn by Emma Thompson in the dystopian Russell T Davies drama Years and Years. It could even be the same one. Named the “Forever” dress, Karen Millen has been selling it in various iterations since 2015 and it’s a consistent bestseller. At £225, it’s not cheap, but also not prohibitively expensive. It’s inclusive too, available in sizes 6-26.
Note how selective the perception is. Russell T Davies notices when Truss wears the dress, but not the Princess of Wales:
The fact that Thompson plays an ultra-far-right politician in a terrifying imagined future in Years and Years is less than ideal for Truss. As Davies himself pointed out on Instagram: “This is getting weird.”
The dress’s appeal is all about its neckline:
“The V-neck does all the right things,” says personal stylist Annabel Hodin, who regularly works with women in the public eye. “It elongates the neck in an unprovocative but very feminine way and allows for delicate but pretty jewellery. This highlights the collarbone and draws the eye upwards. The neckline also creates a narrow shoulder effect. This all exudes confidence very subtly.”
We know that both the Princess of Wales and Truss are fond of delicate jewellery; the inverted notch allows the PM to put her “Circle of Truss” necklace front and centre.
Here’s the ‘power dress’ angle:
But it’s not just famous women – it’s regular women who desperately need smart clothes for work and don’t have the time to trawl the high street for other options. They need clothes that aren’t cut too low at the chest, don’t expose their upper arms, conceal their knees, and allow them to get on with their work without being distracted by their clothes. They are the lawyers, finance executives and general managers at fine dining restaurants. Ask those women where they found their well-fitting skirt or sharply cut dress and they’ll whisper, “Karen Millen”.
That’s enough about dresses.
Liz-slamming continues
Labour, along with the media, are doing their best at slamming Liz — Truss, that is, not Hurley.
After Truss criticised the ‘anti-growth coalition’ in her conference speech on Wednesday, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer wasted no time in attacking her:
On Thursday, October 6, Guido Fawkes reported (red and bold emphases his):
On cue, Sir Keir has hit the airwaves this morning to go on the counterattack after Liz’s conference speech. As expected, Liz’s “anti-growth coalition” line is doing all the heavy lifting, with Starmer erupting into a kind of “I know you are, but what am I?” defence on BBC Radio Sheffield:
Oh for heaven’s sake… the enemies of growth? She has just passed a kamikaze mini-Budget which has lost control of the economy, is putting hundreds of pounds on people’s mortgage bills […] that is the absolute opposite of growth. She’s…she- she’s absolutely not just anti-growth, she’s the destroyer of growth!
Like Liz last week, Starmer made a whistle-stop tour of local media this morning, so inevitably he was asked about this repeatedly. He reacted more of less the same way in each interview, as though it’s the first time he’d heard the accusation.
Labour are also ‘cultivating business’, which is interesting as they normally cultivate unions. Sir Keir is pictured with his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves:
On October 6, Guido posted an excerpt from a new Labour document laying out the Party’s strategy:
Labour has in the past made much of cash for access attacks on Ministers – most recently on Kwasi after the mini-budget. Now the party has its eyes on government it too plans to get closer to corporate interests. In an internal document obtained by Guido, the party intends to raise an initial immediate target of £250,000 by deploying shadow ministers to “business engagement” events. They also plan to “cultivate and maintain” corporate contacts. A Labour press release from just days ago criticised the Tories for “prioritising the rich and big business”. Perhaps they might want to rethink that attack line…
… they are clearly aware that they are going to be pushing the legal boundaries, to generate hundreds of thousands coordinating with the leader’s office and glad handing at business engagement events without being caught offering policy changes. They may claim euphemistically to be “engaging with business”, the document makes clear that the real purpose is to “ensure income maximisation from events” and “to work closely with the fundraising team to ensure business contacts who may also be interested in a donor relationship are identified and effectively managed”. In other words, businessmen are to be flattered and fêted in return for their cash.
Keir is already facing internal criticism for moving away from the unions, who in turn are threatening to withdraw funding. He might now have the “who funds you” cash for access brigade on his case too…
Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves continued pumping out more inaccuracies about Kwarteng’s fiscal event economic policies:
Guido reminded us that Reeves used to work for the Bank of England (BoE) and should be able to handle dead hard sums. Furthermore, she was a few days behind the curve, as the BoE had stopped its intervention during this week’s Conservative Party conference:
The Bank of England has been easing off its interventions in the gilt market, leaving Rachel Reeves’s hyperbolic attack lines exposed for their inaccuracies. Julian Jessop points out the fact the Bank did not have to buy any gilts again today, leaving total purchases stable at £3.66 billion. A tad short of the £65 billion she repeatedly claims. This is a further sign market jitters have been effectively mitigated, far from Labour’s claims of an “economic crash”. As a trained economist and former Bank of England employee, Rachel really must know better. Her sums were out by a factor of 17…
On October 4, Reuters stated that the BoE had already slowed down its purchases of long-dated government bonds:
The Bank of England rejected all 2.23 billion pounds ($2.53 billion) of long-dated government bonds which it was offered on Tuesday at its daily auction aimed at stabilising markets and stopping a fire-sale of assets by pension funds.
The BoE said last week that it was open to buying up to 5 billion pounds of long-dated gilts a day at reverse auctions which it is holding until Oct. 14, subject to a reserve price which would vary depending on market conditions.
The BoE announced the operations on Sept. 28, when 30-year gilt yields hit a 20-year high above 5% in market turmoil after Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. Thirty-year yields dropped 100 basis points (bps) shortly after the BoE announcement.
The actual volume of gilts purchased by the BoE so far has been low and looks unlikely to come close to the 65 billion pounds which initially looked possible.
On Monday the BoE bought just 22.1 million pounds of gilts with a maturity of 20 years or over, and in last week’s three auctions it only bought 3.64 billion pounds in total …
Late on Monday the BoE issued a statement reaffirming its willingness to buy up to 5 billion pounds of gilts, but reiterating that it would not buy gilts at any price.
The lies and the truth
On October 6, The Guardian wrote that the BoE warns that pension funds are in meltdown because of Kwarteng’s fiscal event, or mini-budget.
However, as usual, all the Conservatives’ critics, including their own rebel MPs, miss the point that currencies are fluctuating all over the world.
One of Guido’s readers responded to the article as follows:
1) It’s the G[uardian]
2) It’s an opinion piece
3) Explain why the € is STILL below parity.
4) Explain why every currency crashed (except the Ruble).
Was that all to do with Liz?
Grow up and grow a pair.
Another of Guido’s readers explained that many years of quantitative easing (QE) need to be corrected:
I’m afraid all the “listening” … in the world to the current myopic economic orthodoxy and vested interest groups, will not lead to a result contrary to that which it has already caused i.e. stagflation, merely more of the same.
Further, the real reason Sterling fell in value (which the deluded mainstream media dare not countenance) is because the Bank of England are running nominal interest 1% below that of the Federal Reserve (over 3% in real terms), and that they also announced the reversal of the Quantitative Easing programme (currently standing at over £1 trillion in asset purchases sitting on the Bank of England’s balance sheet).
Unfortunately the bond markets (along with every other asset market, including junk bonds) have been bid up into the stratosphere because of fifteen years of QE and ZIRP, without which, the huge manipulation of asset markets, including Gilts, is going to unwind, resulting in huge price falls, and a large rise in Gilt yields.
It has gone on so long, nobody can remember long term averages of bond yields or interest rates, and trillions of debt has been secured on this basis, which has skewed the economy toward speculation, idle whimsy and a reliance on huge government subsidy, none of which is productive.
In essence we have been producing too little and consuming too much, for far too long, expecting to borrow ever further into the future to fund it, or papering over the cracks with ever greater tranches of money printing.
Quite reasonably lenders are questioning our ability to pay, and the underlying value of our currency.
That is to say, the bill is coming due, and I’m afraid blindly following the prevailing economic orthodoxy, with more debt, money printing, state entitlement, etc., is only going to deepen the economic stagnation and inflation, quite probably to the point of hyperinflation if we continue to “listen” to vested interests unwilling to countenance their folly.
The long-serving Conservative MP John Redwood watches the economy closely and posted these observations on October 5:
The United States has experienced similar turbulence:
Overall, this is a global situation:
Let us now look at the global situation and how the United Kingdom compares.
We are better off than some countries and worse than others.
The point is: we are not an international outlier.
On Wednesday, October 5, The Times‘s David Smith looked at debt-to-GDP ratio across Western countries:
… according to International Monetary Fund figures compiled by the UK’s Office for National Statistics, only Germany in the G7 has a lower debt-to-GDP ratio. The UK’s debt to GDP is 102.8 per cent, slightly higher than the ONS’s own estimate. This is above Germany, 70.2 per cent and the EU, 90.3 per cent, but lower on this measure than Canada, 112.1 per cent, France, 112.3 per cent and America, 132.6 per cent. Then you get to the very high levels of debt of Italy, 150.9 per cent and Japan, 263 per cent.
Some countries have surprisingly low government debt, such as Sweden, 35 per cent and Denmark, 33 per cent. Switzerland, perhaps more predictably, is on 25 per cent. New Zealand is a low-debt country, 33 per cent, with Australia on 48 per cent.
It is worth noting that:
Singapore’s debt-to-GDP ratio, interestingly, is 176 per cent.
The panic narrative in the UK seems to centre around the debt trajectory:
More important is the trajectory of debt; the rate at which it is rising. Fifteen years ago, on the eve of the global financial crisis, under one of the rules followed by the Labour government then, UK debt was just under 40 per cent of GDP. Now it is close to 100 per cent, with a further rise to come, whose size will be determined by the forthcoming assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
I’ll get into the OBR shortly.
David Smith has more:
Other countries have not seen anything like this rise. Germany’s debt-to-GDP ratio, having risen during the financial crisis, is back close to pre-crisis levels, despite the pandemic, thanks to tough fiscal rules. America has seen close to a doubling of its debt, but a smaller rise than the UK. Italy had high debt at the launch of the euro in 1999, roughly 120 per cent of GDP, from which the rise to just over 150 per cent now does not look spectacular.
Japan’s very high government debt has never been a particular problem because it is funded by Japanese savers and financial institutions. A significant proportion of UK debt is held by foreigners and is thus more vulnerable to shifts in sentiment.
Whenever I write about UK government debt, a small contingent raises the issue of unfunded public sector pensions. A much bigger liability, on top of this, is unfunded state pensions. But all countries have unfunded liabilities and the way the OBR deals with this issue is to look at the future cost to government of funding those public sector pensions, which is expected to fall marginally relative to GDP in future because of the reform of those pensions.
He says that everything will hinge on the OBR, rather than the Chancellor, hence more doom and gloom:
The OBR, in its July fiscal risks report, had a baseline projection of UK government debt rising to 267 per cent of GDP over the next 50 years because of the upward pressure on spending on health, the state pension, social care and the loss of motoring taxes from the switch to electric. Returning debt to the 75 per cent of GDP considered sustainable before the pandemic would require significant future tax increases and spending cuts, it said.
Since then, the government has abandoned the health and social care levy (originating with the rise in national insurance) and the receipts in prospect from higher corporation tax. The question now is whether the OBR, later this month, can offer some reassurance on the short-term trajectory of UK debt. With markets still jumpy, that reassurance is still required.
All hail the OBR, in other words.
However, can the OBR be trusted?
Some of the OBR people come from a left-leaning organisation called the Resolution Foundation.
Those who watch parliamentary debates know that one name that comes up a lot is the Resolution Foundation, founded by Torsten Henricson-Bell, who now goes by the name Torsten Bell. Labour quote him and his Resolution Foundation frequently. Bell is also a frequent guest at various select committee inquiries.
This is because Torsten Bell was Ed Miliband’s policy advisor several years ago. It was Bell who carved Miliband’s 2015 Labour manifesto pledges into stone, which, after David Cameron won the general election that year, mysteriously disappeared. Even today, no one knows what happened to the Ed Stone, as it is called.
Bell was always opposed to Brexit.
Once, in 2018, BBC Radio 4 called the Resolution Foundation ‘left-leaning’.
Guido says that the Resolution Foundation, a registered charity, plays a bit fast and loose with the Charity Foundation’s rules on politicising matters. In their case, that involved promoting Labour at one point in February 2019.
This brings us to the present day and the intertwining of the Resolution Foundation with the OBR and the Treasury.
Conservative Chancellor George Osborne created the OBR — Office for Budget Responsibility — in 2010 when the Conservatives were in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Whether Osborne realised it or not at the time, the OBR took stances that opposed later Government policy.
On Monday, October 3, Guido posted ‘Office for Budget Responsibility’ Not-So-Independent Leadership’:
There’s been plenty of media squawking in the last couple of weeks over the lack of an Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast in the mini-Budget. Never mind the fact the OBR didn’t even exist until 2010, without its explicit blessing, how can any fiscal policy ever be trusted?
Even a cursory look at the OBR’s personnel gives you an idea of which school of thought its leaders belong: both the chair of its Budget Responsibility Committee and its Deputy Chief of Staff are former colleagues or protégés of Torsten Bell, chief executive of the left-of-centre* Resolution Foundation (RF). Torsten Bell will be a familiar face to co-conspirators. Before he spent his days pushing for ever-higher welfare payments at the RF, Bell was Labour’s Director of Policy under Ed Miliband. For years it seemed carving Labour’s manifesto into stone would be his crowning achievement. It turns out seeing his friends land top jobs overseeing government fiscal policy has won out…
Richard Hughes, now the chair of the OBR’s Budget Responsibility Committee, spent a year alongside Bell at the Resolution Foundation as its research associate, where he:
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- Co-authored new fiscal rule proposals which were “urgent” because the Government was promising “a flurry of spending commitments and promises to cut taxes” in 2019.
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- Warned of the “economic disruption associated with a no deal Brexit“, and claimed it would lead to “a smaller and slower-growing economy in the long run.”
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- Claimed the impact of Brexit on the economy would be “worse than Covid” which was responsible for over 100,000 deaths.
Laura Gardiner, OBR Deputy Chief of Staff responsible for policy costings, expenditure, receipts and “fiscal risks“, worked for Bell for six years. In that time she:
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- Claimed it “makes sense” to bribe 25-year olds with £10,000 handouts – an £8 billion-a-year policy which was soon swept under the rug, presumably once everyone realised how bonkers it was.
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- Attacked the government for “the era of austerity“, and proposed reforming Universal Credit. Learned plenty from her days alongside Bell, obviously.
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- Served as a “Lambeth Equality Commissioner“.
Lambeth is a long-time Labour borough in south London.
Guido is perplexed:
It baffles Guido that Richard Hughes was recruited to head the OBR from an organisation, the Resolution Foundation, which has been unremittingly critical of every Tory chancellor since George Osborne. Is it any wonder that Kwasi didn’t fancy having his plans benchmarked by known ideological opponents who favoured staying in the EU and egalitarian redistribution on a gargantuan scale. It doesn’t take a great insight to guess what the OBR will say when a budget that doesn’t align with their values and objectives lands on their desks…
*David Willets, the foundation’s president, is used as a token Tory shield against accusations it is a left-wing campaigning organisation. Guido would not go as far as to say Two Brains is a useful idiot, he is however an ideological fig-leaf…
No wonder that Kwarteng felt free to joke about the OBR at a drinks reception sponsored by the think tank Policy Exchange that night at the Party conference:
On Thursday, October 6, Guido made another OBR revelation. Another Resolution Foundation alum favours huge tax rises :
It turns out there’s a third we missed…
Cara Pacitti, the OBR’s Senior Fiscal Analyst, also spent two years as an economist at the Resolution Foundation, where she worked alongside her future OBR boss Richard Hughes on one paper assessing the “damage” of a no-deal Brexit, and another which claimed “tax rises tend to harm the economy less than spending cuts“. The latter paper, “How to support the economy today and repair the public finances tomorrow”, may as well have been drafted by Gordon Brown.
Here’s a flavour of what it proposed:
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- Public support is necessary and so taxes on corporate crisis windfall profits should be considered – which is Labour Party policy.
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- Freezing tax thresholds and raising the Corporation Tax rate should be seen as low-hanging fruit for raising revenue – a massive stealth tax on individuals and a jobs destroying burden on businesses.
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- Reforming wealth taxes can improve the functioning of the tax system and raise significant revenue – the Corbyn agenda.
So that’s three senior members of the OBR who are about to assess a budget which obviously runs contrary to their declared ideological objectives. The Resolution Foundation has never seen a tax it doesn’t like, is run by the Labour Party’s former policy chief and advances an agenda that is socialistic. How is it that out of the thousands of economists turned out by British universities every year, the OBR over and over again keeps hiring senior economists from the one think-tank run by Labour’s former policy chief? What are the odds?
No wonder Kwarteng didn’t bother consulting the OBR before issuing his mini-budget.
Another hard-hitting truth is that average families are paying more tax than the Left and their water-carrying media chums would have us believe:
A full report is available:
How to abolish the 45% tax rate
Now to the nub of the matter.
All the above provides a backdrop as to how difficult it will be to get rid of Gordon Brown’s — Labour’s — 45% tax rate.
I wrote about Kwarteng’s U-turn on Monday. It was spurred on by Sir Graham Brady of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers who can make or break a Prime Minister.
If Parliament had a vote on its abolition, the Government would have lost, leaving Liz Truss in a precarious position. On Monday, The Telegraph reported:
Rebels told journalists they were confident that at least 36 of them would vote with the Opposition on the 45p cut – the number needed to overturn Ms Truss’s working majority – and it became increasingly clear that the policy was unsustainable.
On Tuesday, the veteran editor and author Charles Moore wrote a Telegraph article implying that dropping the abolition of the top tax rate was the right thing to do under the circumstances, although he did say:
Yesterday, unfortunately, the wrong side won. Kwasi Kwarteng may be right that the top-rate cut had become “a terrible distraction” from the rest of the growth plan, but its removal is a setback for that plan. It weakens the Truss/Kwarteng attempt to change our economic culture and return to enterprise.
However, all is not lost.
The Spectator‘s Matthew Lynn has a cracking plan on how to get rid of the 45% tax rate — by stealth:
The tax only raised a trivial £2 billion a year or so and prevented the UK from being the lowest-taxed major economy in Europe.
Getting rid of it might even raise more money. Clearly abolishing it in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis is too difficult politically. It is, however, still the right thing to do. So here’s what Truss – who has spent all her political capital on a botched attempt to scrap the tax – should do instead.
The PM should start by steadily raising the threshold so that it impacts far fewer people. If she’s feeling brave, she should take it all the way up to £500,000. In the United States, for example, the top rate of 37 per cent kicks in at $539,000 (£480,000) – and hardly anyone apart from a few fanatics on Twitter have much to say about that.
Next, Truss should add in various exemptions and allowances that could only be set against the top rate. Mortgage relief, for example, or travel expenses for work.
Finally, she should dramatically increase the thresholds for the 40 per cent rate as well. Given that £50,000 a year is a ridiculous level for people to start paying almost half their income in tax, Truss could push that all the way up to £150,000 a year, and then eventually to £200,000. And then once that had been achieved, the PM could merge the two top rates, and sell the whole package as an increase for the rich. Add up all those changes, and it would no longer exist.
Some of the biggest changes in political direction are best done under cover. Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown achieved some of their most significant policy changes by stealth: Thatcher did so with her slow and gradual reduction of trade union power; Brown with a steady expansion of the tax and welfare system that turned the UK into a country addicted to state support.
The Truss government – if it is not already too late for it to make any meaningful reforms – should learn to follow them. The 45 per cent rate should go: but it can only be done if nobody notices.
No doubt, either Truss or Kwarteng reads The Spectator. Let’s hope they did not miss this brilliant way forward on getting rid of the 45% tax rate. And never mind the OBR.
The UK experienced a busy and historic weekend as Operations London Bridge and Unicorn became reality after the Queen’s death on Thursday, September 8, 2022.
The nation is now in a 10-day period of mourning, which continues through Monday, September 19, the day of the Queen’s funeral in Westminster Abbey. King Charles III has declared the day to be a bank holiday. The Royals, including their staff, will mourn for an additional week.
Before going into the weekend’s events, I have a few items to add from the end of last week.
Wednesday and Thursday, September 7 and 8
Last Wednesday, possibly having been busy preparing for her parliamentary statement on the energy crisis on Thursday, Liz Truss’s office cancelled the weekly update on Operation London Bridge, the funeral plans for Queen Elizabeth II. However, Simon Case, the civil servant who is Cabinet Secretary, informed the Prime Minister of the Queen’s decline early on Thursday morning.
Former Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Parm Sandhu told GB News that Operation London Bridge was originally planned in the 1960s and has been regularly reviewed since.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s — Prince Philip’s — plans were Operation Forth Bridge, so named for the magnificent bridge that links the Scottish capital to Fife.
Operation Unicorn involves funeral plans for Scotland in the event the Queen died there.
As my post on Friday explained, the Prime Minister found out about the Queen’s death during the energy debate in the Commons.
On Friday, September 9, Conservative MP Michael Fabricant told GB News that the note she received at lunchtime might well have said:
London Bridge is down.
At that point, the Queen was receiving medical attention and her closest family members were on their way to Balmoral.
The Times reported how Thursday afternoon’s events unfolded (emphases mine):
The six hours that followed brought together a fractured royal family and seemed to unite a nation in apprehension. At 12.32pm, moments after the first signs in the Commons, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision.”
It was immediately clear the news was more significant than previous announcements about the Queen’s health. Newspaper websites swiftly reported the announcement …
… At 12.45pm the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall announced that they were travelling to Balmoral. They were already in Scotland after hosting a dinner at Dumfries House in Ayrshire the previous evening. A minute later the Duke of Cambridge, 40, announced that he would be travelling from London. It was now clear that the situation was grave.
The Duchess of Cambridge, 40, remained at their Windsor home and drove to collect Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis following their first full day at their new school to tell them of the news. At 1.30pm the Duke of York, 62, who was stripped of his royal duties after the scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, said that he would also be flying to Scotland. Six minutes later the Earl and Countess of Wessex confirmed that they would also be travelling to Balmoral.
The Princess Royal, 72, had been on the Isle of Raasay on Wednesday and stayed at Balmoral overnight. The Duke of Sussex, despite his long- running troubles with the monarchy, announced at 1.52pm that he was also travelling to Scotland, separately from other senior royals but “in co-ordination with other family members’ plans”. He arrived at Balmoral almost two hours after the announcement of his grandmother’s death. He had flown into Aberdeen airport alone, and his wife remained in Windsor.
Prince Harry, 37, happened to be in the UK anyway, and had been due to attend a charity event in London last night.
The first signs of serious concerns about the Queen’s health had emerged at 6pm on Wednesday, when it was announced that she had “accepted doctors’ advice to rest” rather than attend a virtual meeting of the privy council that evening.
That would have been only an hour after I’d heard a long pealing of bells from Westminster Abbey on Wednesday, which I mentioned in my post on Friday.
More of the timeline continues, including the hour when the Queen’s death was announced:
Soon after the announcement of concerns of the Queen’s doctor, Charles, 73, was seen clutching a large briefcase as he boarded the royal helicopter from Dumfries House with Camilla, 75, for the journey to Balmoral.
The flight carrying William, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Sophie took off from RAF Northolt in northwest London at 2.39pm. Royal Air Force flight KRF23R landed at Aberdeen airport at 3.50pm. A short while later, at 4.30pm, the prime minister was informed of the Queen’s death by Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, according to her official spokesman.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Cambridge was driving his two uncles the 40 miles from Aberdeen airport to Balmoral, arriving just after 5pm. William was behind the wheel of the Range Rover, with Andrew in the passenger seat and Edward, 58, and Sophie, 57, in the back …
The Palace said in a statement: “The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.”
Charles had acceded to the throne immediately.
The flags in Downing Street were lowered to half mast at 6.36pm. BBC One played the national anthem following the announcement of the monarch’s death, showing a photograph of the Queen, followed by a royal crest on a black background and the words Queen Elizabeth II …
The double rainbow, which I also referenced on Friday, appeared as soon as the flags were lowered to half mast, not only in London but also in Windsor.
On Friday afternoon, The Telegraph reported that only Princess Anne and Prince Charles made it to Balmoral in time to see the Queen before she died:
The King and the Princess Royal were the only two senior members of the Royal family who made it to Balmoral before Queen Elizabeth II’s death, it is understood …
As for Prince William and his uncles and aunt:
Royal Air Force flight KRF23R took off shortly after 2.30pm, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.com, landing in Aberdeen at 3.50pm.
Prince William drove the quartet from the airport to Balmoral and they were pictured sweeping into the gates of the castle shortly after 5pm.
It is possible they had known they would not make it, perhaps even before their plane took off.
In the event, by the time they arrived, it was too late.
Prince Harry’s flight was delayed and he did not arrive until 8 p.m.:
… he is believed to have been mid-air when Buckingham Palace announced at 6.30pm that the Queen had died, arriving at Balmoral an hour and a half later.
The Duke’s Cessna had been due to land at 6.29pm, a minute before the historic statement. But it was 20 minutes late taking off at Luton Airport, meaning he did not land in Aberdeen until 6.46pm.
The grief-stricken Duke was photographed as he was driven into Balmoral Castle just before 8pm to join other members of his family.
That evening, France paid the Queen tribute by turning off the lights on the Eiffel Tower at midnight and on Friday, at 10 p.m.:
Friday, September 9
On Friday morning, the Telegraph article said that Prince Harry left Balmoral early:
Prince Harry was the first to leave Balmoral on Friday morning, driven out of the gates at 8.20am.
He had to take a commercial flight back to Windsor:
He later boarded a British Airways flight from Aberdeen to Heathrow and is thought to have returned to Frogmore Cottage, Windsor, where the Duchess of Sussex was waiting for him.
Later that morning, the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport Union) head, Mick Lynch, announced that the rail strikes planned for September 15 and 17 were cancelled.
Guido Fawkes said that a postal strike was also cancelled (emphases his):
The Communication Workers Union has also called off a planned Royal Mail strike, with General Secretary Dave Ward saying “Following the very sad news of the passing of the Queen, and out of respect for her service to the country and her family, the union has decided to call off tomorrow’s planned strike action.”
Fair play to both Lynch and Ward, whether they’re genuinely in mourning or its cynical comms, they made the right call…
England’s three main political parties suspended campaigning during the mourning period. This is fine, except that Parliament is adjourned until after the Queen’s funeral, at which point it will continue to be adjourned for three weeks’ worth of annual political party conferences.
If Liz is smart, she will find a way to get the Commons, at least, to reconvene during conference season. There is no justification, especially this year, for every MP to attend these rather superfluous events. Furthermore, the evening events are also times of revelry, which seems inappropriate at this time.
Guido‘s Friday post says:
With King Charles instituting 17 days of mourning, the death of Queen Elizabeth will certainly cast shadows over all three of the major parties’ conferences. Guido understands the Tories are having conversations about how to proceed with their Birmingham gathering in light of the news. With politics grinding to a halt, it’s going to be difficult for PM Truss to enjoy the full political dividend from yesterday’s energy policy announcement…
Parliament is not due to reconvene until October 17. October is the month when the new energy ‘price cap’ — i.e. a dramatic increase — comes into effect. This will affect everyone and a policy really needs to be finalised before then. Conservative MP John Redwood tweeted:
As I write on Monday afternoon, GB News’s Tom Harwood says that a ‘fiscal event’ — an energy policy announcement — could be made on one of the four consecutive days after mourning and before conference recess. He says that his sources tell him that separate legislation would not be required. Let’s hope he is right.
Friday is not normally a day when either House of Parliament meets. However, both MPs and the Lords met to pay tribute to the Queen. The sessions, which also included taking the Oath of Loyalty to King Charles — optional, as the Oath includes successors — continued into Saturday. Every MP and Lord who wanted to speak was able to do so.
The Commons session on Friday afternoon began with a minute’s silence:
Afterwards, the Prime Minister began the tributes:
Guido has the video and pulled out the key quote from her address:
The United Kingdom is the great country it is today because of her, the Commonwealth is the family of nations it is today because of her.
Hansard has the full transcript of Friday’s and Saturday’s tributes from MPs. I commend them to everyone, because many MPs mentioned that the Queen visited their respective constituencies more than once during her reign. Only a handful had never had met her. The contributions reflected a monarch with not only dignity but also good humour. Everyone who met her said that she knew how to put them at ease.
Truss pointed out other historical highlights in her address:
In the hours since last night’s shocking news, we have witnessed the most heartfelt outpouring of grief at the loss of Her late Majesty the Queen. Crowds have gathered. Flags have been lowered to half-mast. Tributes have been sent from every continent around the world. On the death of her father, King George VI, Winston Churchill said the news had,
“stilled the clatter and traffic of twentieth-century life in many lands”.
Now, 70 years later, in the tumult of the 21st century, life has paused again.
Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. She was the rock on which modern Britain was built. She came to the throne aged just 25, in a country that was emerging from the shadow of war; she bequeaths a modern, dynamic nation that has grown and flourished under her reign. The United Kingdom is the great country it is today because of her. The Commonwealth is the family of nations it is today because of her. She was devoted to the Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. She served 15 countries as Head of State, and she loved them all …
Her devotion to duty remains an example to us all. She carried out thousands of engagements, she took a red box every day, she gave her assent to countless pieces of legislation and she was at the heart of our national life for seven decades. As the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, she drew on her deep faith. She was the nation’s greatest diplomat. Her visits to post-apartheid South Africa and to the Republic of Ireland showed a unique ability to transcend difference and heal division. In total, she visited well over 100 countries. She met more people than any other monarch in our history.
She gave counsel to Prime Ministers and Ministers across Government. I have personally greatly valued her wise advice. Only last October, I witnessed first hand how she charmed the world’s leading investors at Windsor Castle. She was always so proud of Britain, and always embodied the spirit of our great country. She remained determined to carry out her duties even at the age of 96. It was just three days ago, at Balmoral, that she invited me to form a Government and become her 15th Prime Minister. Again, she generously shared with me her deep experience of government, even in those last days.
Everyone who met her will remember the moment. They will speak of it for the rest of their lives. Even for those who never met her, Her late Majesty’s image is an icon for what Britain stands for as a nation, on our coins, on our stamps, and in portraits around the world. Her legacy will endure through the countless people she met, the global history she witnessed, and the lives that she touched. She was loved and admired by people across the United Kingdom and across the world.
One of the reasons for that affection was her sheer humanity. She reinvited monarchy for the modern age. She was a champion of freedom and democracy around the world. She was dignified but not distant. She was willing to have fun, whether on a mission with 007, or having tea with Paddington Bear. She brought the monarchy into people’s lives and into people’s homes.
During her first televised Christmas message in 1957, she said:
“Today we need a special kind of courage…so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.”
We need that courage now. In an instant yesterday, our lives changed forever. Today, we show the world that we do not fear what lies ahead. We send our deepest sympathy to all members of the royal family. We pay tribute to our late Queen, and we offer loyal service to our new King.
His Majesty King Charles III bears an awesome responsibility that he now carries for all of us. I was grateful to speak to His Majesty last night and offer my condolences. Even as he mourns, his sense of duty and service is clear. He has already made a profound contribution through his work on conservation and education, and his tireless diplomacy. We owe him our loyalty and devotion.
The British people, the Commonwealth and all of us in this House will support him as he takes our country forward to a new era of hope and progress: our new Carolean age. The Crown endures, our nation endures, and in that spirit, I say God save the King. [Hon. Members: “God save the King.”]
Labour’s Keir Starmer, Leader of the Loyal Opposition, spoke next. Guido has the video:
The highlight of his speech was this:
She did not simply reign over us, she lived alongside us. She shared in our hopes and our fears, our joy and our pain, our good times, and our bad.
Interestingly, when they were younger, both Starmer and Truss wanted to abolish the monarchy.
Boris Johnson spoke a short time later, declaring the Queen:
Elizabeth the Great.
Historian David Starkey would disagree and did so on GB News on Sunday, September 11. He said that ‘the Great’ has applied exclusively to monarchs who waged war, e.g. Peter the Great.
Guido has the video. Boris began by saying that the BBC contacted him recently to speak about the Queen in past tense:
I hope the House will not mind if I begin with a personal confession. A few months ago, the BBC came to see me to talk about Her Majesty the Queen. We sat down and the cameras started rolling, and they requested that I should talk about her in the past tense. I am afraid that I simply choked up and could not go on. I am really not easily moved to tears, but I was so overcome with sadness that I had to ask them to go away.
I know that, today, there are countless people in this country and around the world who have experienced the same sudden access of unexpected emotion, and I think millions of us are trying to understand why we are feeling this deep, personal and almost familial sense of loss. Perhaps it is partly that she has always been there:
a changeless human reference point in British life; the person who—all the surveys say—appears most often in our dreams; so unvarying in her pole-star radiance that we have perhaps been lulled into thinking that she might be in some way eternal.
But I think our shock is keener today because we are coming to understand, in her death, the full magnitude of what she did for us all. Think what we asked of that 25-year-old woman all those years ago: to be the person so globally trusted that her image should be on every unit of our currency, every postage stamp; the person in whose name all justice is dispensed in this country, every law passed, to whom every Minister of the Crown swears allegiance; and for whom every member of our armed services is pledged, if necessary, to lay down their lives.
Think what we asked of her in that moment: not just to be the living embodiment, in her DNA, of the history, continuity and unity of this country, but to be the figurehead of our entire system—the keystone in the vast arch of the British state, a role that only she could fulfil because, in the brilliant and durable bargain of the constitutional monarchy, only she could be trusted to be above any party political or commercial interest and to incarnate, impartially, the very concept and essence of the nation.
Think what we asked of her, and think what she gave. She showed the world not just how to reign over a people; she showed the world how to give, how to love and how to serve. As we look back at that vast arc of service, its sheer duration is almost impossible to take in. She was the last living person in British public life to have served in uniform in the Second World War. She was the first female member of the royal family in a thousand years to serve full time in the armed forces.
That impulse to do her duty carried her right through into her 10th decade to the very moment in Balmoral—as my right hon. Friend said—only three days ago, when she saw off her 14th Prime Minister and welcomed her 15th. I can tell you, in that audience she was as radiant and as knowledgeable and as fascinated by politics as ever I can remember, and as wise in her advice as anyone I know, if not wiser. Over that extraordinary span of public service, with her naturally retentive and inquiring mind, I think—and doubtless many of the 15 would agree—that she became the greatest statesman and diplomat of all.
She knew instinctively how to cheer up the nation, how to lead a celebration. I remember her innocent joy more than 10 years ago, after the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, when I told her that the leader of a friendly middle eastern country seemed actually to believe that she had jumped out of a helicopter in a pink dress and parachuted into the stadium. [Laughter.] I remember her equal pleasure on being told, just a few weeks ago, that she had been a smash hit in her performance with Paddington Bear.
Perhaps more importantly, she knew how to keep us going when times were toughest. In 1940, when this country and this democracy faced the real possibility of extinction, she gave a broadcast, aged only 14, that was intended to reassure the children of Britain. She said then:
“We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well”.
She was right …
… It was that indomitability, that humour, that work ethic and that sense of history that, together, made her Elizabeth the Great.
When I call her that, I should add one final quality, of course: her humility—her single-bar-electric-fire, Tupperware-using refusal to be grand. I can tell the House, as a direct eyewitness, that unlike us politicians, with our outriders and our armour-plated convoys, she drove herself in her own car, with no detectives and no bodyguard, bouncing at alarming speed over the Scottish landscape, to the total amazement of the ramblers and tourists we encountered.
It is that indomitable spirit with which she created the modern constitutional monarchy—an institution so strong, so happy and so well understood, not just in this country but in the Commonwealth and around the world, that the succession has already seamlessly taken place. I believe she would regard it as her own highest achievement that her son, Charles III, will clearly and amply follow her own extraordinary standards of duty and service. The fact that today we can say with such confidence, “God save the King” is a tribute to him but, above all, to Elizabeth the Great, who worked so hard for the good of her country not just now but for generations to come. That is why we mourn her so deeply, and it is in the depths of our grief that we understand why we loved her so much.
Theresa May’s speech was the funniest. I do wish she had shown this side of herself as Prime Minister. Her comic timing was impeccable:
Guido has a video of most of her address:
Arguably one of May’s most poignant speeches. Some needed light relief for the day...
Here’s the best part:
This excerpt follows:
Of course, for those of us who had the honour to serve as one of her Prime Ministers, those meetings were more frequent, with the weekly audiences. These were not meetings with a high and mighty monarch, but a conversation with a woman of experience, knowledge and immense wisdom. They were also the one meeting I went to that I knew would not be briefed out to the media. [Laughter.] What made those audiences so special was the understanding the Queen had of issues, which came from the work she put into her red boxes, combined with her years of experience. She knew many of the world leaders—in some cases, she had known their fathers—and she was a wise and adroit judge of people.
The conversations at the audiences were special, but so were weekends at Balmoral, where the Queen wanted all her guests to enjoy themselves. She was a thoughtful hostess. She would take an interest in which books were put in your room and she did not always expect to be the centre of attention; she was quite happy sometimes to sit, playing her form of patience, while others were mingling around her, chatting to each other. My husband tells of the time he had a dream: he dreamt that he was sitting in the back of a Range Rover, being driven around the Balmoral estate; and the driver was Her Majesty the Queen and the passenger seat was occupied by his wife, the Prime Minister. And then he woke up and realised it was reality!
Her Majesty loved the countryside. She was down to earth and a woman of common sense. I remember one picnic at Balmoral that was taking place in one of the bothies on the estate. The hampers came from the castle, and we all mucked in to put the food and drink out on the table. I picked up some cheese, put it on a plate and was transferring it to the table. The cheese fell on the floor. I had a split-second decision to make: I picked up the cheese, put it on a plate and put the plate on the table. I turned round to see that my every move had been watched very carefully by Her Majesty the Queen. I looked at her, she looked at me and she just smiled. And the cheese remained on the table. [Laughter.]
This is indeed a sad day, but it is also a day of celebration for a life well spent in the service of others. There have been many words of tribute and superlatives used to describe Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, but these are not hype; they are entirely justified. She was our longest-serving monarch. She was respected around the world. She united our nation in times of trouble. She joined in our celebrations with joy and a mischievous smile. She gave an example to us all of faith, of service, of duty, of dignity and of decency. She was remarkable, and I doubt we will ever see her like again. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.
Saturday’s session in the Commons was another marathon.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle opened it with this:
I now invite the House to resume its tributes to Her late Majesty. I expect to conclude tributes at 10 o’clock, when I shall invite Ministers to move the motion for a Humble Address to His Majesty. A hundred and eighty-two Members contributed yesterday, and many want to contribute today. I hope Members will therefore keep to the informal time limit of three minutes.
An excerpt from John Redwood’s speech follows.
On Friday, he pointed out how historically significant three of our Queens were in British history and for women:
On Saturday, he said:
What always came across to all of us was just how much she respected every person and every institution that she visited. She showed that respect by impeccable manners and great courtesy—always on time, always properly briefed, always appropriately dressed for the occasion.
But, as so many have said from their personal experiences, there was something so much more than that. She was not just the consummate professional at those public events: there was the warm spirit, the personality, and above all the understanding that everyone else at that event was terrified that something was going to go wrong, that they had not understood the protocol, or that there was some magic way of doing it—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) was explaining—that they had to get right. At those public events, the Queen always relaxed people and showed them that there was no right way, because she was there for the people; she was there for the institution; she was there for the event. That is what we can learn from.
Of course, she was also Our Majesty. She was the embodiment of the sovereignty of people and Parliament; she represented us so well abroad and represented us at home, knowing that as a constitutional monarch, she represented us when we were united. She spoke for those times when we were gloriously happy and celebrating, or she spoke for those times when there was misery and gloom and she had to deal with our grief and point to the better tomorrow. That was why she held that sovereignty so well and for so long—a constitutional monarch who did not exercise the power, but captured the public mood; who managed to deal with fractious and difficult Parliaments and different political leaders, but who was above the politics, which meant that our constitution was safe in her hands. I wish her son, the new King, every success in following that great lead as he has told us he will do, and I can, with others, say today—“God save the King.”
Redwood later tweeted that he had omitted an important part of his speech:
Indeed.
The Queen attended only two of her former Prime Ministers’ funerals, those of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
These are links to Friday’s (continued here) and Saturday’s (continued here) tributes from the Lords, both Spiritual and Temporal.
On Sunday, our vicar said that the Church of England lost her greatest evangelist, the Queen.
I cannot disagree with that.
The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke earlier on Friday afternoon, excerpted below.
He recalled her deep faith, something I wish more CofE clergy had:
… What has been said already today has been extraordinarily eloquent. I do not intend to repeat it but to say something about the Queen’s links to faith and to the Church of England. First is her assurance, her confidence, in the God who called her. At her coronation, so long ago, conducted by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher—the first of seven Archbishops of Canterbury who had the privilege of serving her—the service began with her walking by herself past the Throne, where she would very shortly be seated, and kneeling by the high altar of Westminster Abbey. The order of service said, “She will kneel in private prayer”—and so she did, for some time. The next thing to happen was that homage was paid to her, starting with the Duke of Edinburgh. What that said about her understanding of her role was that she pledged her allegiance to God before others pledged their allegiance to her. She had this profound sense of who she was and by whom she was called.
Then there was her profound, deep and extraordinary theological vision. Many years ago now—seven or eight years ago—I was travelling abroad, and someone who had no knowledge of these things said, “Well, of course, she’s not really got that much intellect, has she? I mean, private tutors and all this—what can she know?” Well, what ignorance. In 2012, she spoke at Lambeth Palace on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, and the speech she made there is one we return to very frequently, because she set out a vision for what an established Church should be. It was not a vision of comfort and privilege; it was to say, put very politely, “You are here as an umbrella for the whole people of this land”. The subtext was, “If you are not that, you are nothing”. That is a deep vision of what it is to be the Church—of what it is to be not an established Church but a Christian Church. That came from her deep understanding of faith. Every five years, at the inauguration of the Church of England’s General Synod, she came with messages of encouragement and assurance of her prayers. In 2021, her message was,
“my hope is that you will be strengthened with the certainty of the love of God, as you work together and draw on the Church’s tradition of unity in fellowship for the tasks ahead.”
Publicly, Her late Majesty worshipped regularly and spoke of her faith in God, particularly in her Christmas broadcasts, with quiet, gentle confidence. Privately, she was an inspiring and helpful guide and questioner to me and to my predecessors. She had a dry sense of humour, as we have heard already, and the ability to spot the absurd—the Church of England was very capable of giving her material—but she never exercised that at the expense of others. When I last saw her in June, her memory was as sharp as it could ever have been. She remembered meetings from 40 or 50 years ago and drew on the lessons from those times to speak of today and what we needed to learn: assurance of the love of God in her call, and then humility. It would be easy as a monarch to be proud, but she was everything but that. It was her faith that gave her strength. She knew that, but she knew also her call to be a servant, the one whom she served, and the nation she served, the Commonwealth and the world. Over the last 24 hours, I have had so many messages from archbishops, bishops and other people around the world, within the Commonwealth and way beyond it—from China, Latin America and many other places—in a deep sense of loss.
It has been the privilege of those on these Benches to be intimately involved with momentous occasions so often throughout Her late Majesty’s life. As has been said, she has been a presence for as long as we can remember. Jesus says in the Gospel of St Matthew:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”.
May God comfort all those who grieve Her late Majesty’s loss, and may God sustain His Majesty King Charles III in the enormous weight and challenges that he takes on immediately, at the same as he bears the burden of grief, and those around him in his family. May God hold Her late Majesty in His presence, firmly secured in the peace that passes far beyond our understanding.
The Archbishop of York, the Right Revd Stephen Cottrell, spoke in the first of Saturday’s sessions in the Lords. He added some light relief:
My Lords, like most Bishops from these Benches, I have stories to tell; stories of doing jigsaws in Sandringham on Sunday evenings and of barbeques in the woods at Sandringham in the middle of January—I even have a slightly scurrilous story about healing the Queen’s car. Perhaps I will tell it.
I had preached in Sandringham parish church. We were standing outside and the Bentley was there to get the Queen. It did not start. It made that throaty noise cars make in the middle of winter when they will not start, and everybody stood there doing nothing. I was expecting a policeman to intervene, but nothing happened. Enjoying the theatre of the moment, I stepped forward and made a large sign of the cross over the Queen’s car, to the enjoyment of the crowd—there were hundreds of people there, as it was the Queen. I saw the Queen out of the corner of my eye looking rather stony-faced, and thought I had perhaps overstepped the mark. The driver tried the car again and, praise the Lord, it started. The Queen got in and went back to Sandringham, and I followed in another car. When I arrived, as I came into lunch, the Queen said with a beaming smile, “It’s the Bishop—he healed my car”. Two years later, when I greeted her at the west front of Chelmsford Cathedral, just as a very grand service was about to start and we were all dressed up to the nines, she took me to one side and said, “Bishop, nice to see you again; I think the car’s all right today, but if I have any problems I’ll know where to come.”
When I became the 98th Archbishop of York, during Covid, I paid homage to the Queen by Zoom conference. I was in the Cabinet Office; everyone had forgotten to bring a Bible, including me, but there was one there—which is kind of reassuring. Just as the ceremony was about to begin, the fire alarm went off.
The Queen was at Windsor Castle, but we all trooped out of the Cabinet Office, on to the road, and were out there for about 20 minutes until they could check that it was a false alarm and we could go back in. When I went back into the room, there was the screen, with Her late Majesty waiting for things to begin again. I do not know why I find myself returning to that image of her, faithful watching and waiting through those very difficult times. That was a very small part of a life of astonishing service.
The other thing I have noticed in the last couple of days is that we are all telling our stories. Yesterday, I found myself sharing stories with somebody in the street. I at least had had the honour of meeting Her late Majesty; this person had never met her, but we were sharing stories. I said, “Isn’t it strange how we need to tell our stories? It’s not as if she was a member of our family.” Except she was. That is the point. She served the household of a nation. For her, it was not a rule but an act of service, to this people and to all of us.
I remind us, again and again, that that came from somewhere: it came from her profound faith in the one who said,
“I am among you as one who serves.”
The hallmark of leadership is service, watchfulness and waiting. It was her lived-in faith in Jesus Christ, day in and day out, which sustained, motivated and equipped her for that lifetime of service. How inspiring it was last night and this morning to see the baton pass to our new King, King Charles, in the same spirit of godly service to the people of a nation.
I had not thought of this, but the Archbishop of York pointed out the important feast day that coincided with the Queen’s death, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
Her Majesty the Queen died on 8 September, the day on which the blessed Virgin Mary is remembered across the world and the Church. Another Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, said of her when she knew she would be the mother of the Lord:
“Blessed is she who believed that the promises made to her would be fulfilled”.
Shot through all our tributes in this House and another place, and across our nation, is that which we have seen, especially as it was only on Tuesday—I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for reminding us—that the Queen received a new Prime Minister. Can it really be possible? She served to the end—a life fulfilled.
I will finish with a handful of her words. This is what the Queen wrote in a book to mark her 90th birthday, reflecting on her faith in Jesus Christ in her life:
“I have indeed seen His faithfulness.”
I am not supposed to call noble Lords “brothers and sisters”, but dear friends, we have seen her faithfulness too, and we see it now in our new King. May Her late Majesty the Queen rest in peace and rise in glory. God save the King.
Friday, September 9
At 6 p.m. on Friday, two significant events occurred.
The first was an hour-long service of prayer and reflection held at St Paul’s Cathedral:
This service was for people who work in the City of London along with a limited number of members of the public who could apply for wristbands — tickets — to attend. St Paul’s posted a page on how to obtain a wristband and how to queue on Friday afternoon for admittance.
Cabinet members attended and sat in the choir stalls. Prime Minister Truss and her Cabinet Secretary Simon Case sat in the front row. On the opposite side were Labour’s Keir Starmer and other Opposition MPs.
This was an excellent service. The Cathedral helpfully posted the Order of Service, which can be downloaded from the aforementioned webpage.
Truss read Romans 14:7-12:
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live
to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgement seat of God. For it is written,
‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.’
So then, each of us will be accountable to God.
This prayer in memory of the Queen is beautiful:
Eternal Lord God,
you hold all souls in life;
send forth, we pray, upon your servant, Elizabeth,
and upon your whole Church in earth and heaven
the brightness of your light and peace;
and grant that we,
following the good example of those
who have faithfully served you here and are now at rest,
may at the last enter with them
into the fullness of eternal joy
in Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Amen.
Meanwhile, King Charles III addressed the nation for the first time as monarch:
He spoke for ten minutes, first discussing his late mother then pledging his service to the people of the United Kingdom.
He ended his address by saying that Prince William would become the new Prince of Wales and that he had much love for Prince Harry as he and Meghan continue building their life together overseas.
The Telegraph included the following blurb. The last line comes from Shakespeare:
The broadcast was recorded in the Blue Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace, after the King and Queen greeted crowds of mourners outside the gates.
In a final message to his mother, the King said: “To my darling Mama, as you begin your last great journey to join my dear late Papa, I want simply to say this: thank you.
“Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years.
“May ‘flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest’.”
The walkabout the paper refers to involved much emotion from members of the public, especially women. One lady kissed him on the cheek and another shook his hand. Historically, one does not touch the monarch. That also applied to the Queen, even if a few people did touch her.
Another similar walkabout by the new King and Queen Consort occurred on Saturday afternoon outside the Palace.
The Accession Ceremony took place on Saturday morning. More about that tomorrow.
This is the final instalment of my series on Boris Johnson’s downfall.
Those who missed them can read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Also of interest are:
Developing news: how long can Boris last as PM? (July 5-6)
Boris stays as PM for now but stands down as Conservative leader: ‘When the herd moves, it moves’ (July 6-7)
This post discusses two groups of people who are still wild about Boris: British voters and the Ukrainians.
British voters
On June 11, 2022, one week after Boris survived a vote of confidence by his fellow Conservative MPs, The Observer — the Sunday edition of The Guardian — posted the results of a poll they commissioned.
The findings were surprising for a left-wing newspaper (emphases mine):
Boris Johnson makes a better prime minister than Keir Starmer would despite Partygate, the cost of living crisis and the confidence vote in Johnson held by his MPs, according to the latest Observer poll.
Granted, the results were close, but Boris managed to come out on top, with the Conservatives two points behind Labour:
The Opinium figures, which will raise further concerns within Labour over the party leader’s performance, shows that the prime minister has a two-point lead over his opponent. It also reveals that Starmer’s party holds a narrow two-point lead, compared with a three-point lead in the last poll a fortnight ago. Labour are on 36% of the vote, with the Tories up one point on 34%. The Lib Dems are on 13% with the Greens on 6% …
While 28% think Johnson would make the best prime minister, 26% opted for Starmer.
On June 13, the i paper‘s Hugo Gye posted a few pages from the book Moonshot, by Pfizer’s chairman Albert Bourla:
Two excerpts follow. These pertain to late 2020 and early 2021:
From my perspective, the UK was doing an exceptional job under tremendous pressure.
At that time, the UK was the only vaccinating so quickly that demand surpassed supply. As a result, we worked on a plan to meet the UK’s needs …
Yet, in the UK, it was only the Conservatives and conservatives remembering Boris’s efforts during that time period:
On June 14, the Mail‘s Alex Brummer wrote a positive article about the British economy, explaining why things weren’t as bad as the media and pundits portray them:
So, yes, we face serious challenges. And yet I simply do not believe there is any justification for the gloom-laden interpretation by large sections of the broadcast media and fierce critics of Boris Johnson’s government.
These Cassandras peddle a diet of relentless financial woe as they carelessly claim that the nation is in recession or heading for one.
But closer inspection shows not only that things are nowhere near as bad as they claim, but that there are serious grounds for hope in certain sectors, too.
Brummer explored the possibilities of what could happen either way:
True, the UK economy lost momentum recently, shrinking by 0.3 pc in April.
But what no one has mentioned is that this was largely down to a statistical quirk, and respected City forecasters are still actually predicting a 3.2 pc expansion of the UK economy this year, followed by 0.9 pc in 2023.
The big danger is that the constant barrage from the doom merchants could begin to influence events and destroy the resilience of consumers and enterprise — resilience which is still delivering for this country.
What is more, with a change of tack in the Government’s approach, I believe the economy could be recharged.
Of course, the country will struggle if it is required to contend with inflation, rising interest rates and a mountainous tax burden all at the same time. If consumers and businesses are doubly squeezed by higher interest rates and higher taxes, household incomes will be devastated …
Brummer disagreed with Rishi’s tax hikes:
The truth is that, with the nation close to full employment and the City of London and services — comprising more than 70 pc of national output — performing well, there was absolutely no need to urgently hike taxes, if at all.
Income tax, national insurance receipts, VAT and corporation tax receipts have all been flowing into the exchequer in record volumes. All that future rises will do is stymie spending and the willingness of companies to invest.
And the main reason for that fall in output of 0.3 pc in April? It is because the Government suddenly ended the NHS’s Test and Trace operations — which had grown into a formidable industry, employing tens of thousands of people — as the country emerged from the pandemic.
In fact, April saw activity in consumer services jump by 2.6 pc. In spite of the £100-a-tank of petrol, the £8-a-pint of best IPA and rocketing food prices, a recession — defined as two quarters of negative growth — is unlikely.
Brummer did support Rishi’s help to the neediest families:
Even if Rishi Sunak does not cut taxes, his £15 billion package of targeted support to help poorer households with the rising cost of living means incomes should now rise in the second and third quarter of the year. It is equal to nearly 2 pc of their earnings and will boost the country’s spending power.
There were more reasons not to believe the doom-mongers, who, as I write in early September, are getting shriller and shriller:
What the doom-mongers fail to tell you is that investment bankers Goldman Sachs recently pointed out that consumer services are ‘robust’ and Britain’s economy is 0.9 pc larger now than it was before the nation went into lockdown.
Economic activity in the crucial services sector, meanwhile, is 2.6 pc higher.
But it is not just the consumer activity — along with the £370 bn plus of pandemic savings in the current and savings accounts of households — propping up the economy.
New data just released shows that the drive towards the UK becoming a high-tech, high-value nation continues to make Britain prosper.
So far this year, the country has sucked in £12.4 bn of investment into the tech industry, the highest level of any country other than the United States.
And let no one blame Brexit:
As for the argument that Brexit has done for Britain, it is comprehensively rubbished by the City consultancy firm EY, which argues that, when it comes to financial services, ‘six years since the EU referendum, we can be confident that Brexit has not damaged the UK’s fundamental appeal’.
Since the financial and professional services are the biggest generator of income for HMRC, and the UK’s most successful export to the rest of the world, this should surely be a source of national pride rather than Remoaner carping.
Indeed, wherever you look, the excellence of Britain’s life sciences sector — as evidenced by the rapid development and distribution of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine during the pandemic — continues to shine …
Ultimately, taxes do need to be cut:
But more needs to be done. And by that I mean Rishi Sunak must put an end to the tax hikes — or even reverse them …
… he froze personal tax allowances until 2025-6, along with the thresholds for capital gains tax.
… this will provide additional revenues to the Government of about £20.5 bn a year.
Sunak also opted to raise corporation tax from 19 pc to a whopping 25 pc next year. And to help pay for the NHS and social care, every employee and employer in the country is now paying a 1.25 pc surcharge on national insurance.
Together, all these measures (before inclusion of the windfall tax on oil production) mean that Boris Johnson’s government is raising more tax from the British people and commerce than any UK government since the 1940s.
Such a position, given the precarious economic circumstances we face, is completely unsustainable. If the Johnson government wants to fight the next election with a healthy economy, taxes have to be cut with a decisive policy shift.
And if that happens, it could just be the magic pill for a Tory revival.
Meanwhile, Boris took a brief staycation in Cornwall while he helped campaign for the Conservative candidate in Neil ‘Tractor Porn’ Parish’s constituency for the by-election, which, unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats won.
The Mail reported on Boris’s schedule:
Boris Johnson has been pictured walking on a Cornish beach with his son Wilfred as he chose a staycation amid weeks of chaos at Britain’s airports for millions desperate for a post-pandemic foreign break.
The Prime Minister has been in the West Country campaigning as he tries to win the Tiverton and Honiton by-election for the Tories on June 23, but is squeezing in a short family holiday.
And after a flying visit to the Devon constituency he headed to Cornwall to launch his food strategy at the wheel of a tractor before relaxing on the award-winning Porthminster beach, St Ives.
Unfortunately, on Wednesday, June 15, Lord Geidt quit as Boris’s ethical adviser, which made all of his opponents question whether he should still be in office. This came a day after Geidt had appeared before a parliamentary select committee. I saw parts of that session. Geidt did not exactly inspire me with confidence.
Lord Geidt, a former private secretary to the Queen, announced his resignation in a 21-word statement the day after MPs accused him of “whitewashing” Johnson’s conduct and questioned whether there was “really any point” to him.
Geidt, 60, came close to quitting last month after concluding that there were “legitimate” questions about whether the prime minister breached the ministerial code. He said that Johnson’s fine for breaking coronavirus rules threatened to undermine his role and risked leaving the ministerial code open to ridicule.
He also received a “humble and sincere” apology from Johnson in January after the prime minister withheld critical messages from Geidt’s inquiry into the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat.
A statement from Geidt published on the government website this evening said simply: “With regret, I feel that it is right that I am resigning from my post as independent adviser on ministers’ interests.”
In a bruising encounter with the public administration and constitutional affairs select committee yesterday, Geidt admitted that he had been “frustrated” by the prime minister’s approach to the scandal.
William Wragg, the Conservative chairman of the committee, told The Times: “Lord Geidt is a person of great integrity, motivated by the highest ideals of public service. For the prime minister to lose one adviser on ministers’ interests may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.”
Then again, William Wragg is not a fan of Boris’s, prompting his supporters to think there was a stitch up, especially as Tony Blair had just been installed as a new member of the Order of the Garter.
Geidt’s letter seems to be focused on Boris’s fixed penalty notice for Partygate, but Boris’s response, published in The Guardian, is about steel tariffs:
GB News’s Patrick Christys explained this before going into Tony Blair’s offences during his time as Prime Minister, including the Iraq War and letting IRA terrorists walk free. It’s a shame the video isn’t clearer, but the audio is compelling. After Christys introduced the subject, a panel debate took place:
Christys ran a poll asking if Boris is more unethical than Blair. Seventy per cent said No:
Blair’s former adviser John McTernan said that, unlike Boris, Blair had been cleared of a fixed penalty notice (for an irregularity in paying London’s congestion charge). But was Blair actually cleared? The BBC article from the time suggests that he wasn’t:
On June 24, after the Conservatives lost Neil Parish’s seat to the Lib Dems and the Wakefield seat to Labour, The Telegraph reported that the co-Chairman of the Conservative Party, Oliver Dowden MP, resigned. He seemed to blame the loss on Boris, although mid-term by-election victories often go to an Opposition party, something Dowden should have known:
Oliver Dowden has resigned as chairman of the Conservative Party after it suffered two by-election defeats, saying in a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson that “someone must take responsibility”.
Mr Dowden’s resignation came at 5.35am, shortly after the announcement of the two defeats. He had been scheduled to appear on the morning media round before he decided to step down.
In Tiverton and Honiton the Liberal Democrats overturned a 24,000 Tory majority to win, while Labour reclaimed Wakefield.
The contests, triggered by the resignation of disgraced Tories, offered voters the chance to give their verdict on the Prime Minister just weeks after 41 per cent of his own MPs cast their ballots against him.
Guido Fawkes posted Boris’s generous letter of thanks to Dowden and his video explaining that mid-term by-election results often explain voters’ frustration with the direction of the Government:
As usual, Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell posted another inaccuracy, this time about Labour’s by-election results:
At the time, Boris was away in Kigali, Rwanda, for CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting). While there, he clarified sex and gender. The Times reported:
A woman cannot be born with a penis, Boris Johnson said last night, adding that there were “particular problems” around “issues of gender”, but he said it was important to be “as understanding of everybody else as possible”.
Asked whether a woman could be born with a penis, Johnson replied: “Not without being a man”.
This has been an ongoing controversy for the past year. Neither Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer have been willing to answer that question. Boris met that challenge.
By the time Boris resigned on Thursday, July 7, millions of voters thought it was a stitch up.
Dan Wootton expressed our thoughts magnificently in his editorial that evening on GB News:
Excerpts from his transcript follow:
They won, folks.
They got him in the end.
Let’s be honest for a moment, they were never going to stop until they’d secured Boris Johnson’s head.
Since December, the campaign by the political establishment, the Remoaner elite, the civil service blob and – crucially – the country’s biased broadcast media, notably BBC News, ITV News and Sly News, has been fever pitch.
Eventually, the Conservative Party decided it was impossible to govern while also fighting such dark and powerful forces.
These are deeply depressing times for British democracy.
Boris is the third Tory Prime Minister brought down in six years.
The febrile and hostile establishment and the MSM knows the power they have to bring political paralysis to the country.
And why were they so determined to destroy Boris?
Think about it.
He was a transformational Prime Minister.
A Prime Minister who stared them all down to finally deliver Brexit.
A Prime Minister who had vowed to cut the size of the civil service and demanded they return to their damned desks.
A Prime Minister who was going to scrap the hated BBC licence fee and sell the far-left Channel 4 News.
It’s not hard to see why they would stop at nothing to discredit him.
I mean, last night the BBC quoted a source saying Boris Johnson “is now like Putin”.
That’s how deranged and determined his critics have become.
The celebration that broke out across the airwaves today – especially on the Boris Bashing Corporation once known as the BBC – blew up any final suggestion that we have an impartial broadcast media here in Britain …
I wanted to share with you part of a conversation I had earlier today with a source close to the Prime Minister.
They told me: “People had no interest in talking about the quite historic leadership achievements be that dragging us through a pandemic, a world leading vaccine programme rollout and a quite uniquely special performance in regards to that European war.”
“Those people who wanted him gone never wanted to acknowledge that at any point. Never ever. It was always just the Westminster personality stuff. That was the only focus.”
“Labour has had not one policy or grown-up policy discussion. It has been an out and out campaign to remove Boris. And you always have to ask yourself why. Why did they want to get rid of Boris so much? Why did sections of the media do that? Ultimately, wounded or not, he is the Conservative’s best chance of winning an election” …
As the Daily Mail said today: “The truth is, Mr Johnson stands head and shoulders above almost all his assassins. Compared with the mountains he has scaled, their combined achievements are little more than molehills“ …
To Boris Johnson, it was a project not completed, largely down to external forces.
But thank you for delivering us Brexit; that is an achievement for the ages that will go down in the history books.
It was a sad evening, indeed.
However, in time, there might be an upside. Maybe he could appear on GB News now and again:
Boris won that night’s Greatest Briton accolade:
Wootton’s focus on Brexit was confirmed by The Telegraph‘s Sherelle Jacobs the following day. She fears that Boris’s resignation will give a lift to prominent Remainers:
… With the implosion of Boris Johnson, the Brexit war threatens to start anew. Tory Leavers must accept their vulnerability. The Prime Minister who ended the last battle by getting a Brexit deal done has just fallen in ignominious circumstances. Meanwhile, Remainers – who will never give up the fight – scent weakness.
While Andrew Adonis rallies against a “revolution which devours its children”, Michael Heseltine has declared that “if Boris goes, Brexit goes”. It might be tempting to dismiss all this as the hopeful rantings of bitter men. After all, Sir Keir Starmer has been at pains to reassure voters in recent days that Labour will not take Britain back into the European Union.
But even if the leader of the Opposition – a Remainer who voted six times against a Brexit deal – is genuine, he is powerless to stop the rejuvenation of the Remainer campaign. As support for Brexit in the polls has seeped away in recent months, in part because of the chaos that has gripped the Government, ultra-Remainers have been on manoeuvres. With the fall of Johnson, they think their time has almost come.
Over the next two years, they will likely proceed with a calculated mixture of boldness and caution. Already the public is being relentlessly bombarded with misinformation, which erroneously links every ill facing Britain with the decision to leave the EU. As the Tory party is distracted by internal dramas, negative Brexit sentiment will mount. This is already starting to happen, as critics in the business world become blunter in their criticisms – from the aviation industry to the CBI.
Meanwhile, some Tory MPs have been discreetly arguing in favour of a softer Brexit. Indeed, while the removal of the PM was by no means a Remainer plot, some of his internal enemies were motivated by a desire for greater alignment with EU rules – or at least by their opposition to what they consider to be an excessively aggressive attitude towards fixing the Northern Ireland protocol …
In truth, Conservative fealty to the Brexit cause has been disintegrating even under Boris Johnson, as the Blob has sapped the Government’s will …
The great fear is that the Tory party now elects a closet Remainer who does not have the conviction to take all this on. That Brexit dies with a whimper, smothered by bureaucratic inertia and then finally strangled after the next election. If Brexiteers want to avoid this fate, they must think like war strategists once again. That means confronting the extent of their current weakness, and taking their opponents seriously.
Boris also shares that same worry and said so in Parliament on July 19, the day of his final Prime Minister’s Questions:
Right after Boris’s resignation, an online petition appeared: ‘Reinstate Boris Johnson as PM’. It currently has over 23,000 signatures making it one of the top signed petitions on Change.org.
On Saturday, July 9, the i paper had an interesting report with several interviews:
The atmosphere sounded surreal:
“It was a bit weird”, a source said of the Cabinet meeting Boris Johnson convened on Thursday just two hours after he said he would step down, effectively putting Britain on pause.
The Prime Minister was flanked by senior ministers, some of whom, less than 24 hours, had earlier led a delegation of men and women in grey suits to No 10 to urge him to quit …
Bill committees examining legislation line-by-line had to be cancelled, or they had newly resigned ministers sitting on them as backbenchers, while the whips who lacked the required specialist knowledge of the issues at stake were leading for the Government …
Contenders to take over as PM, when Mr Johnson does go, have been preparing for a contest months as the writing has slowly been scrawled on the wall of No 10.
Tom Tugendhat, Penny Mordaunt, and Jeremy Hunt were the most active hopefuls this week, contacting MPs and arranging meetings …
As the leadership contenders jostled, the Whitehall blame game began over Mr Johnson’s spectacular fall from grace. The Prime Minister entirely overhauled his inner circle in February, after the initial “Partygate” allegations broke, and it is largely this team that will shepherd the Government through the final few months of his premiership …
The arrival of Guto Harri, one of Mr Johnson’s oldest allies, as director of communications is seen by many as a contributor to the Prime Minister’s downfall …
The spin chief had a habit of making up policies off the cuff, prompting advisers in other departments to joke about “the Guto special” when confronted with unexpected announcements from No 10. One Whitehall official concluded: “He is good for journalists, I’m not sure he’s good for HMG [Her Majesty’s Government]” …
But others pin the ultimate blame firmly at Mr Johnson’s door.
One of Mr Johnson’s closest former advisers told i that it “all went wrong for the PM” when he stopped listening to those from Vote Leave …
One of the former ministers who quit said on Thursday simply: “Everything is his fault. I spent months defending, or at least being generous about, his mistakes.
“Not after the last 24 hours. Appalling.”
On July 12, Guido reported that Boris loyalist Jacob Rees-Mogg thought that the Prime Minister’s name should be on the Conservative MPs’ ballot (emphases his):
… he affirmed it was “unjust” to deny the Prime Minister the opportunity to fight for his position amongst Tory members. This comes in the context of his previous arguments for the growing presence of personal mandates in British political leaders. Unfortunately, Guido doesn’t believe this strategy is quite in line with the contest rules…
I think this gave Boris’s supporters false hopes:
People in Conservative constituencies began emailing their MPs:
With no result, the question then turned to whether Boris’s name should be on the ballot for Conservative Party members.
On Saturday, July 16, The Times‘s Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke posted an article: ‘How the Tories turned the heat on Rishi Sunak’. In it, they introduced Lord Cruddas, who would go on to campaign for Boris’s name to be on the members’ ballot:
Both men were Eurosceptics who had supported the Vote Leave campaign when it might have been politically advantageous not to do so. Both were the beneficiaries of Boris Johnson’s patronage. Cruddas had been given a peerage despite official objections. Sunak had been plucked from obscurity the previous year and made one of the youngest chancellors in history.
In 2021:
Sunak was the most popular politician in Britain and second only to Liz Truss in Conservative Home members’ polls, having overseen the furlough and Eat Out to Help Out schemes. In the chamber, Cruddas gave his own vote of confidence, saying Sunak’s budget “had established a clear path for the country to move from these difficult times”, praising his “thoughtful” approach and arguing it would “not just to reinvigorate the economy post Covid but to help propel the post-Brexit opportunities”.
By July 2022, everything had changed:
A week into the most toxic Tory leadership election in memory, the fact such comments were made feels inconceivable. Cruddas, 68, who remains close to Johnson, has shared posts on social media describing Sunak as a “rat”, “a snake”, a “little weasel”, a “backstabber”, “a slimy snake”, a “treacherous snake”, “Fishy Rishi”, “Hissy Rishi”, “Judas”, “the traitor”, “the Remainer’s choice”, a “sly assassin”, a “Tory wet” promoting high taxes and the leader of a “coup” who “must be removed at all costs”. Cruddas also retweeted claims about the financial affairs of Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty.
Tonight the peer said there had indeed been a “coup”, adding: “I planned to donate a total of £500,000 this year but that is on hold and will not be paid unless the membership have a chance to vote on Boris being PM. I have no interest in Rishi who I deem to be not fit for high office due to his plotting and the orchestrated way he and others resigned to remove the PM.” He also accused Sunak, 42, of setting up his leadership “before Christmas” and choreographing his resignation to inflict maximum damage.
The problem for Sunak is that such sentiment — especially the notion that he behaved improperly and cannot be trusted on the economy — is not confined to a fringe on social media. He might be the frontrunner but “Anyone But Rishi” reflects the opinion of Johnson and a coalition within the party. This includes cabinet ministers, staff inside Downing Street and Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ), Johnson’s biggest donors, MPs opposed to higher taxes, and rivals for the leadership.
On July 22, The Telegraph‘s Christopher Hope added support for Boris’s return and, in the meantime, addition to the ballot:
Tim Montgomerie, a former aide to Mr Johnson who has since been critical of him, said he had been told by sources close to the Prime Minister that he was convinced he would be back.
In a well-sourced post on social media, Mr Montgomerie wrote: “Boris is telling aides that he’ll be PM again within a year” …
It comes as a row broke out among senior Conservatives about a campaign among party members to allow them a vote on whether Mr Johnson should continue as Prime Minister.
By Friday night, 7,600 members – all of whom have given their membership numbers – had signed a petition calling for the vote.
Lord Cruddas of Shoreditch, the former party treasurer who organised the petition, said “several MPs” had started to “make noises” about supporting his campaign …
Conservative MPs panicked:
The next day, The Times stirred the pot even more with ‘Is Boris Johnson really planning another run at No 10?’
On Wednesday afternoon, moments after Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were announced as the final two Conservative Party leadership contenders, a group of “red wall” MPs met on the House of Commons terrace to reflect on the result. “Is it too late to withdraw my resignation letter?” mused an MP, who held a junior ministerial role until the coup against Boris Johnson. “Shouldn’t we just bring back Boris?” she said, leaving the question to hang in the air …
… Much like the Roman republic after Caesar’s assassination, Whitehall is now riven by internecine warfare and a government paralysed by indecision …
For a man who just 18 days ago was brutally ousted from the job he has coveted his entire political life, Johnson appears to be living out his final days in Downing Street in a cheerful mood. Freed from the never-ending cycle of Westminster scandals, Johnson is relaxed and has spent the past few days hosting friends, relatives and other allies at Chequers and preparing a number of set-piece events leading up to his departure from No 10 in September …
Johnson, who allies claim remains furious with Sunak for his part in the coup, has sought to distract himself from the race to select his successor through media-friendly stunts …
Several MPs who helped oust Johnson have received a backlash from their constituents, stoking fears that they may face the same electoral retribution inflicted on Conservative MPs who ousted Margaret Thatcher. Backbenchers in red wall seats have been inundated with emails from voters who are furious at their role in ousting the prime minister.
They added that their postbag was filled with messages from newly converted Tory voters who have warned they will not vote for the party again now Johnson is gone. A colleague of Gary Sambrook, MP for Birmingham Northfield, claimed he had received hundreds of emails from constituents since he stood up in the Commons earlier this month and accused Johnson of refusing to accept responsibility for his mistakes …
Johnson leaves, aides say, with the air of someone with unfinished business. Whether this is the end of the Johnsonian project, or a precursor to his own Hollywood-esque sequel, remains to be seen.
On July 25, Christopher Hope wrote that the Boris petition had garnered 10,000 signatures:
Insiders say he is obsessed with delivering for the 14 million voters who voted Conservative in 2019, many for the first time because of him.
There are already stirrings of a revolt among the members. By Saturday night, 10,000 Conservative members had signed a petition organised by Lord Cruddas of Shoreditch, former Party treasurer, and David Campbell-Bannerman, former Tory MEP, demanding a say over his future.
The members want a second ballot to confirm MPs’ decision to force his resignation, to run concurrently with the official leadership ballot between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
That evening, Dan Wootton stated his belief that Boris’s name should be on the members’ ballot:
He asked his panel, which included Boris’s father Stanley about it:
You can see relevant portions in these shorter extracts: Stanley supporting his son, Stanley verbally sparring with a journalist for the i paper as well as the opinion of former Boris adviser, Tim Montgomerie.
In the end, nothing happened. There was no Boris ballot.
Early this week, I heard one of the campaigners tell GB News that CCHQ are asking the organisers to do a sanity check on the signatories, confirming their Party membership number and clearing out any duplicates. If the number is still sizeable, CCHQ will discuss a possible changing of the rules for any future contests.
This is good news, in a way, but it will not help the Conservatives in the next general election. Boris’s supporters are still angry.
Ukrainians
The Ukrainians will miss their biggest supporter.
They were saddened by his resignation:
Boris offered them his reassurance:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy even made a special announcement to the Ukrainian people about it:
Guido Fawkes wrote:
After leaving office Guido suspects Boris may end up reflecting more proudly on his work supporting Ukraine than even his Brexit legacy. Since the announcement of his resignation, Ukrainians have come out en masse to voice their sadness about his impending departure … Taking to Telegram late last night, Zelenksyy posted a touching video saying “Today, the main topic in our country has become the British topic – Boris Johnson’s decision to resign as party leader and Prime Minister” …
Boris’s hair has become a bit of an icon there (just as Trump’s had in the United States). Guido has the images:
Boris’s popularity among Ukrainians has already been well-reported since the outbreak of war. Streets have been named after him, as have cakes in a Kyiv patisserie. Yesterday Ukraine’s national railways redesigned their logo to include an unmistakable mop of blonde hair, as did major supermarket Сільпо…
Boris once joked that the reason he’d left journalism for politics was because “no one puts up statues to journalists”. It seems that, thanks to his efforts in Ukraine, he did manage achieved his wish for public deification – just not in the country in which he was elected…
On July 8, Ukraine’s youngest MP made a video praising Boris:
Boris Johnson took a clear stand when so many others looked the other way.
In August, someone was inspired to paint a mural of Boris:
On August 24, Boris made his farewell — and surprise — visit to Ukraine on the nation’s Independence Day:
Guido wrote:
Boris has made yet another surprise visit to Ukraine on its independence day — and the sixth month anniversary of its invasion. He used the visit, his last as PM, to announce a £54 million aid package to the country of 2000 state-of-the-art drones and loitering munitions …
Slava Ukraini…
Guido also posted this video:
GB News had more on the story:
Mr Johnson’s visit came as Ukraine marked 31 years since its independence from Moscow’s rule.
And it also came six months on from Russia’s invasion of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s nation …
He said in Kyiv today: “What happens in Ukraine matters to us all.
“That is why I am in Kyiv today. That is why the UK will continue to stand with our Ukrainian friends. I believe Ukraine can and will win this war” …
The Prime Minister used his meeting with Mr Zelenskyy to set out a further package of military aid, including 2,000 drones and loitering munitions.
He also received the Order of Liberty, the highest award that can be bestowed on foreign nationals, for the UK’s support for Ukraine.
Mr Johnson said: “For the past six months, the United Kingdom has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine, supporting this sovereign country to defend itself from this barbaric and illegal invader.
“Today’s package of support will give the brave and resilient Ukrainian armed forces another boost in capability, allowing them to continue to push back Russian forces and fight for their freedom.”
The package includes 850 hand-launched Black Hornet micro-drones – smaller than a mobile phone – which can be used to provide live feeds and still images to troops, particularly important in urban warfare.
The support also includes larger drones and loitering weapons, which can be used to target Russian vehicles and installations.
The UK is also preparing to give mine-hunting vehicles to operate off the coast, with Ukrainian personnel being trained in their use in UK waters in the coming weeks.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK Vadym Prystaiko marked the occasion by urging UK citizens to be “patient” as the war-torn country “cannot afford to lose your support”.
He said: “You are playing a very important part in this fight. Ukraine will do what it takes to claim victory.”
But will Britons continue to love Ukraine as much when the winter and higher fuel bills kick in?
Boris told us that we must do it, we must suffer, for Ukraine:
He has a point, but I do wonder how well this will play by the end of the year.
At least Boris got his Churchillian international claim to fame.
What next?
This week, Boris made a farewell tour of the UK, topped off with a dawn police raid of a house:
Guido has the video and explains the greeting:
This morning Boris accompanied the police on a home raid. Given we’re now comfortably into the 21st century, it didn’t take long for one of the occupants to realise the PM was in his home and film the experience, asking Boris ‘wagwan‘. Boris politely asked the filming resident “how you doing?”. The Snapchatter could have at least offered Boris a cuppa…
It’s rumoured that Michael Gove might be off to edit a newspaper:
Guido has the story and the audio of Gove’s plans:
This morning Michael Gove laughed off the suggestion he’s planning an imminent return to Fleet Street, insisting on the Today Programme he’s “definitely planning to stay in Parliament” and won’t be stepping down any time soon. Rumours have been building in SW1 that Gove had his eye on the editorship of, erm, one particular Murdoch-owned broadsheet, should a vacancy become available …
No, no. I think my first responsibility and duty is to my constituents in Surrey Heath. I’m going to stay on as MP, argue for them, and also argue for some of the causes in which I believe. I think it’s vitally important that we continue to make the case for levelling up. I think Boris Johnson is absolutely right to focus on the need to provide additional support for overlooked and undervalued communities…
Gove added he still has “a reservoir” of affection for Boris despite being the only Minister the PM actually sacked in July. Boris is also rumoured to be sticking around until the next election. Could make for awkward small talk on the backbenches.
I predict they will stay on as MPs until the next election, just show up less often in the Commons.
As for Rishi, The Guardian said on Friday, September 2, that he was being compared with Michael Heseltine, one of the MPs who brought down Margaret Thatcher:
One of the most familiar refrains of the Conservative leadership contest was candidates earnestly inviting comparisons to Margaret Thatcher.
But after his resignation as chancellor brought down Boris Johnson’s wobbling house of cards, a Tory insider said Rishi Sunak found himself with “the curse of Heseltine hanging round his neck”.
Despite long having been talked of as a likely future prime minister, Sunak struggled to shed the parallel with the man who helped bring down Thatcher but failed in his own tilt at the top job – before coining the famous political cliche: “He who wields the knife never wears the crown.”
I’ll leave the final word to The Spectator‘s political editor James Forsyth, who muses on what politics will look like after Boris leaves:
His absence will reshape the political landscape because his presence defined it.
We will find out who Boris’s successor is on Monday. The Guardian has a report on what we should expect:
The candidate who receives the most votes will be revealed on Monday by Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, a gathering of Conservative backbench MPs (not named after the average year of birth of its members but the year in which it was founded) …
The formal handover will take place on Tuesday. The Queen is recovering from the outgoing prime minister’s tenure in her Scottish pile Balmoral and will appoint the new PM there, which will be a challenge as it requires the winner to leave Westminster.
Johnson is expected to make a farewell address outside 10 Downing Street at about 9am on Tuesday. It is not known whether he has written two versions of the speech, one based on staying, one based on leaving.
More next week as a new chapter in Conservative politics begins.
End of series
This is the penultimate instalment of Boris Johnson’s downfall.
Earlier ones can be found here: parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Before I get to the heart of the matter, one of Boris’s former aides, Cleo Watson, wrote about her time in Downing Street for the September 2022 issue of the high society magazine Tatler: ‘Exclusive: how PM’s former aide had to “nanny” him through lockdown’.
Cleo Watson tells the story of how she went from working on Obama’s 2012 campaign to the Vote Leave one that preceded the 2016 Brexit referendum. As she worked with Dominic Cummings on the latter, he asked her if she would like to work at Downing Street when Boris became Prime Minister.
She accepted but had no idea what fate awaited her. Who knew then about the pandemic, which she had to get Boris through: frequent coronavirus testing, recovering from his near-death viral experience with nourishing drinks rather than Diet Coke and putting up with his silly, schoolboy jokes.
Then there was Dilyn, his and Carrie’s Welsh rescue terrier, which they acquired in 2019. Dilyn never was properly house-trained and left little surprises in Downing Street and at the prime ministerial weekend retreat, Chequers.
Watson has just finished writing her first novel, Whip!, a fictionalised account of what life is like in Downing Street. It is scheduled to be published in 2023.
One thing that struck me is just how pervasive Dominic Cummings was during his time there.
She describes what the penitential press conference he had to give in May 2020 after his forbidden trip to County Durham during lockdown was like (emphases mine):
Dom’s ‘eye test’ itself led to moments of strange humour as we struggled to respond to the public anger it caused. Remember his press conference in the rose garden? What you didn’t see was the group of advisers loitering behind the cameras, clutching ourselves with worry. Dom’s natural sunny attitude …
‘Sunny attitude’? Surely some sarcasm there, methinks:
… seemed to be waning, so halfway through I took to standing directly in his eyeline, bent over like a tennis linesman, gesticulating for him to sit up straight and, if not smile, be tolerant and polite when responding to the repetitive questions being fired at him.
She left around the same time as Cummings, in November 2020:
As so many in politics know, the end comes sooner or later – generally sooner, if you’re employed by this prime minister. (Although I suppose he’s had karma returned with interest recently.) The end for me came in November 2020, about two weeks after Dom’s hurried departure.
These were her final moments with Boris:
The PM had been isolating after his latest ‘ping’ and he and I finally reunited in the Cabinet room, where we had an exchange that I am sure may have been familiar to many of his girlfriends. Him: ‘Ho hum, I’m not sure this is working any more.’ Me: ‘Oh, OK, you seem to be trying to break up with me. I’ll get my things.’ Him: ‘Aargh… I don’t know… yes, no, maybe… wait, come back!’ I suppose it went a little differently. He said a lot of things, the most succinct being: ‘I can’t look at you any more because it reminds me of Dom. It’s like a marriage has ended, we’ve divided up our things and I’ve kept an ugly old lamp. But every time I look at that lamp, it reminds me of the person I was with. You’re that lamp.’ A lamp! At least a gazelle has a heartbeat. Still, he presumably knows better than most how it feels when a marriage breaks up.
So I left No 10 – without a leaving party, contrary to what has been reported. What actually happened is that we agreed to go our separate ways and I went to the press team to say goodbye. The PM, unable to see a group of people and not orate, gave a painful, off-the-cuff speech to a bewildered clutch of advisers and I left shortly after.
More work followed, then came a holiday in Barbados:
I was asked to work on the COP26 climate change summit (quite cleansing for the brand after Vote Leave and Johnson’s No 10), which took place in Glasgow in November 2021. It was a brutal year, no less dogged by Covid than the previous one, and I was lucky enough to top it off with a recovery holiday in Barbados in December.
The sun, the sea, the cocktail bar… Welcome to paradise. Except something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but whenever I was indoors at Cobblers Cove, the lovely hotel my husband, Tom, and I were staying at, I had a strange, uneasy feeling that I’d been there before. Where had I seen muted green print on jolly green print on rattan before? The place had been revamped by none other than Lulu Lytle, of the Downing Street flat fame.
Downing Street stays with a person, not unlike memories of an ex:
It’s often the way that looking at a period of your life later on can frame it as much happier than it really was. It’s like remembering the good times with an ex. You’ll smell or hear something that nearly knocks you over with a wave of nostalgia and before you know it, you’re thinking: ‘I wonder what they’re doing now…’
I’m very fortunate in that I know exactly what they’re doing and what I’m missing out on. Yes, you get the chance to serve the country and on an individual level you can change people’s lives. But there is also the constant work that gets gobbled up by the news cycle. The gut-busting effort behind every speech that flops. The policy that gets torn to shreds. The constant lurk of an MP rebellion. From the moment you’re awake, you’re on your phone(s).
These days I’ll be walking my dog (far too big to be used as a handheld prop now) and delighted – literally delighted – to be picking up after him rather than dealing with the latest catastrophe I can see playing out just a couple of miles away.
I’ve weaned myself off my phone, cancelled my newspaper subscriptions and studiously avoided social media. I’ve really understood what burnout means. It has taken months to recover …
Now on to the final weeks of Boris and his wife Carrie.
The thing that sticks most in my mind is that awful — and awfully expensive — refurb of the Downing Street flat.
The next occupant will want to rip it all out and start again with something quiet and tasteful.
Boris must have thought he would be there for years. Otherwise, why would he have agreed to it?
Another disappointment for them must have been not being able to use Chequers for their big wedding party.
The couple married in 2021 at Westminster Cathedral (Catholic), but because of coronavirus restrictions, could have only a small number back to Downing Street to celebrate.
They had looked forward to having a big party at Chequers. Unfortunately, once Boris resigned as Party leader, he became a caretaker PM and was refused permission.
Fortunately, Lord and Lady Bamford of construction equipment manufacturer JCB fame lent their sprawling Gloucestershire estate to the Johnsons:
On Wednesday, July 27, GB News reported:
The Prime Minister and his wife are said to be planning on hosting family and friends at 18th-century Daylesford House, in Gloucestershire, this weekend.
A huge white marquee topped with bunting had been erected in the property’s expansive grounds on Wednesday, with staff going in and out amid apparent party preparations.
Owned by Lord Bamford, the Grade I-listed mansion has been found as a replacement to Chequers – where the Johnsons had originally planned to host the party.
The Tory peer, chairman of construction equipment manufacturer JCB, has donated millions to the Conservative Party …
Lord Bamford is covering at least some of the cost of the party, the Mirror reported, quoting unnamed sources.
No 10 declined to comment on the “private matter”.
The Johnsons decided on a unique celebration.
Reporters from The Mail were on hand earlier on Saturday, July 30, to find out more:
Guests at Boris and Carrie Johnson‘s wedding party are set to dine in style on South African street food at the Cotswolds retreat of Tory mega-donor Lord Bamford today.
Caterers from eco-friendly BBQ eatery Smoke and Braai were spotted setting up shop on the grounds at Daylesford House on Friday in advance of the fanfare.
Around 200 guests including a dozen Conservative MPs will gather at the idyllic, Gloucestershire Grade I-listed mansion for drinks from 5.30pm.
Grass-fed locally sourced meat will be the mainstay of the food menu in line with Mrs Johnson’s well-known commitment to green causes, The Telegraph reported.
At least three street food outlets were pictured arriving at the gorgeous countryside manor house on Friday afternoon, with helicopters heard amassing above …
Daylesford House is the 18th-century home of Lord Bamford, 76, the founder of construction giant JCB and one of the Conservative party’s most prolific donors.
The billionaire Bamfords, who gave £4million to the party in the run-up to the 2019 general election, after handing £100,000 to the Vote Leave campaign, stepped in to fill hosting duties after furore surrounded the Johnsons’ prior plans to hold their wedding party at Chequers.
Lady Bamford and Carrie, in particular, joined forces to orchestrate today’s proceedings, the newspaper reported.
The South African street food menu is set to include lime and mint-infused pineapple, skin-on fries, cherry wood-smoked pork with honey and mustard slaw, and Aberdeen Angus ox cheeks.
South Africa’s answer to the barbecue, a braai is typically the setting for an hours-long cookout in which all are welcome.
The Telegraph told us that Steve Bray, the braying anti-Brexit chap from College Green near Parliament, was a short distance away. The article has a photo of him.
Caterers and entertainers could not miss him:
… they were greeted by Steve Bray, an activist known as the “Stop Brexit Man”, who had positioned himself at one of the entrances holding a banner which read: “Corrupt Tory Government. Liars, cheats and charlatans. Get them out now.”
The article told us more about the menu:
Rum punch is also available to guests, as well as barbecue chicken and beef with salad. Handmade ice-cream from a family run dairy farm in the Peak District is also being served, adding to the laid back atmosphere at Daylesford House, Gloucestershire …
Mrs Johnson is thought to have worked closely with Lady Bamford to organise the event and set the theme of a South African-style barbecue laid on by Corby-based Smoke and Braai, with the 200 guests served from eco-friendly street food trucks amid hay bale benches.
On the menu is grass-fed British beef braai boerewors rolls, masa corn tortilla tacos, smoked barbacoa lamb and what was described as “ancient grain salad” …
Adding to the festival atmosphere, for dessert there is ice-cream courtesy of Dalton’s Dairy, a family-run dairy farm in the Peak District which produces handmade ice creams, including wild strawberries and cream, pineapple, and amaretto and black cherry.
The guest list included MPs, singers and millionaires:
The guests, who include several Conservative MPs, began to arrive at the estate at around 5pm. Australian actress and singer Holly Valance, who is married to British property developer Nick Candy, was also pictured arriving at the estate in a Rolls Royce.
Mr Johnson’s younger sister, Rachel Johnson, was seen arriving via the back entrance, as did the Prime Minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, who arrived alongside a female companion.
Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg were also among the first guests to arrive.
Other politicians in attendance included Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary; Jake Berry, who previously served as minister for the Northern Powerhouse; Amanda Milling, the MP for Cannock Chase; and John Whittingdale, the former culture secretary.
More elusive and camera shy guests preferred to arrive by helicopter, landing on a helipad positioned in the grounds of the estate. They were then ferried to the garden party in a black Range Rover.
The Mail on Sunday had more, complete with lots of photographs:
Boris and Carrie Johnson danced the night away at their festival-style wedding party in the Cotswolds last night, with the bride wearing a £3,500 dress that was rented for £25.
Carrie opted to stick to her sustainable fashion principles with the dress by designer Savannah Miller, the older sister of actress Sienna.
The floor-length, halter-neck gown named Ruby has an original price tag of £3,500 but is available for a day rate of £25 on London-based website Wardrobe HQ, which Carrie, 34, has been using for more than three years.
Meanwhile, the festivities started with Boris joining Carrie on the dancefloor for their first dance to Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline – chosen because Carrie’s full first name is Caroline.
They were joined by friends and family at the picturesque venue that sits within 1,500 acres and boasts stunning amenities including a heart-shaped orchard, painstakingly manicured gardens, an 18th century orangery and a luxurious pool.
For anyone wondering if this Daylesford is related to the eponymous organic food brand, it is, indeed:
Lady Carole Bamford OBE, became famous for launching Daylesford Organic Farm, based in the private village but with farm shops across London.
Daylesford House, which is just a mile from Lord and Lady Bamford’s organic farm of the same name, boasts 1,500 acres of manicured gardens including pristine lawns, an 18th-century orangery and a secret garden – complete with octagonal swimming pool, shell grotto and alfresco pizza oven.
The article had more on the Bamfords and their involvement with the Conservative Party:
Downing Street has refused to comment on the occasion, stating it does not discuss private events which do not involve taxpayer funds or ministerial declarations.
Beyond cash handouts, the Tories have also benefited from repeated press conferences staged at JCB’s Staffordshire headquarters.
Boris Johnson made his headline-grabbing Brexit stunt at the factory as part of his general election bid in 2019.
The global digger manufacturer paid him £10,000 just three days before he smashed through a brick wall in a JCB digger.
Beyond politics, the Bamfords hold sway with a long list of British elites, including their friends the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.
Lady Bamford, whose precise age is unknown, sits on JCB’s board of directors and was awarded in OBE in 2006 for services to children and families.
A former air hostess, Lady Bamford OBE married Sir Anthony in 1974.
They have four children and a haul of houses around the world in addition to a prolific car collection worth tens of millions of pounds.
The article beneath it, by Adam Solomons, had more about Steve Bray’s presence. One photo shows a policeman seemingly asking him to leave. Bray alleged that his friend was arrested:
So-called ‘Stop Brexit Man’ Steve Bray flouted the tight guest list for Boris and Carrie Johnson‘s wedding party to conduct a solo protest yesterday after a friend and fellow campaigner was allegedly arrested nearby.
Photographer Sylvia Yukio Zamperini was taken away in a police car after turning up close to opulent party venue Daylesford House, Gloucestershire, Mr Bray claimed.
In a Facebook post this evening, he wrote: ‘I was supposed to meet Sylvia […] but she called me. She was searched by Police.
‘A police van and car passed me 20 minutes ago. She was crying and waving frantically from the back of the car. She’s been arrested.’
He added in a subsequent tweet: ‘Police using dirty tactics.’
Gloucester Constabulary did not respond to a MailOnline request for clarification or comment this afternoon.
The notorious Parliament demonstrator put out an appeal for urgent legal help on Sylvia’s behalf.
Ms Yukio Zamperini has been Bray’s right-hand woman throughout years of noisy campaigning in and around the parliamentary estate over the past six years.
Describing herself as a ‘proud European’, she often shoots footage of Bray’s flags and banners.
Sylvia travelled to the gorgeous Cotswolds wedding venue from Birmingham, with Steve commuting from London.
They were supposed to meet close to Daylesford House, but Sylvia had reportedly already been arrested.
Bray also posted a video in which he spoke to a local police officer, who’d warned him that loud amplifiers set up to disrupt the party would be confiscated.
The unidentified officer, who Bray’s followers noted was polite and respectful, said he was giving ‘Stop Brexit Man’ a ‘pre-pre-warning’ in the event he tried to sabotage the postponed wedding party.
The infamous campaigner tells the policeman: ‘Look what these guys have done to our lives. I don’t care if it’s a wedding party.’
Guido Fawkes has a video of Boris and Carrie dancing to Sweet Caroline, which young Wilf interrupted. Carrie picked him up and swayed from side to side. Of Boris, Guido says:
Some questionable dad dancing moves from Boris there.
On August 6, The Telegraph‘s Gordon Rayner had more in ‘Inside Boris and Carrie Johnson’s secret wedding party’:
The bride wore a gold mini dress, the groom wore a baggy cream suit and the guests wore expressions of mild bemusement.
At the Prime Minister’s wedding celebration, Sweet Caroline had been chosen for the first dance as a romantic tribute to Caroline Johnson, better known as Carrie – but her husband seemed to think he was at an England football match, where the song has become a fan favourite.
His dad-dancing at the couple’s wedding celebration last weekend was more “let’s all have a disco”, as sports crowds chant, than “how can I hurt when holding you”, in the words of Neil Diamond’s song.
The moment, however, was entirely in keeping with the eccentricity of the whole event, held in the middle of a field where guests had no escape from the speeches, the South African street food or the bitching about Rishi Sunak.
It featured slut-drops, congas, rum punch, hay bales, a steel band and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but without an actual wedding for the guests to attend, it was an event that appeared not to know quite what it was trying to be …
The Prime Minister, who had worn a charcoal suit on what was his third wedding day last year, struggled to pull off the Man From Del Monte look, wearing a cream suit with trousers that needed taking up and a jacket that appeared too long for his body.
Mrs Johnson, 34, had greeted guests earlier in the day wearing a £3,500 halter-neck Ruby wedding gown by Savannah Miller, the designer, which she had rented for £25 a day. However, by the time the first dance happened at 8.30pm, she had changed into a shimmering gold mini dress with a plunging neckline that was more disco diva than blushing bride.
Neither she nor the 58-year-old Prime Minister looked comfortable dancing in front of their guests. They may have been relieved when their two-year-old son Wilfred, dressed in a navy blue sailor suit, toddled across to them halfway through the dance and became the centre of attention, as he was twirled around on the hips of his parents …
The event officially ended at 11.30pm, although many guests, with long journeys home, had already left by then.
Ms Johnson said the party was held in “a magical flower-filled field”, but other guests whispered that the party had the vibe of a failed pop festival, complete with portable lavatories …
Before the dancing, the guests were treated to a succession of speeches, starting with Ms Johnson, followed by Carrie Johnson – whose words were “full of affection” for her husband – and finishing with the Prime Minister himself, who stood with one hand in his trouser pocket and the other clutching A4 sheets of notes.
In a defiant and typically joke-filled speech, Mr Johnson told his guests that he had received “masses of letters to resign, mostly from my closest family”, according to The Times.
He went on: “There are many opportunities, which lead to disasters, and disasters can lead to new opportunities, including to opportunities for fresh disasters.”
He also described the mass ministerial resignations that forced him to resign as: “The greatest stitch-up since the Bayeux Tapestry.”
The guest list was light on parliamentarians, partly because so many of them had turned on the Prime Minister only days before. Only the most ultra-loyal Johnsonites received an invitation.
As a former head of communications for the Conservatives, Mrs Johnson knows all about messaging. She was keen to put the word out that her dress was rented, because she is keen to promote sustainable fashion, and that the food on offer was eco-friendly because the catering firm buys its ingredients from local farmers.
But the messaging was somewhat undermined by the reality of the event. Guests arrived in a steady stream of Range Rovers, Rolls-Royces and other gas guzzlers, with some even arriving by helicopter.
By choosing to hold their party in such a rural location, the couple ensured that it had the largest possible carbon footprint. In only a matter of weeks, though, worrying about political mis-steps will cease to be much of a concern for them.
The party — especially with Bray’s presence — would make a great film for television. You could not make this up.
On August 2, Telegraph reporter Rosie Green poured cold water on Carrie’s renting of dresses. I’m including this as a caution for women thinking it’s a failsafe solution: ‘Renting a dress sounds like a good idea — until you face the logistics’.
She went through the process herself, which sounds tiresome:
I book appointments at the places offering “trying on” services (Front Row, Harrods and Selfridges) and let them know which dresses I would like to road test.
At the My Wardrobe HQ pop up concession at Harrods, although the manager was friendly and helpful, disappointingly only one of the four pieces I had requested was there. Then the dress I had loved on screen wouldn’t do up. Hmm.
Thankfully I found another wonderful gown by the same designer which fits beautifully (the same size weirdly). But at £1,861 to buy and with a long train that looked perfect for stepping on I was worried about incurring damage. Another dress I loved had a broken zip …
I leave for my next appointment at Front Row to meet one of its founders and to try on a selection of dresses, but when I arrive at the showroom she is not there and the doors are locked. I am stumped. I can’t get through on the phone. I later discovered she had her handbag snatched by a man on a motorbike. Front Row confirms they’ll send the dresses to my home instead. In the meantime, I get a message from Selfridges saying my requested dress (the only one on the website I found suitable) is not available as it is being repaired. Hmm.
I head home to Oxfordshire a little dispirited. So I start delving deeper into By Rotation and discover that they act as a middle man between the renter and the owner. This means the clothes are kept by their owners and so effectively you are reliant on Sandra from Surrey or Carla from Cheshire posting you their gown. This makes me very nervous.
There’s more, so I’ll skip to the chase:
Then, on the day I’m expecting the My Wardrobe dress to arrive, I’m told I have to pick it up from Harrods. I have a minor heart attack. I tell them I live in Oxfordshire and not only is it impractical but the cost of the return train ticket to London would be more than the rental. They arrange for it to be couriered and it arrives the morning of the event.
According to UPS the Front Row dresses are stuck at the depot. Then they are officially AWOL. Renting has not been stress free. Buying my dress is now feeling like a much more attractive proposition …
… my advice if you’re planning to rent would be to get your choices a few days before you need them. Try them on first, and always have a back-up plan.
Would I hire a wedding dress this way, like Carrie did? No way. My nerves couldn’t take it.
On another cautionary note, provocative dance moves can prove difficult as one ages.
Guido Fawkes found a 2018 Celebrity Big Brother clip with Boris’s sister Rachel boasting about how Liz Hurley taught her one of these dance moves then demonstrating it.
Unfortunately for Rachel, 56, things didn’t go so well with it at her brother and sister-in-law’s party, as she wrote in her Spectator diary of August 6:
The Season has ended and – apart from The Spectator’s summer bash of course – the two bang-up parties of July were discos in the Cotswolds. They do things differently there. At Jemima Goldsmith’s I danced so hard in high heels with a selection of her handsome young swains that I suspect the double hip replacement will be sooner rather than later. At Carrie and Boris’s Daylesford wedding do in a magical flower-filled field we all busted out our best moves. I was taught the slut-drop by Liz Hurley years ago in Nick Coleridge’s party barn in Worcestershire. She demonstrated how to collapse to the floor like a broken deckchair on the count of three. My problem at Daylesford was getting up again – not a challenge shared by my sister-in-law. She could win a Commonwealth gold hands-down in this particular high-risk dance move. I’d kicked off my shoes (to save on physio bills later) but still ripped off a big toenail during the conga. Conclusion: I can no longer slut-drop but I can still name-drop for Britain till the cows come home.
Sometimes I feel as if I live in another world.
Anyway, by early August, the party was over for Boris.
Although he surpassed Theresa May’s tenure at No. 10 on August 5 …
… Boris faces a hearing by the parliamentary Privileges Committee in September, led by Labour’s Harriet Harman.
Note that Boris’s opposite number, Keir Starmer, gets away with multiple violations. Yet, Boris will be quizzed on whether he knowingly — rather than accidentally — misled Parliament over a piece of cake in a Tupperware container:
To make matters worse, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin is on that committee. He is not one of Boris’s biggest fans:
The topic came up on Dan Wootton’s GB News show on August 8. Nearly 75% of his viewers thought the committee hearing would be a witch hunt:
Panellist Christine Hamilton agreed:
Boris’s supporters among the general public were eager to get his name on the Conservative Party leadership ballot along with Liz Truss’s and Rishi Sunak’s. The fight on that still continues. The best they can hope for now is a change in the Conservative Party rules. I will have more on that in a separate post. The feeling for Boris continues to run deeply among many voters.
On Friday, August 12, a reporter asked Boris why he was not taking calls from Rishi Sunak:
Boris said:
That’s one of those Westminster questions that doesn’t change the price of fish…
He quickly deflected to move the discussion towards resolving the cost of energy crisis and said that the future would be very bright.
On Saturday, August 13, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, gave an interview on GB News to two of his fellow Conservative MPs, Esther McVey and her husband Philip Davies.
In this segment, he explains why Boris has always had his support, dating back to 2016. His only criticism is that the Government could have handled the economy better post-pandemic:
As for Boris coming back as PM, Rees-Mogg said it was highly unlikely. The Telegraph reported:
“Nobody’s come back having lost the leadership of the party since Gladstone,” Mr Rees-Mogg replied. “And I just don’t think in modern politics, the chance of coming back is realistic.
“Lots of people think they’re going to be called back by a grateful nation which is why Harold MacMillan waited 20 years before accepting his peerage… Life just isn’t like that.”
Rees-Mogg also explained why Boris was hounded out of office:
In the interview, Mr Rees-Mogg claimed that Mr Johnson’s downfall was partly the result of anti-Brexit campaigners – even though a number of Brexiteer MPs, such as Steve Baker, called for his resignation.
Mr Rees-Mogg said: “There’s a lot of people who resent the fact we left the European Union. And therefore to bring down the standard bearer of Brexit was a triumph for them.”
In August, Boris and Carrie took a summer holiday in Slovenia.
He no sooner returned than he jetted off again, this time to Greece, for reasons to be explored tomorrow.
Picking up from where I left off yesterday with Dan Wootton’s GB News poll on the next Conservative Party leader, 60,000 people responded and 49 per cent said that Boris Johnson should be the next one.
On Thursday, Wootton remarked:
The Prime Minister’s swashbuckling and energetic PMQs farewell today just emphasised that point further.
Boris participated in his final Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, just under three years since he first stood behind the despatch box as Prime Minister.
It was one of Boris’s best performances and can be viewed here. Hansard’s transcript is here.
Highlights follow, emphases mine.
Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer had a go at the leadership contest, particularly last week’s debates and the refusal of a third debate on Sky News. The debates were a bit spiky at times, but pretty tame overall.
Boris replied:
I am not following this thing particularly closely, but my impression is that there has been quite a lot of debate already, and I think the public have ample opportunity to view the talent, any one of which—as I have said before—would, like some household detergent, wipe the floor with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Today happens to be just about the anniversary of the exit from lockdown last year, and do you remember what he said? He said—[Interruption.] No, I am going to remind him. He said it was “reckless”. It was because we were able to take that decision, supported by every single one of those Conservative candidates, opposed by him, that we had the fastest economic growth in the G7 and we are now able to help families up and down the country. If we had listened to him, it would not have been possible, and I do not think they will be listening to him either.
Starmer had a go at Rishi Sunak’s accusation of Liz Truss’s proposed tax cuts as ‘fantasy economics’.
Boris said:
Well, Labour know all about fantasy economics, because they have already committed to £94 billion of extra tax and spending, which every household in this country would have to pay for to the tune of about £2,100. It is thanks to the former Chancellor’s management of the economy—thanks to this Government’s management of the economy—that we had growth in May of 0.5%. We have more people in paid employment than at any time in the history of this country. I am proud to be leaving office right now with unemployment at or near a 50-year low. When they left office, it was at 8%. That is the difference between them and us.
Then Starmer quoted Liz Truss’s criticism of Rishi’s economic policy for its lack of growth.
Boris answered:
I think that everybody would agree that what we saw in the last two and a half years was because of the pandemic, with the biggest fall in output for 300 years, which this Government dealt with and coped with magnificently by distributing vaccines faster than any other European Government—faster than any other major economy—which would not have been possible if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. That is why we have the fiscal firepower that is necessary to help families up and down the country, making tax cuts for virtually everybody paying national insurance contributions. There is a crucial philosophical difference between Labour and the Conservatives: under Labour, families on low incomes get most of their income from benefits; under us, they get most of it from earnings, because we believe in jobs, jobs, jobs. That is the difference.
Starmer went on to quote Penny Mordaunt on Britain’s sluggish public services.
Boris said:
… This is the Government who are investing £650 billion in infrastructure, skills and technology. He talks about public services; what really matters to people in this country right now is getting their appointments and their operations, fixing the covid backlogs—that is what we are doing—and fixing the ambulances. That is what he should be talking about. That is why we voted through and passed the £39 billion health and care levy, which Labour opposed. Every time something needs to be done, Labour Members try to oppose it. He is a great pointless human bollard. That is what he is.
Starmer referred to Kemi Badenoch’s criticism of Rishi’s handling of covid loans.
Boris replied:
This is one of the last blasts from Captain Hindsight, at least to me. They were the party, I remember, that was so desperate for us to be hiring their friends—they wanted a football agent and a theatrical costumier to supply personal protective equipment. Do you remember, Mr Speaker? We had to get that stuff at record speed. We produced £408 billion-worth of support for families and for businesses up and down the country. The only reason we were able to do it at such speed was that we managed the economy in a sensible and moderate way. Every time Labour has left office, unemployment has been higher. The Opposition are economically illiterate, and they would wreck the economy.
You can read more on Guido Fawkes about Labour’s hilarious — well, it would be were it not so tragic — attempts to get the Government to employ their friends for pandemic related equipment.
Starmer went on for another few minutes about the nation being an utter shambles at the moment.
That is true in many instances, but Boris cited the good things that the Conservatives have accomplished over the past three years:
What does it say about the right hon. and learned Gentleman that no one can name a single policy, after three years, of the Opposition apart from putting up taxes? He is one of those pointless plastic bollards you find around a deserted roadworks on a motorway. We got Brexit done; he voted against it 48 times. We got this country fast out of covid, in spite of everything, when he would have kept us in lockdown. We are fixing social care, when the Opposition have no plan and no ideas of their own. We are now bringing forward measures, in the face of strikes, to outlaw wildcat strikes.
I can tell the House why the Leader of the Opposition does that funny wooden flapping gesture—it is because he has the union barons pulling his strings from beneath. That is the truth—£100 million.
We have restored our democracy and our independence. We have got this country through covid. I am proud to say that when it comes to tackling climate change or sticking up for Ukraine, we have led the world on the international stage. I want to thank my friends and colleagues on these Benches for everything they have done.
Guido posted the video of that portion, which is Boris at his best. Viewers will also get the mood of the Chamber, which was very noisy indeed:
After Starmer had finished, it was the turn of Ian Blackford from the Scottish National Party (SNP). As ever, he criticised the Government and put in yet another plug for a second independence referendum:
Boris said:
That is not what I observe. The right hon. Gentleman talks about records; I point to the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe, the lowest unemployment for at or near 50 years as I have said, the lowest youth unemployment, and the fastest growth in the G7 last year, in spite of everything. As for the Scottish nationalists’ record, look at where they are. I am afraid to say that Scottish school standards are not what they should be, because of the failure of the SNP. It is failing people who are tragically addicted to drugs in Scotland, and the people of Scotland are facing another £900 million in tax because of the mismanagement of the SNP.
True. All of it.
Blackford ranted once more on partygate. Incidentally, he is a multi-millionaire who likes to paint himself as a humble crofter.
Boris replied:
On the personal abuse stuff, I think the right hon. Gentleman is talking a load of tosh, but when he has retired to his croft—which may be all too soon—I hope that he will reflect on his long-running campaign to break up the greatest country in the world. I hope that he will reflect on the pointlessness of what he is trying to do, and think instead about the priorities of the people of Scotland, which are all the issues that he thought were trivial: education, crime, and the burden of taxation that the SNP is unnecessarily placing on the people of Scotland.
After Blackford sat down, Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, had his say. He indirectly accused Boris of being ambitious and ‘tyrannical’. He asked whether Boris would now be devoting time to completing his book on Shakespeare. He also said there should be a general election.
Boris answered:
Polonius—that’s who the right hon. Gentleman is; he needs more matter with less art. The only thing we need to know is that if there were to be a general election, the Liberal Democrats would rightly get thrashed, because that would be the moment when the public looked with horror at what the Liberal Democrats’ policies really are and all those rural voters would discover the massive green taxes that they would like to apply. The only risk is that there could be some kind of crackpot coalition between those guys on the Labour Benches, the Lib Dems and the Scottish nationalists to put that into effect. That is what we must prevent.
Felicity Buchan, a Conservative who represents London’s Kensington constituency, expressed her concerns about rising crime under the current Mayor of London (Sadiq Khan).
Referring to himself, Boris replied:
London once had a Mayor who cut crime by 25%, cut the murder rate by 30% and built twice as many affordable homes as the current incumbent. What London needs is another Conservative Mayor.
Another Liberal Democrat, Scotland’s Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) wanted a freeport in his Highlands constituency.
Boris said:
I can confirm that we are committed to funding two new green freeports in Scotland to the tune of £52 million. That would not be possible, of course, if the SNP got its way and we returned to the EU.
Boris defined levelling up:
It is not just inequality; it is inequality of opportunity, and that is what levelling up addresses.
A Labour MP moaned about the railways in the north of England.
Boris replied:
Actually, this Government are responsible for three new high-speed lines, including Northern Powerhouse Rail, which no previous Government have done.
Boris gave his advice with regard to hot weather when an MP asked about disposable barbeques and Chinese sky lanterns:
The key thing is for people to behave responsibly with the use of these things. It is clearly insane to take a disposable barbecue on to dry grass.
Another SNP MP, Dr Philippa Whitford, talked about poverty in Scotland, ending with a plug for independence.
Boris said:
Actually, we increased the living wage across the whole of the UK by £1,000, we made sure that people on universal credit got their tax bills cut by £1,000, and over the last couple of weeks we have cut national insurance contributions by an average of £330. It was because of the Union that we were able to support families up and down the country, in Scotland, with the furlough and other payments, to the tune of £408 billion.
One of the nicest contributions came from Conservative MP Andrew Bowie, who represents West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine:
May I thank my right hon. Friend for his commitment to Scotland and the entire United Kingdom over his years in Downing Street? I also thank him and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland for improving and increasing the visibility and involvement of the UK Government in Scotland over the past three years. Does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister agree that whoever takes his job, and whatever comes next, the United Kingdom will always be stronger together than it ever would be apart?
Boris replied:
That was brilliantly put; I could not have put it better myself.
Then a young Labour MP asked about the slow compensation for Windrush victims.
Boris said:
Actually, I think more people have got compensation. I renew my apologies to the Windrush generation for what they have suffered, but we have greatly increased the compensation available. We have paid out, I think, more than £51 million. We are working with voluntary groups to ensure that people get what they are entitled to. I may say that Labour has never apologised for its own part in the Windrush scandal.
An MP from Northern Ireland accused the Government of ruining relationships between Ulster and the Republic.
Boris replied:
I completely disagree with that. The whole objective of the Northern Ireland (Protocol) Bill that we have passed is to support the balance and symmetry of the Belfast/Good Friday arrangements. I was very pleased that the Bill advanced to the House of Lords with no amendments.
GB News has more on the legislation:
A Conservative MP, Crispin Blunt, is not my favourite. However, here is where I agree with him. He paid a splendid tribute to Boris:
In recalling the situation that the Prime Minister inherited in July 2019, of a Parliament with a majority determined to frustrate the result of the 2016 referendum, led by a Speaker who was just slightly partial—the seemingly impossible situation he found—does my right hon. Friend understand that he has the gratitude of my constituents, who can identify the wood from the trees, and of myself, for his leadership over the last three years?
Boris replied:
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. There is a fair amount of wood on the Opposition Benches and I think that is why we will prevail at the next general election.
Another SNP MP banged on about a second independence referendum.
Boris said:
This is the country that secured furlough and that delivered the vaccine across the whole of the UK, while the SNP gets on with overtaxing to the tune of £900 million—that is how much they are overtaxing in Scotland. And we had a referendum in 2014.
Another SNP MP complained spitefully about Boris being a nobody and about the honours list he might draw up before he leaves office.
Boris answered:
I am sure that everybody who has served this Government loyally and well deserves recognition of some kind, but as for the honours list, I am afraid the hon. Gentleman will have to contain his excitement.
Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh was the last to speak. He, too, paid Boris tribute for the past three years:
On behalf of the House, may I thank the Prime Minister—[Interruption.] On behalf of the House, may I thank the Prime Minister for his three-year record of service? On behalf of some of the most vulnerable people in the country, can I thank him for his insistence on rolling out the AstraZeneca jab, which has saved thousands of lives around the world? On behalf of the 17.4 million people who voted Brexit, may I thank him for restoring people’s faith in democracy? On behalf of northern towns, may I thank him for his commitment to levelling up? And most of all, on behalf of the people of Ukraine, may I thank him for holding high the torch of freedom and ensuring that that country is not a vassal state? For true grit and determination, keep going and thank you.
Boris replied, giving his closing remarks and advice for the future PM:
I thank my right hon. Friend, and I want to use the last few seconds to give some words of advice to my successor, whoever he or she may be.
No. 1: stay close to the Americans; stick up for the Ukrainians; stick up for freedom and democracy everywhere. Cut taxes and deregulate wherever you can to make this the greatest place to live and invest, which it is. I love the Treasury, but remember that if we had always listened to the Treasury, we would not have built the M25 or the Channel Tunnel. Focus on the road ahead, but always remember to check the rear-view mirror. And remember, above all, it is not Twitter that counts; it is the people that sent us here.
And yes, the last few years have been the greatest privilege of my life. It is true that I helped to get the biggest Tory majority for 40 years and a huge realignment in UK politics. We have transformed our democracy and restored our national independence, as my right hon. Friend says. We have helped—I have helped—to get this country through a pandemic and helped save another country from barbarism. Frankly, that is enough to be going on with. Mission largely accomplished—for now.
I want to thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to thank all the wonderful staff of the House of Commons. I want to thank all my friends and colleagues. I want to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford). I want to thank everybody here. And hasta la vista, baby. [Applause.]
Here’s the ‘Hasta la vista, ba-by’ video — a must-see:
The Conservatives gave him a standing ovation, with everyone applauding him, except for Theresa May, who merely stood.
The Opposition either sat in silence or walked out.
One of Guido’s readers wrote:
Lack of class from opposition MPs who can’t possibly give a polite round of applause for a political opponent.
I agree. On the other hand, they hate Boris because he represents Brexit.
In Guido’s comments on the same post, someone said that Boris was Britain’s ‘worst ever PM’, which garnered this response, rightly pointing out the greater moral failings of Tony Blair, John Major and Theresa May as well as today’s world leaders:
What, even worse than a Prime Minister who took the UK into an illegal war which resulted in the deaths of millions as well as thousands of UK soldiers and for which the UK is still feeling reverberations in the form of terrorist attacks? What a worse PM than a Prime Minister who signed the UK up to the Maastricht Treaty without putting it to the British people in the form of a referendum? What worse than a Prime Minister who put forward the idea of making the elderly sell their homes to pay for Health Care …
But instead listened to the people and secured an 80 seat majority to leave the EU (admittedly still leaving a lot to do). Invested in Vaccine development and procurement to ensure the UK had enough supplies for every citizen, and that the UK was at the front of the queue, and didnt go overboard on Covid restrictions, not when you look at what other countries got up to, namely Canada, China and France with Macron’s “I want to punish those that won’t get vaccinated” this after he was responsible for sowing Vaccine doubt simply because the Vaccine was developed in the UK – but then Johnson commited a crime so heinous – he had a piece of Birthday cake brought to him buy his wife – and that’s ‘your’ worst Prime Minister, lol …
Journalist and former Conservative adviser Amanda Platell said she wept after PMQs:
Boris will be missed for his powerful performances at the despatch box …
… and Labour know it. One of their former advisers admits that’s why Boris had to go:
Keir Starmer was often petty and unpleasant towards Boris:
That is because he knows Boris can win elections. In fact, earlier this week, Starmer was so frustrated with the Prime Minister that he insulted him on a podcast.
Starmer’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said on Monday, July 18, that she would be happy with either Truss or Sunak as his successor. At the time she gave this interview, five candidates were still in the race:
I’m quite happy with any one of them. Because the one thing, and I kind of could see it… [Boris] had this, like, teflon coating… It’s like a little magic. Where he was able to get through to the public and get through to the places that I actually don’t see any of the five candidates that are standing having at the moment… Boris had so much going for him. He got an 80-seat majority and the country was really behind him… the five that we’ve got now I don’t think have got that…
Here’s the video:
Boris’s former adviser Dominic Cummings thinks that Boris, like Arnie, will be back, if the next Conservative leader is too lacklustre:
As I wrote yesterday, thousands of voters do not want until then. Dan Wootton’s viewers think that Boris’s name should be on the ballot going out to Conservative Party members early in August:
Wootton’s poll follows on from the ongoing petition by Party members to have Boris’s name on the ballot:
The petition is being spearheaded by Lord Cruddas of Shoreditch, the Tory donor, and David Campbell Bannerman, a former Conservative Euro MP:
The Mail also has a report on the petition.
GB News interviewed David Campbell Bannerman on Thursday, July 21:
However, Labour are planning a rearguard action to prevent Boris from ever being Party leader again.
They hope to depose him as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in west London:
On Thursday, July 21, GB News reported:
Boris Johnson could be forced to face a by-election if he is found to have lied to Parliament and is handed a suspension for 10 or more sitting days.
The Privileges Committee is examining whether the Prime Minister committed a contempt of Parliament by misleading MPs over the Partygate scandal.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle [Labour] confirmed that the committee’s findings would fall within the remit of the Recall of MPs Act, following advice from a leading lawyer.
That would mean that a suspension of 10 or more sitting days, or 14 calendar days, would trigger a recall petition.
If at least 10 percent of voters in Mr Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat demand a by-election he would lose his place as an MP, but would be eligible to stand again in the contest.
The cross-party committee also published advice from the Clerk of the Journals, Eve Samson, the Commons’ expert on parliamentary privilege, which suggested that whether or not Mr Johnson intended to mislead MPs was not a factor that needed to be considered.
But she said that intent could be seen as an “aggravating factor” when considering penalties …
The MPs intend to call Mr Johnson to give oral evidence in public in the autumn, under oath.
The committee has already said that whistleblowers will be able to give evidence about the Prime Minister anonymously.
Mr Johnson has also been ordered to hand over a cache of documents to the MPs investigating whether he lied to Parliament with his partygate denials.
The committee wrote to the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case demanding details relevant to its inquiry.
On Friday, July 22, Guido posted on the upcoming inquiry, saying (emphases in red his):
While the committee will now disregard the PM’s intent, the Clerk’s report does say that can feed into deciding a sanction. This is all, in the understated words of The Telegraph, “a departure from precedent”…
It seems the Speaker’s also got in on the act of changing rules. The Privileges Committee’s announcement yesterday said Hoyle has ruled that “any suspension of the requisite length (10 sitting days or 14 calendar days) ) following on from a report from that Committee will attract the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act”. Previously only recommendations of suspension from the Standards Committee would apply the recall act. Now the PM faces a by-election being forced by [Labour MP Harriet] Harman. Tory MPs are now having to fight back on his behalf, launching a petition to scrap the investigation altogether in light of his resignation…
For now, let’s remember the happier times of earlier this week.
Boris held his final Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, July 19:
Despite the heat, Guido reports that there were no refreshments or food:
… there were a few presents, and a round of applause for the PM. Nigel Adams also gave a speech commending Boris’s time in office, followed by a school photo.
Boris was gi[ven] a six-set first edition of Churchill’s war books; surprisingly not something the ex-PM’s biographer didn’t already own. Guido also learns Boris was given wines that reflected significant dates in his life and political career: 1964, 2008, 2012 and 2019. He also got wine from other countries that mean a lot to him, including Ukraine and Greece …
Here’s the Cabinet photo:
I hope all goes well for the Prime Minister in the weeks to come.
No doubt if Labour try to get at him, he’ll find a way out.
All being well, I’ll have a post next week on what really happened leading to his ouster.
Churchmouse Campanologist 