You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Labour Party’ tag.
My series on the Red Wall MP Miriam Cates concludes today.
Those who missed my previous posts on the Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire can find them here and here.
On October 27, 2021, Miriam Cates revealed to GB News that she and her family had to move out of their home for a time when she got doxxed. YorkshireLive has the story:
The MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge told GB News she has felt frightened by her previous experiences.
She said: “I have had an experience where someone was trying to incite Twitter users to share my address online.
“I had to move my family out of the family home while the police got involved.”
But she claims her colleagues have faced even worse issues, saying some have “got harrowing stories.”
The Conservative MP also said her parliamentary role was an adjustment from her previous position as a school teacher.
Online Safety Bill
Cates supports the Online Safety Bill, which is with the House of Lords at the moment.
The proposed legislation has captured the hearts and minds of nearly every MP.
On the evening of Tuesday, January 17, 2023, in the Bill’s last day in the Commons, Sir Bill Cash rose to put forward his new Clause 2 (emphases mine):
In a nutshell, we must be able to threaten tech bosses with jail. There is precedent for that—jail sentences for senior managers are commonplace for breaches of duties across a great range of UK legislation. That is absolutely and completely clear, and as a former shadow Attorney General, I know exactly what the law is on this subject. I can say this: we must protect our children and grandchildren from predatory platforms operating for financial gain on the internet. It is endemic throughout the world and in the UK, inducing suicide, self-harm and sexual abuse, and it is an assault on the minds of our young children and on those who are affected by it, including the families and such people as Ian Russell. He has shown great courage in coming out with the tragedy of his small child of 14 years old committing suicide as a result of such activities, as the coroner made clear. It is unthinkable that we will not deal with that. We are dealing with it now, and I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for responding with constructive dialogue in the short space of time since we have got to grips with this issue …
The Irish have come up with something that includes similar severe penalties. It can be done. But this is our legislation in this House. We will do it the way that we want to do it to protect our children and families. I am just about fed up with listening to the mealy-mouthed remarks from those who say, “You can’t do it. It’s not quite appropriate.” To hell with that. We are talking about our children.
On past record, which I just mentioned, in 1977-78, a great friend of mine, Cyril Townsend, the Member for Bexleyheath, introduced the first Protection of Children Bill. He asked me to help him, and I did. We got it through. That was incredibly difficult at the time. You have no idea, Mr Deputy Speaker, how much resistance was put up by certain Members of this House, including Ministers. I spoke to Jim Callaghan—I have been in this House so long that I was here with him after he had been Prime Minister—and asked, “How did you give us so much time to get the Bill through?” He said, “It’s very simple. I was sitting in bed with my wife in the flat upstairs at No. 10. She wasn’t talking to me. I said, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ She replied, ‘If you don’t get that Protection of Children Bill through, I won’t speak to you for six months.’” And it went through, so there you go. There is a message there for all Secretaries of State, and even Prime Ministers.
Cates was next:
I too rise to speak to new clause 2, which seeks to introduce senior manager criminal liability to the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) set out, we will not push it to a vote as a result of the very welcome commitments that the Minister has made to introduce a similar amendment in the other place [House of Lords].
Protecting children is not just the role of parents but the responsibility of the whole of society, including our institutions and businesses that wish to trade here. That is the primary aim of this Bill, which I wholeheartedly support: to keep children safe online from horrendous and unspeakable harms, many of which were mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) …
Only personal criminal liability will drive proactive change, and we have seen this in other areas such as the financial services industry and the construction industry. I am delighted that the Government have recognised the necessity of senior manager liability for tech bosses, after much campaigning across the House, and committed to introducing it in the other place. I thank the Secretary of State and her team for the very constructive and positive way in which they have engaged with supporters of this measure …
I offer my sincere thanks to the NSPCC, especially Rich Collard, and the outstanding Charles Hymas of The Telegraph, who have so effectively supported this campaign. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash); without his determination, knowledge and experience, it would not have been possible to achieve this change. He has been known as Mr Brexit, but as he said, even before he was Mr Brexit, he was Mr Child Protection, having been involved with the Protection of Children Act 1978. It is certainly advantageous in negotiations to work with someone who knows vastly more about legislation than pretty much anyone else involved. He sat through the debate in December on the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), and while the vote was taking place, he said, “I think we can do this.” He spent the next week in the Public Bill Office and most of his recess buried in legislation. I pay tribute to him for his outstanding work. Once again, I thank the Secretary of State for her commitment to this, and I think this will continue our Parliament’s proud history of protecting children.
Many members of the public, however, are concerned that this will go far beyond child safety. We shall see.
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Section 35
Before Christmas 2022, I wrote about the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which the Scottish Parliament (Assembly) passed in breathtaking haste.
The Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack MP, invoked Section 35 to block it. It was an unprecedented move, because Westminster has never before used Section 35 to block Scottish legislation.
The Commons debated the move on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 17, 2023.
No one could have imagined that all hell would break loose.
Miriam Cates said:
I rise to support the Government’s decision to use their section 35 powers with regard to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill …
In paragraph 27, the Government point out that the Bill does not create “sufficient safeguards”. They are right to be concerned about “fraudulent and/or malign applications” because of the implications for child safeguarding. This morning, the Education Committee heard from Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired the inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse. It was harrowing to hear the stories of decades of child sexual abuse throughout institutions across the country. One key feature of such abuse is that predators will exploit any loophole that they can find to get access to children, and I am afraid that that is what will happen with the Bill.
We should not be asking how easy it is for someone who is uncomfortable with their sex to obtain a GRC [Gender Recognition Certificate]; we should be asking how easy it is for a predator to get access to children. The Bill would make it vastly easier for a predator to get access to children by changing their gender with an eye to exploiting loopholes to access children and women in particular …
… Changing legal gender, with a potential route to long-term changes to fertility, sexual function and health, is not suitable for 16-year-olds and is a huge safeguarding risk.
Paragraphs 30 and 48 mention membership on the grounds of sex and single-sex spaces. Sex Matters recently did a report that looked at the impact on single-sex spaces of men’s ability to access them by changing their gender. Women say, “I never went back to that swimming pool,” or, “I never went back to that counselling class,” because for many of them, the dignity of having a women-only space and knowing that there will be no men there is important. We will see a chilling effect on important single-sex rights if the Bill passes. As a woman, I fully understand the threats to dignity and safety that the Bill poses, because it will change the social contract. In this country, we recognise that in toilets, changing rooms and public spaces, there are areas where only women are allowed.
In a restaurant recently, I had an experience where a man dressed as a woman walked into the toilets where I was on my own. He stood behind me and stared at me in the mirror, looking me in the eye. I have no idea whether he intended me any harm, but my evolved instinct as a woman was to be frightened, because unlike in almost any other species, women are far less powerful than men and we cannot defend ourselves. [Interruption.] No, it is a fact. The difference in strength between men and women is phenomenal, which is why we have separate sex categories for sport. Women are evolved to be wary of men in intimate spaces, which is why we have single-sex spaces and why they must continue to exist for the safety and privacy of women. The Bill threatens that social contract.
Finally, this threatens the understanding of our law, which should be based on fact, and someone cannot change their sex any more than they can change their place of birth or who their parents are. I fully understand the complex arguments involved and we should treat this with compassion, but if the law is not based on fact, then how can we trust the law? That is why the Government are absolutely right to serve this notice.
The Labour bench was quite noisy.
Madam Deputy Speaker Rosie Winterton called the House to order.
Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) rose:
Goodness me, that speech was probably one of the worst transphobic dog-whistle speeches I have heard in an awfully long time. Linking the Bill with predators is, frankly, disgusting, and you [Cates] should be ashamed.
The Deputy Speaker said:
Order. No—calm down!
Somewhere at this point — I didn’t see it on BBC Parliament, but I might have looked away — Russell-Moyle, who has form for playing up in Parliament having been suspended for a day for picking up the mace, crossed over to the Conservative benches to sit near Cates.
You can see it here, starting at 1:51. It was part of GB News’s Mark Dolan’s editorial asking if Labour have a women problem:
Conservative MP Paul Bristow moved down a row or two to sit next to Cates. Father of the House Peter Bottomley is sitting in front of her. Bristow made a Point of Order about Russell-Moyle’s behaviour a few days later. More on that in a moment. Here is Conservative MP Laura Farris’s tweet of the scene:
Cates spoke:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Russell-Moyle replied:
No, I will not give way to you, or anyone else. [Interruption.] I mean to the hon. Member.
On the substance of this, ignoring that horrible speech we have just heard—
The Father of the House [longest serving male MP] Sir Peter Bottomley, a Conservative, intervened:
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Did you hear anything transphobic in the previous speech?
Madam Deputy Speaker responded:
I have to say to the Father of the House that different Members of this House will interpret speeches in different ways. I suggest that we move on quickly, and I think the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) needs to calm down, moderate his language and move on to the substance of the debate, otherwise I will ask him to resume his seat.
Russell-Moyle said:
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is difficult when we are talking about these emotional matters.
The reality of this is that this section 35 is the new Tories’ section 28. It is their continuation of a war against a group of people—their culture war—that they want to pursue, and they think it will advantage them in the polls. That is what the Australian Conservatives thought as well and what the Republicans in the US thought, but I trust it will not, because the people do not like the bigotry that we hear from the other side.
Another Conservative MP, Alicia Kearns, intervened:
I recognise that the hon. Gentleman feels very strongly about this, but I would ask him to use caution about labelling a party as solely one thing, because it is Conservative party colleagues who led for the conversion therapy ban that has been announced today. When I was elected, no other MP talked about it for seven months, and we have delivered it today. I caution him to please not label all Members on certain sides of the House as transphobic or homophobic, and I also challenge anyone being labelled that in this House.
Russell-Moyle then spoke, acknowledged Alicia Kearns’s point then said, in part:
What this report says in reality is that there is no amendment this Government would accept or allow to pass. What this flimsy piece of paper indicates is that the only Bill they would accept is the current UK law, and anything that deviates from it would be blocked. I am afraid that is an undermining of the very concept of devolution. The Government should just be honest, and say that they want to remove the devolved competences in this area from the Scottish Parliament and return them back to Westminster. At least that would be an honest debate, rather than this dog-whistle debate about the safety of children, which, frankly, is not correct.
… Let us see how this Bill rolls out in Scotland. We could then see the flaws that might come from it, and the Scottish Parliament could have amended it and taken action, because all Bills are living, practical documents.
I say this as a gay man who loves all-male spaces sometimes and finds that the liberation of having such spaces is important—and I am sure that many women feel that the safety of all-women spaces is important to them—but this Bill does not change that law one bit. GRCs exist at the moment, and we already have a system for people to change their passport and their driving licence without a GRC. Going into a toilet, a public facility or a refuge is not contingent on a certificate at all, so all those arguments are bogus, and to continue a bogus argument knowing that it is bogus is, I am afraid, a form of bigotry.
Afterwards, Conservative MP Craig Mackinley lightened the mood by discussing what one can and cannot do at the age of 16, excerpted below:
I am rather concerned that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) might have a seizure at the end of my speech, but we will do our best to keep him calm …
I do have issues with the whole concept of this—I am not going to stray into that too much, but I find the provision on the age of 16 scarcely believable. Even in Scotland a 16-year-old cannot drive or buy alcohol or cigarettes.
I was going to cover the things that people can do at 16. I understand that in education in Scotland, access for the armed forces to encourage a future and a career in the armed forces is actively discouraged, which is taking a lot of people away from credible and superb future employment. In Scotland—I always like to give the sunbed rule—someone cannot even go on a sunbed, and they cannot contract, yet here we are—[Interruption.] We all wanted to do lots of things aged 16. I rather wanted a tattoo and an earring, but here I am aged 56, and I am damn pleased I did not go down that route. It means that when I lie on beaches, most people sort of point at me say, “Look at that. There’s a guy without a tattoo on this beach.”
The other safeguards I am concerned about regard sex offenders. Are we really so naive as to think that those who are so minded will not exploit some of these rules to do things that we know they want to do? Are we so naive as to think that people will do the right thing in all circumstances? I am an absolute libertarian Conservative and I have no interest in how people want to live—that is a matter for them. I have completely no interest, and I do not bring my opinions on it to this place for legislation. That is not my interest or concern. I steadfastly say that—people can do exactly as they please …
I am concerned that the process for obtaining a GRC would be much easier and much reduced under the Bill, as opposed to what I think has been a well debated, well rehearsed, and settled argument across the UK up to this date. The settled will has been that a GRC can be obtained where someone has lived as a different sex for two years, had some medical advice and intervention and guaranteed that they shall live in that way for the rest of their days. I think that is sensible; I am fully in agreement with that.
As I said, I am a libertarian Conservative, so I really do not mind what people want to do, but this is an issue about section 35 of the Scotland Act. The Bill would change the Equality Act 2010 and change how we live. I support the Government.
People responding to Laura Farris’s aforementioned tweet complained about Madam Deputy Speaker and Lloyd Russell-Moyle:
She should have expelled him, but, then again, she’s a Labour MP.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who wasn’t there, didn’t say anything, either.
Imagine if a Conservative MP had done that: immediate suspension with the video making the news for weeks!
On Sunday, January 22, The Express reported that Russell-Moyle apologised to Cates:
It is understood that Mr Russell-Moyle has written to Ms Cates, calling the tone of his remarks “a mistake”.
Also apologising to the Deputy Speaker on Wednesday, Mr Russell-Moyle said, “I should have expressed my deep disagreement on what I believe is an abhorrent view in a more appropriate way.”
On Monday, January 23, Guido Fawkes had a further update. Paul Bristow had raised a Point of Order about the incident:
Guido’s post says (red emphases his):
Tory MP Paul Bristow just made a point of order in the Commons rightly condemning the behaviour of Lloyd Russell-Moyle on the green benches last week. While Russell-Moyle has already apologised for failing to control his “passion” during his screed at Miriam Cates last week, his decision to then sit directly next to her on the Tory benches has also sparked outrage. Surely just a coincidence…
Deputy Speaker Dame Rosie Winterton also responded, although hedged her bets a bit by claiming “it is very difficult for me to know what was in the honourable gentleman’s [Russell-Moyle’s] mind” when he sat a yard away from the woman he’d just screamed at. Doesn’t seem that difficult to Guido…
This morning, Lloyd tweeted:
It is not uncommon at the end of a debate for people to sit at different seats while waiting to enter the chamber or the lobbies.
I had no concept that this was making any member feel awkward and would never do anything to deliberately intimidate anyone in or out of the chamber.
Guido will let observers decide whether Russell-Moyle’s seating decision was a mere coincidence…
That statement of Russell-Moyle’s is quite something. For a start, this was not at the end of the debate. It was during the debate. As such, no one was waiting to enter or leave the chamber.
His second sentence is absolutely breathtaking. He would have seen Paul Bristow move next to Miriam Cates. She had just related an experience in which she felt intimidated, then Russell-Moyle crossed the aisle to move near her when her expectations would have been for him to remain in his seat across the chamber.
Disgusting.
I do not know if Miriam Cates has been re-selected by her local Conservative Association for 2024. She seems a determined lady and, no doubt, she is a good constituency MP. We need more like her.
More profiles on Red Wall MPs will follow after Easter.
On Wednesday, March 8, I went out for a leisurely lunch.
I thought I could avoid the parliamentary debate, which inevitably becomes party political. As it did … on Thursday afternoon, while I was preparing dinner.
Looking back at Wednesday, Guido Fawkes’s Christian Calgie gallantly wished British women a happy day. Pictured are all the British political parties that, at one time or another, have had an elected female leader. All, that is, except for — wait for it — Labour:
Guido’s post says (emphases his):
On today’s International Women’s Day, Guido thought it was time to celebrate the first female leaders of significant political parties in the UK. The timeline of trailblazers is:
-
- Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, 1975
- Green Party, Jean Lambert, 1992
- Welsh Nationalists, Leanne Wood, 2012
- Scottish Nationalists, Nicola Sturgeon, 2014
- Democratic Unionist Party, Arlene Foster, 2015
- UKIP, Diane James, 2016
- Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, 2019
- [Labour Party, NA, NA]
Unless Sir Keir has a big announcement to make, sadly the Labour Party can’t yet properly participate in this list…
Guido and his team reinforced the message about Labour’s lack of elected lady leaders:
A Labour group later tweeted about diversity on this day. Look closely at the photos. What do you see?
A cross-dressing career comedian who hopes to be a Labour candidate in the next election is pictured in the second row from the bottom, second photo from the right. His name is Eddie Izzard. This week, he declared that he would like to be known as Suzy.
Labour make themselves out to be the progressive choice. Yet, one of their MPs, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, did a bit of mansplaining to a doctor on the BBC’s Politics Live about the importance of using gender-neutral language when describing medical conditions that women have. Recently, he tried to intimidate a female Conservative MP during a debate in the Commons:
The Shadow Health Minister, Labour’s Wes Streeting, has form when it comes to names for women:
Perhaps he has since repented. After all, the tweets Guido captured (more here) are well over 10 years old.
Before marking the next general election ballot for Labour, British women might want to imagine themselves in a hospital bed and having Mr Streeting visit their bedside as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in a few years’ time. What would he call them: ‘old bag’, ‘cow’ or ‘tart’?
Elsewhere, a Conservative MP, Theresa Villiers, appeared on GB News and sent Guido a photo of the channel’s gender-neutral loos:
Guido tells us that GB News has nothing to do with the loos. They come with the building:
Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers was on GB News and sent Guido this picture of the gender-neutral toilets at their Paddington studio – she was most disconcerted to find men coming in whilst she was touching-up her make-up. Opining that “This doesn’t seem entirely consistent with their apparent enthusiasm for fighting culture wars” …
The private sector seems to be solving the fellas-in-frocks in the same washroom as teenage girls problem with single cubicle washrooms. It is obviously more expensive to build single-person washrooms, the higher costs are less controversial than the alternative. Expect to see more of these in the future…
Returning to Labour, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the Evening Standard an incredible piece of misinformation on Wednesday:
Ms Reeves began her career at the Bank of England, where the court of directors has 13 men and just three women …
“I want it to change,” Ms Reeves told the Standard.
“I have worked at some of those institutions. The Bank has never had a female governor. There has never been a woman chancellor in 800 years. I want to see change.
“When I started at the Bank of England my graduate intake was 37 and only six of us women.”
Ms Reeves began at the Bank 23 years ago, in the same graduate intake as former Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
She’s right, but she’s also very wrong. An MP should know better.
I read that article on the train home from lunch yesterday and nearly went ballistic.
Here’s why.
Every now and then, a photographer manages to get the part of the door to No. 10 on which there is a brass plate above the doorknob that reads:
FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY
Perhaps Ms Reeves needs to look at more photos of that famous door.
The First Lord of the Treasury is a title that the Prime Minister holds.
To whom does the Chancellor report? The Prime Minister.
We have had three female First Lords of the Treasury — thanks to the Conservatives. They are Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss. The inscription is just above the letterbox slot:
That’s three more female Party leaders and Prime Ministers than Labour have had.
The UK is doing well as far as women in leadership positions go. Well done, Conservatives.
On Saturday, February 11, 2023, GB News aired Charlie Peters’s incredible 45-minute documentary, Grooming Gangs: Britain’s Shame.
This is not easy viewing, but it is important to watch. Peters was able to interview victims and whistleblowers, mostly in Rotherham, but also in Rochdale and Telford — all in England:
Near the end of the documentary is a map of all the known towns in England — there are many — along with Glasgow where grooming gangs currently operate. If I had a still of it, I would post it. Most are in the north, but there are some in the Home Counties, too, such as leafy Wendover.
Imagine. Those are only the places known about. Some experts say that nearly every town in England has a grooming gang network.
Highlights
The following highlights from the documentary show what a serious problem this has been and continues to be.
Action was not taken because of the unique ethnicity of the perpetrators.
It should be noted that Rotherham and Rochdale, among others, have Labour councils.
Amazingly, whistleblower and youth worker Jayne Senior of Risky Business and concerned Rotherham council workers were told that the girls consented. According to English law, children cannot consent because they are not old enough to give informed consent:
Councillors in Rotherham and elsewhere knew what was going on but turned a blind eye. As I mentioned several days ago, Mark Steyn, now back in Canada, shone a spotlight on the grooming situation in Telford when he worked for GB News:
This is one of the cases Rotherham councillors knew about. Julie was 12 at the time. Her ‘boyfriend’ was 24. He and his mates took over her and her mother’s life:
Julie’s mother was terrified. The abusers were so intimidating that she felt she had no choice but to co-operate with them by allowing them in the house with access to her daughter:
Julie ended up being trafficked around the country at the whim of the gang. She ended up learning their Pakistani dialect. Two of the councillors who were briefed on her case were committee chairs but did nothing. They remain committee chairs today. One of them now heads Rotherham Council’s Standards and Ethics committee:
Jayne Senior of Risky Business was shocked to learn of the Standards and Ethics committee appointment. A survivor called it ‘a slap in the face’:
Jayne Senior had a database of girls in Rotherham which she worked on in order to find a network of abusers. Someone unknown tampered with aspects of it.
In Rochdale, then-Detective Constable Maggie Oliver, who later retired to found the Maggie Oliver Foundation which helps victims of grooming gangs, said that her superiors told her that there was no evidence to prosecute — even though she had compiled plenty of incriminating evidence.
In every town investigated, grooming gangs treated their victims as subhumans. One was murdered. Another was raped with a broken bottle. One had petrol thrown on her with gang members lighting matches around her. Girls have been routinely tortured, gang raped, drugged, plied with strong drink, burnt — and more.
This is what Maggie Oliver had to say:
She says that, because they have been operating for decades now, grooming gangs know exactly what to look for when selecting a young girl as prey:
The following are current statistics from the Maggie Oliver Foundation:
It is very difficult for a young girl to extricate herself from the gangs.
Elizabeth, a Rotherham survivor, has a book coming out on March 31 about her harrowing experience. She was groomed by a woman who acted as a go-between with the gangs:
Samantha Smith from Telford, a long-time victim, was also in the documentary. She posts an assessment from a Rotherham victim — once one perpetrator has your number, they all have it — and adds that it is easier to treat victims as criminals rather than the perpetrators:
Samantha is now a columnist for The Telegraph, The Spectator and the Daily Mail.
If gang members treated their victims as subhumans, teachers, police and council workers did, too. Samantha said that she was made to feel as if it were her fault.
Home Office reports
There were three Home Office reports into the Rotherham scandal, which continues today.
Nothing happened as a result.
Jayne Senior says the council did not like the results of the reports:
As one newspaper reported, everything was ignored in order to ‘preserve grubby political careers’:
This thread discusses the Home Office reports and their findings:
Residential care workers also raised the alarm but were largely ignored:
The second and third reports from 2003 and 2006 went further than the first. Those reports revealed that criminality was clearly involved. Police and social work managers ignored them:
Rotherham Council did not want to know, either. Some councillors were in denial. Others thought it was a one-off problem:
Meanwhile, social services were becoming stretched with the numbers of victims coming forward:
Ethnicity was becoming an issue in these cases, but no one in authority wanted to acknowledge it:
No one wanted to open a powder keg. Whilst this is understandable, the problem of CSE — child sexual exploitation — will continue until this is tackled intelligently but thoroughly:
It should be noted that women were also targeted, some of whom acted as madams, by their landlords:
Rotherham’s Labour council thinks that the city’s designation as the 2025 Children’s Capital of Culture will automatically heal all these wounds. Instead, townspeople think it is a sick joke:
Ultimately, there is a desparate need for an honest discussion:
GB News has two detailed reports on Rotherham Council’s part in the scandal here and here.
Growing problem that political correctness won’t stop
Charlie Peters did several interviews in the run-up to and after the broadcast of the documentary.
Here he says that girls are being ignored and that the authorities are too concerned about political correctness to do anything:
Indeed, Peters points out the problem with political correctness in the documentary:
He is correct in saying that there needs to be a ‘national response’ to grooming gangs:
Red Wall MP Robbie Moore of Keighley, which also has a grooming gang problem, agrees:
Rotherham’s MP, Alexander Stafford, also a Red Wall parliamentarian, told Tom Harwood that he was not happy about councillors remaining in prominent positions. He thanked GB News for the documentary:
The scale is likely to be much larger than had been previously thought, says one solicitor (lawyer):
The statistics are horrifying:
One reason why is the increasing use of social media to lure vulnerable girls:
Home Office response
During last summer’s Conservative Party leadership contest, Rishi Sunak said that he would tackle the problem of grooming gangs.
We haven’t heard a peep since.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s office said she was ‘appalled’ by the documentary’s findings:
I won’t hold my breath in anticipation.
Reaction
GB News presenters publicised the documentary, with some interviewing Peters.
Nigel Farage said it is a must-see:
Michelle Dewberry, originally from Hull, which also has a grooming gang problem, said the issue needs discussing:
It deserves a repeat showing, more than once:
Elsewhere, The Spectator‘s Ed West wondered where the moral outrage is over this problem. Note that where there is outrage, the authorities, including the Home Office, stomp on it quickly. More on Labour-run Knowsley at the end of the post:
And, across the Pond, columnist Rod Dreher says that there are lessons to be learned from this in the United States:
Last weekend’s news
Knowsley, which is a Labour constituency near Liverpool, had a demonstration last weekend against Channel migrants being housed in local hotels. Families have become increasingly concerned about the safety of girls and women. One 15-year-old girl was propositioned by one of the hotel residents, who was clearly an adult. She recorded it and it went viral.
Unfortunately, the authorities and the media accused those at the peaceful protest of being far-right thugs. To be fair, the protest was later gate-crashed but probably not by the far-right. People dressed in black and wearing balaclavas infiltrated the event and became violent. Such types are likely to be from the far-left. Europeans call them black bloc. Americans call them Antifa.
In London, someone verbally lashed out at the Tate (pictured below) for holding a Drag Queen Story Hour. Again, this person was labelled far-right in the media. In light of the mad things happening in Scotland over sexual identity politics, people are worried.
The Telegraph‘s Alison Pearson voiced her objections to labelling: ‘I’m sick of people with an ounce of common sense being labelled “far-right”‘:
She adds a third news story to the mix:
… we learn that four Afghan “boys” who arrived in small boats across the Channel last year have just been arrested in connection with the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl at a school in Dover. So, are all of us who warned that there was a potential safeguarding issue around putting asylum seekers of indeterminate age into British schools still “far-Right”?
She concludes:
If the Government and a liberal elite continue to stigmatise and silence working-class people for a perfectly rational reaction to policies which threaten their children and their communities then I’m afraid they must prepared to reap the whirlwind.
Are those who think this way far-Right? Or could it possibly be that we are just right?
Many will say that those who object are just right.
Take, for example, this February 14 verdict on a former grooming gang member from West Yorkshire. He walked free:
The defendant apparently has mental health issues. One wonders about his victim’s mental health:
He did not serve any time:
One must take a moment to read the article on YorkshireLive. Excerpts follow:
A grooming gang member who was first arrested seven years ago has finally been sentenced – but has walked free from court.
Sayeed Hafeez was 23 when he took a 15-year-old girl to two beauty spots in West Yorkshire and had sexual activity with her. Bradford Crown Court heard the girl had already been groomed and abused by a number of other men who have previously been sentenced.
His Honour Judge Anthony Hatton said there was no evidence to suggest the girl had been “traded” to Hafeez, who is now 36, and it is not clear how they came to know each other. He said Hafeez had had sexual activity with the teenager at Cliff Castle and St Ives …
The court heard the prosecution could not point to anything that would suggest Hafeez, of Thomas Duggan House in Shipley, knew the girl was vulnerable.
Mitigating Taryn Turner told the court …
… the girl was “mature” at 15, and a photograph of Hafeez at the time seems to “reveal he was a much younger man still in college so perhaps the disparity in age is not so great as may be thought at first.”
Again, we see the notion of a minor being able to consent. Wrong!
People should be highly upset about this — not only at the perpetrators but also at the authorities for doing absolutely nothing to stop the damaging, sometimes deadly, abuse of young girls.
On Monday, I wrote about the UK’s third anniversary on becoming free of the European Union.
Admittedly, Northern Ireland is still half-in and half-out, a problematic situation that is being negotiated.
I pointed out the sclerotic pace at which MPs are legislating to take full advantage of Brexit.
On February 1, UnHerd featured an article by Richard Johnson, a Labour Party member, and Lecturer in US Politics and Policy at Queen Mary University of London: ‘Labour’s lost love for Leave’.
Richard Johnson voted to Leave in 2016 and has no regrets.
Before going into Parliament’s slow pace at reclaiming our sovereignty, he explains Labour’s changing viewpoint on belonging to the EU (emphases mine):
Back in 2016, one in three people who voted Labour at the previous year’s general election voted for Brexit. Today, polling for UnHerd shows that just 15% of Labour voters think the UK was right to leave. Of course, in those intervening years, there has been enormous churn in the Labour electorate, with sizeable defections by Labour Leavers at the last election to the Brexit Party and the Conservatives. Nonetheless, UnHerd’s polling shows that support for Brexit has dropped significantly in Labour’s historic heartlands in the North and Midlands.
In historical terms, this is a striking shift. For four decades, the Labour Party was the chief Eurosceptic party in British politics — far more so than the Conservative Party. Every Labour leader between Clement Attlee and Neil Kinnock had expressed opposition to joining (or support for leaving) the European Economic Community (EEC) at some point as a frontbench Labour MP. The first truly pro-European Labour leader was John Smith, who defied a three-line whip in 1972 to vote for the Conservatives’ European Communities Act. Pro-Europeanism was viewed as a Right-wing project — an attempt to constitutionalise capitalist principles in ways that would curtail the power of socialist governments to plan their national economies as they saw fit.
Labour’s perspective on the EU began to change in the 1980s:
In the late Eighties, Labour finally abandoned its opposition to EEC membership, though the change was driven more by a response to repeated domestic defeats than a principled embrace of the European project. The promise of a “social Europe” was regarded by many Labour MPs as a chimera, but it at least offered some alternative to Thatcherism. So the party came to accept supranational legal limits on British governments, hoping the EU could mitigate the excesses of Conservative rule.
Belonging to the EU meant that EU law applied, restricting the ability of both Conservatives and Labour to raise legislation that benefits the UK’s interests. This also affected civil servants’ work:
… this Mephistophelian deal meant placing limits on future Labour governments, too. Policy tools which had once been fundamental to previous governments’ socialist programmes — trade policy, currency management, state aid and nationalisation, and capital and labour controls — were all sacrificed in exchange for the promise of minimum labour standards and regional development funds delivered through European institutions, rather than Whitehall.
Once we were in, we were in fully. Although Johnson is writing from a Labour perspective, the following attitudes also pertain to Conservative Remainer MPs, of which there are many:
Few outwardly advocated leaving the bloc, believing it to be too difficult or simply not politically feasible …
This is where we find ourselves today, six-and-a-half years after voting to leave in the 2016 referendum.
Parliamentarians have not had to legislate much since the 1970s. Civil servants haven’t had to think about that, either. Hence the slow pace. It might require work, not only in the House of Commons but also in Whitehall:
Joining the EEC in 1972, for instance, took a variety of national powers out of the hands of the UK Government and, by extension, parliament. EU countries are constitutionally transformed from nation-states to member-states, as the Cambridge academic Chris Bickerton has explained. This means that a variety of policy instruments are removed from national governments altogether, or their implementation becomes contingent on the wishes of the European Commission or interpretations of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Perhaps more obviously, EU membership is simply not compatible with a belief in socialist planning. At its core, the Single Market is designed to limit the power of national electorates to plan their own economies. Of course, a certain degree of national economic planning is permitted within EU membership, but it is conditional. Any time a national government takes a decision that is viewed as distorting the hallowed Single Market — which must be prioritised above all else — those policies are blocked …
… European judges have struck down labour practices that they claim impose onerous restrictions on business, as in the infamous cases Laval and Viking. The former limited Swedish trade unions insisting on higher working conditions for construction workers from Latvia who operated in Sweden. The latter prevented a Finnish transport union from taking action against Viking Line for reclassifying their workers under the flag of a lower-wage EU country to ignore Finnish collective bargaining. Because these judgements are based on judicial interpretation of fundamental EU treaty rights, no legislation, either at a national level or from MEPs, can overturn them.
As such, for 50 years, the UK government has had to rely on Brussels for legislation. It is no wonder that the nanny state has grown so much, particularly over the past 25 years. What else is there to legislate upon but personal behaviours?
Johnson points out that Labour have been as negligent as the Conservatives over embracing our new freedoms:
Indeed, there are so many areas of policy where Labour ought to have spent the last few years seriously thinking about the post-Brexit opportunities. How can we use procurement better now that we are out of the Single Market? … What would a socialist trade policy look like, once protection of continental European industries and agriculture is removed from the equation?
Instead, Labour has wasted the years since Brexit almost as much as the Tories have. Labour had stood on a manifesto in the 2017 election which promised to take the UK out of the EU, Single Market, and Customs Union. That election saw the biggest increase in its vote since the 1945 General Election and the only net gain in Labour seats since 1997. A majority of the seats Labour won in England were Leave-voting seats off the Tories …
Today, though … the reality is that Labour is still not making the case for Brexit on Labour terms. Virtually every time a Labour politician speaks about Brexit, it is framed as an attempt to mitigate the damage. Labour’s underlying assumption is that Brexit has failed because the UK has diverged too much from the EU. A better Brexit is one closer to the EU. But, the reality is that the UK has not diverged enough from the limitations which EU membership placed on national economic planning.
The reason why?
For both main parties, it’s too much like work, for MPs and civil servants alike: a parlous state of affairs.
My most recent post on Liz Truss left off with the beginning of the end in her final week as Conservative Party leader.
Friday, October 14
Her sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng and installation of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor on Friday, October 14, meant only one thing — her end was nigh:
Liz Truss’s first Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng: what he expected, what he got instead (October 13, 14)
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng illustrate that one DAY is a long time in politics (October 13, 14)
The Times‘s headline on the morning of the 14th said that Conservative MPs were already plotting to install Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt in Truss’s place. One of them would be Prime Minister and the other would be Chancellor or Foreign Secretary:
The article also said (purple emphases mine):
Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, are expected within days to make a humiliating climbdown over corporation tax in an effort to calm the markets and see off a mounting revolt.
Indeed, that is what Truss announced at her disastrous press conference that afternoon. By then, Jeremy Hunt was already Chancellor:
It was hard to believe, especially as Ireland’s corporation tax is half that: 12.5%. What is to stop businesses in Northern Ireland from moving south of the border?
Liz prefaced the announcement with:
This is difficult.
Guido Fawkes has the video and another quote preceding her announcement about corporation tax:
It is clear that parts of our mini-Budget went further and faster than markets were expecting… so the way we are delivering has to change…
He concluded (emphases his):
The mother of all U-turns…
Later in the afternoon, Wendy Morton, the Chief Whip, summoned Conservative MPs to an online call with the Deputy Prime Minister Thérèse Coffey.
One hundred of them dialled in. Coffey allegedly kept staring at her notes:
Saturday, October 15
Saturday’s papers were scathing.
The Daily Mail asked, ‘How much more can she (and the rest of us) take?’
The i paper led with ‘Tory MPs tell Truss: “It’s over”‘:
The Telegraph‘s Tom Harris wrote about the symbiotic relationship between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor from Margaret Thatcher’s time to Truss’s.
When that relationship goes wrong in a big way, it’s nearly always bad news for the PM, although there are exceptions:
When a prime minister loses a long-serving chancellor and ally – as Margaret Thatcher did when Nigel Lawson walked out of her government in 1989 – the political ramifications are enormous. In Thatcher’s case, that event signalled the beginning of her long defeat. When a prime minister loses a friend too, it becomes, as Liz Truss stated in her press conference, “not an easy” personal moment.
Their closeness also makes it impossible for Truss to distance herself from the mess left at the Treasury. It is not clear which policy Kwarteng implemented that the prime minister was so unhappy with that she had to fire him. In 1989, Lawson resigned over his objection to the prime minister’s reliance on her economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters, but there were already disagreements between Numbers 10 and 11 over whether Britain should join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
[John Major’s Norman] Lamont was fired over his handling of Britain’s departure from the same institution. Javid resigned over personnel issues. Rishi Sunak’s reasons for resigning were similar, though in his case the personnel issue involved the then prime minister himself.
In Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss might be given a chance to form the kind of reassuring, mutually supportive – and, crucially, stable – relationship with her chancellor that good government demands. It would be foolish, however, to assume that when such a relationship breaks down, it is always the chancellor who is next to go.
The Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey looked at the backbench Conservative MPs, wondering how Conservative they actually were. I was glad to see that she mentioned Alicia Kearns, who does not seem very Conservative to me.
Tominey’s article shows that a significant number of Conservative backbenchers do not hold traditional Conservative Party values:
Never underestimate the Conservative Party’s unparalleled ability to turn the gun on itself when coming under enemy fire. As the pot shots continued to rain thick and fast on Liz Truss’s troubled premiership, what did the Tories decide to do? With Labour’s help, they elected Alicia Kearns as chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
For those unfamiliar with Ms Kearns, she is the former Amnesty International activist who led the so-called “Pork Pie Plot” to oust Boris Johnson over partygate. Despite having been an MP for all of five minutes, the 34-year-old, who won the safe seat of Rutland and Melton in 2019 (hence the pork pie theme) decided that the Conservatives’ wisest move was to remove the man who secured the party’s biggest election win since 1987. Well, dip me in jellied pork stock and cover me in hot-crust pastry, that went swimmingly!
Having declared last year that she came into Parliament with “one legislative change I wanted to deliver, which was to ban conversion therapy”, inexperienced Kearns now occupies one of the most influential posts in the House of Commons.
Her first intervention? Following hot on the heels of her fellow chair, Mel Stride, of outspoken Treasury select committee fame, she used a radio interview on Thursday night to urge the Prime Minister to reverse the tax-cutting measures in the mini-Budget.
I’ve got nothing personally against Ms Kearns – she is clearly a thoughtful and intelligent woman. But if she isn’t for cutting tax, then what on earth is she doing in the Tory party, let alone now apparently in the running to enter a future Conservative Cabinet?
One former minister was this week quoted as saying: “Everything [the Government] are doing is everything that I don’t believe in.” Why, then, is that senior politician – apparently so opposed to spending controls and economic growth – not currently residing on Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow front bench or drinking Remaineraid with Sir Ed Davey?
As former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost put it on Thursday: “There are too many … social democrats operating under Conservative cover.”
It is one thing to be a broad church, but the Tories are currently taking on the mantle of a Blue Labour cult.
Not only are many of them perfectly comfortable with taxing people more, despite the tax burden being at its highest in 70 years, but they are also apparently as opposed to fracking as Ed Miliband. They seem to love the status quo and appear happy to watch Britain slowly sink into decline – along with their own party.
Tominey says that Liz Truss’s platform was clasically Conservative, and so was the one upon which Alicia Kearns was elected.
These are the MPs who will determine the outcome of Brexit and the next election. Both are in peril.
Tominey rightly lays the blame at the feet of former PM David Cameron, a wet who wanted a different type of Conservative MP:
David Cameron’s decision to introduce open primaries in the late 2000s, which saw wannabe MPs selected by non-members as well as members, was perhaps the most obvious mistake. The Conservatives ended up with “yellow” Tories in its ranks, such as Sarah Wollaston, who later defected to the Liberal Democrats.
Funnily enough, Sarah Wollaston is no longer an MP. Others like her, most of whom had the whip removed, were defeated or chose not to run in 2019.
This is the issue:
But more broadly, by inviting people with no background in Conservative politics to stand for Parliament, they ended up with people with no Tory backbone either. Holding successive snap elections only made the selection process less rigorous and open to people high on ambition and low on ideology.
This is a problem for the next general election. GEs depend upon local activists — party members — who are willing to canvass door-to-door:
We now have the Sunak squadders, calling for people to keep less of their wages, for businesses to pay more in corporation tax and for benefits to be linked to inflation, Corbyn-style …
Conservatives have become so detached from reality that they actually believe this will help them to win the next general election – even though it promises to prompt a mass walkout by the very grass-roots activists they rely on to run a campaign.
However, Tominey says that Rishi Sunak’s coronavirus handouts have also altered the public perception of the role of the state. We can but see how this will play in 2024 or early 2025 when the next GE comes along.
Monday, October 17
On Monday, October 17, Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt had to stand in for Truss during a debate. Opposition MPs accused Truss of hiding under a desk.
Mordaunt had to deny that more than once, saying that Truss had a ‘very genuine reason’ for not being present.
I don’t often feel sorry for Penny Mordaunt, but I did that day:
However, one Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, tweeted that Liz Truss was the victim of a ‘coup’ — his word — and that Jeremy Hunt was the acting PM:
On Tuesday, October 18, The Times explained why Truss did not turn up at the despatch box the day before:
For much of the day Truss was conspicuous by her absence. She refused to respond to a question by Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons, prompting accusations from Labour that she was “frit”. Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, answered questions in her stead. She said that the prime minister had “a very good reason” for her absence but refused to explain further, prompting misplaced speculation that Truss had resigned.
That reason for her absence turned out to be a meeting with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee. Sources said that the meeting was routine and had been arranged before Kwarteng’s dismissal. But the issue of her leadership, and a potential revolt by Tory MPs, was said to have been discussed.
One source on the committee said there were a “number of views” on the way ahead but that there were concerns that an immediate move to defenestrate the prime minister could further destabilise the markets.
“The question is whether it is more damaging to create further uncertainty by getting rid of the prime minister when the chancellor [Hunt] appears to have settled the markets,” said an MP on the committee.
Some Tory MPs believe that with the unravelling of her tax-cutting agenda and signature energy policy she is finished politically. Sir Charles Walker became the fifth Conservative MP to publicly call for her to go, saying her position was “untenable”.
A senior Conservative source added: “It’s the biggest unforced humiliation for a British government since Suez. Eden did the decent thing and resigned.”
“The trouble is there is no consensus for who should replace her,” said one former backer of Rishi Sunak. “And the last thing we need now is to be seen to be causing more uncertainty on the financial markets.”
Monday night was grim.
On the subject of a coup, Nigel Farage agreed that Jeremy Hunt was in charge, and that this was a ‘globalist coup’:
On his GB News show that night, Dan Wootton also said that there had been a coup. He agreed that the unpopular Hunt was in charge and that no one liked him, except for the Establishment. He said that if the Conservatives allowed this to continue, then they deserve to lose the next GE:
Truss surfaced to give an interview to the BBC’s Chris Mason, wherein she apologised for the mini-budget. She said:
First of all, I do want to accept responsibility and say sorry for the mistakes that have been made. I wanted to act, to help people with their energy bills, to deal with the issue of high taxes, but we went too far and too fast. I have acknowledged that.
Tuesday, October 18
Tuesday’s headlines were deeply discouraging for her. Nearly all had photos of her alongside Hunt:
The new biography of Truss, Out of the Blue, was not even ready for publication. Someone photoshopped the cover with a remainder sticker on it, saying, ‘Reduced for quick sale — please just take it’:
The Sun‘s political editor, Harry Cole, one of the book’s co-authors, posted an article about the MPs plotting against her:
TORY plotters dubbed the “Balti Bandits” carved up Liz Truss’s future last night over a korma and bhuna feast, The Sun reveals.
Leading rebel Mel Stride hosted more than a dozen “miserable” Conservative MPs in his large House of Commons office for an Indian takeaway – with the PM’s fate also on the table.
Ex-Ministers John Glen, Nick Gibb, Mark Garnier and Shailesh Vara tucked into “lashings of curry and naan” ordered in by Mr Stride, alongside outspoken backbencher Simon Hoare.
2019 intake MPs Angela Richardson and Simon Baynes were also said to have joined the “poppadum plot” – but sources say the meeting ended with “no credible solution” to their woes …
Contenders include ex-Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt – but given the party is deeply split, the plotters admitted the chances of a rapid “coronation” of a new PM were “almost zero.”
One attendee told The Sun: “the vast majority of attendees were Rishi Sunak supporters, but there were Penny people too. It was not a Rishi thing.”
On Tuesday evening, Truss had another group angry with her — her own supporters in the European Research Group, the pro-Brexit group of backbench Conservative MPs.
The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley wrote about it, as he was there in the corridor for Truss’s meeting with them:
Liz Truss launched her fightback at 6pm in Committee Room 11. The meeting was actually set for 5pm; Commons voting ran late so Mark Francois advised us hacks to go away and come back later, but I hung around on the suspicion that the moment we left, Liz would slip out of her hiding place in the roof of the lift and jog, unseen, into the Room …
These are the true believers: if they’re angry at Liz for anything, it’s for not keeping the mini-Budget …
What we saw of her on TV on Monday night, interviewed by Chris Mason, did not spark confidence as she uttered that dread word “sorry”, thus accepting personal responsibility for blunders past and future. It is the mark of an “honest politician”, she said, to admit mistakes. That’s true, but it’s also a dead giveaway for a not-very-good one, trying to turn a repeated error into a display of moral virtue. As Samuel Johnson might have said, “Honesty is the last refuge of the incompetent”.
… She bobbed into view in a dark blue dress and black tights – fresh-faced, one suspects, from a good night’s sleep. Instinctively, I stood: she might be a PM, but she’s still a lady. I earnt a cheeky nod. Those who can’t fathom the rise of Ms Truss haven’t met her. She has a way of compromising you, of making you think you’re on her side, and it’s the most fun side of the room to be on.
The ERG roared as she entered. She entertained them behind a closed door for about 45 minutes. Then she left, followed by Mr Francois who told us it was “a very positive meeting”.
The PM evidently spoke about Northern Ireland and her commitment to raising defence spending by the end of the decade, which is ambitious for a woman who could be out of office by Friday. And he noted that David Canzini, the clever political operative, was with her, an eminence so grise, none of us had noticed he’d gone in.
No 10 confirmed it: he was hired as of that morning.
Too little too late. That might have been Canzini’s shortest job.
Wednesday, October 19
On Wednesday, October 19, Guido Fawkes posted that the Reform Party — formerly the Brexit Party — was climbing in the polls. The photo shows their chairman, businessman Richard Tice:
Guido’s post said, in part:
Guido can reveal that in the 48 hours before close of play yesterday afternoon, the old Brexit Party received almost 1000 new £25 membership sign-ups. That new five-figure cash boost was joined by 300 members registering a new interest in standing as a party candidate at the next election. The first time the Tories dipped below Labour in the polls – September 2021 – Reform saw one in 10 Tory voters switching to them. Can they continue capitalising on Liz’s woes? …
It’s not just Reform benefitting from the dire state of No. 10. Last night the LibDems revealed five new donors, each giving £50,000 to the party, one of whom is a former Tory donor. While the last 36 hours have been calmer for Truss, it does feel like the ship has sprung one too many leaks to be repaired by a strong PMQs performance…
Wednesday was another fateful day. Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned, then a confusing scene took place in the voting lobby over a division (vote) on fracking, which resulted in more chaos when it was unclear whether Wendy Morton had resigned as Chief Whip:
Liz Truss’s final 24 hours: Suella Braverman’s resignation, question over Whips’ resignations (October 19)
Truss appointed Grant Shapps, former Transport Secretary, in Braverman’s place:
Holy mole, guacamole!
Nigel Farage repeated ‘coup’ in his tweet about the news:
As with Hunt, Truss had to scrape the barrel.
The Telegraph reported that, like Hunt, Shapps was not a Truss supporter:
It is a remarkable turnaround for Mr Shapps, the transport secretary under Boris Johnson who went on to become a prominent supporter of Ms Truss’s leadership rival Rishi Sunak.
Only on Monday night, Mr Shapps was telling a theatre audience that he believed Ms Truss had a “Mount Everest to climb” to remain in power.
“I don’t think there’s any secret she has a mountain, a Mount Everest to climb,” he told Matt Forde’s podcast. “What she needs to do is like threading the eye of a needle with the lights off.”
Now he is one of her most senior ministers – and another example of the way a weakened Ms Truss is being forced to offer olive branches to the Sunak supporters she had previously shunned.
Not only was Mr Shapps questioning her chances of success until as early as this week – he was working proactively to get rid of her.
Mr Shapps has been viewed in Westminster as one of the leaders of the opposition to Truss’s libertarian policies.
He spoke up at the Tory party conference in Birmingham earlier this month against her plans to scrap the 45p rate of income tax, and warned that Ms Truss had “10 days” to turn things around or MPs “might as well roll the dice and elect a new leader”.
This is what the aforementioned Camilla Tominey was lamenting in Conservative MPs. Some of the recent ones have no appreciation of or allegiance to Conservative values. Shapps was a Cameronian MP.
The article also discussed Shapps’s famous spreadsheets which appear to work as well as the 1922 Committee in making or breaking a Prime Minister:
The veteran MP – known by some as the “Duracell Bunny” for his enthusiasm – is also well-known for his “Star Wars” spreadsheet, with which he has spent the past few weeks recording the views of MPs on Ms Truss and her plans.
Mr Shapps used an earlier version of his famous spreadsheet to lead a rebellion against Theresa May, and also utilised its information to help guide Boris Johnson into Downing Street.
The spreadsheet is said to contain more than 6,000 historical “data points” from previous conversations with MPs.
It was rumoured that he had been in contact with Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak to see if they would join an effort to oust Ms Truss. And some rebel MPs claimed he had even offered himself up as a caretaker prime minister.
Let us not forget that Shapps himself is hardly a paragon of virtue:
… unfortunately for Mr Shapps, some elements of his past may make a shot at No 10 less than likely – not least the Michael Green saga.
This was an alter-ego he employed to enable him to run a series of get-rich-quick schemes on the internet while he was an MP.
Mr Shapps originally denied he had a second job, and threatened legal action against a constituent who said he had. But he was forced to admit practising business under a pseudonym in March 2015.
All this happened while he was Tory chairman, in charge of David Cameron’s efforts to win the 2015 election.
He was demoted soon after to aid minister, and resigned from that role after claims he had ignored repeated allegations of bullying involving the Tories’ youth organiser. It was said the alleged bullying, which took place on the party’s RoadTrip 2015 campaign, may have caused one party member to commit suicide.
On Wednesday evening, Camilla Tominey reprised her warning about un-Conservative MPs and their takeover of the Government. She, too, used the word ‘coup’:
… the departure of Suella Braverman as home secretary speaks to a bigger problem for Liz Truss than sheer optics.
In sacking two key allies on the Right, only for them to be replaced by opponents more to the Left of the party, the Prime Minister is increasingly looking like the victim of a Conservative coup.
It is certainly ironic that the former home secretary, in post for just 43 days, first used that word to describe those who plotted against Ms Truss’s original plan to link benefit to wages rather than inflation.
With that, and most of her mini-Budget up in flames thanks to a rebellion by the moderates, Jeremy Hunt now appears to be the de facto Prime Minister.
He will now be joined by his fellow Sunakite Grant Shapps, who despite being rejected from Ms Truss’s original cabinet, has now been appointed to replace Mrs Braverman at the Home Office.
Braverman, at one point, had headed the aforementioned European Research Group:
… her swift exit from one of the highest posts in public office will anger her European Research Group supporters.
It was only on Tuesday evening that Ms Truss was said to have charmed the backbench group of Eurosceptics with her honest, straight-talking approach.
They are unlikely to take kindly to their former chairman, a darling of the grassroots, being ejected in such unseemly fashion.
Mrs Braverman, a Conservative leadership candidate herself over the summer, received the longest standing ovation at the Tory Party conference two weeks ago.
Fortunately, Rishi Sunak re-appointed Braverman as Home Secretary. He probably realised he had to, in order to keep Party members on side.
Returning to Wednesday, October 19, The Telegraph posted an article stating that Conservative backbenchers were asking Labour for help in ousting Truss. Unbelievable:
Rebel Tories have been asking Labour MPs to help them overthrow Liz Truss, The Telegraph has been told.
Conservative backbenchers are growing increasingly frustrated with the Prime Minister’s leadership, but currently lack any mechanisms to remove her given the one-year immunity she has from a no confidence vote.
As things stand, the only way to oust Ms Truss would be to change the rules – which is a decision that only the executive of the 1922 committee of backbenchers can make – or if she resigns of her own volition.
One Labour MP told The Telegraph: “Tories are speaking to us saying ‘this is a complete nightmare and there is no way out’. We are being asked ‘can’t you do something about her?’”
The MP, who said their colleagues have reported similar experiences, said they were approached by one Red Wall MP whose constituency was in the north and another MP who is a member of the One Nation group of moderates …
A Labour source said: “There is very little Labour can do. Even a vote of no confidence doesn’t have the constitutional standing that it used to. The Tory party are the ones that elected her, they need to get rid of her.”
The paper’s Michael Deacon wrote that Conservative MPs were entirely to blame for the mess. Furthermore, he said, they risked angering Party members, the campaigning activists, if they pushed ahead with a rule change saying that the members would no longer be able to vote for future Party leaders. The members elected Truss over Sunak in August:
This week, The Telegraph reported that Tory MPs want to bar members from voting in future leadership elections. Supposedly the reason is to speed up the process of choosing a leader. But this is blatantly a smokescreen. Quite plainly, MPs just want to prevent the members from landing them with another turkey like Truss.
Many members are appalled by this suggestion. And so they should be. Such a plan is not just arrogant and undemocratic, it’s delusional. Because party members aren’t to blame for the current mess.
Tory MPs are.
After all, who put Truss on the ballot paper in the first place? Tory MPs. No fewer than 113 of them, in fact. A third of the parliamentary party. Out of an initial field of 11 candidates for the leadership, Truss was the MPs’ second favourite.
Unlike the MPs, however, the party members weren’t allowed to choose between the initial field of 11. If they had been, it’s extremely unlikely that they would have chosen Truss. They’d have been far more likely to choose Penny Mordaunt or Kemi Badenoch, to name just two. In fact, if the MPs had deigned to ask them, I suspect that the greatest number of members would have wanted their leader to be Boris Johnson – the person they chose to be leader in the first place.
The truth is, the members voted for Truss simply because they didn’t want to vote for Rishi Sunak. In leadership contests, they’re only ever given two candidates to choose from. And why? Because Tory MPs don’t trust them. They fear that, if presented with a wide-open field, party members will choose the “wrong” candidate. Funny how things turn out.
All things considered, then, it seems clear that, if anyone should be barred from voting in leadership contests, it should be Tory MPs. In future, just leave it to the wiser judgment of the members instead.
That night, The Telegraph posted an article by Lord Frost saying that the Party was moving towards a status quo, if not anti-Brexit, stance, going all the way back to David Cameron’s time as Prime Minister, with George Osborne as Chancellor and Philip Hammond in the same post under Theresa May:
… the Government is implementing neither the programme Liz Truss originally advocated nor the 2019 manifesto. It is going in a completely different direction. We are back to Osbornomics, the continuity Hammond view of the world. There is no shred of a mandate for this. It’s only happening because the Truss Government messed things up more badly than anyone could have imagined, and enabled a hostile takeover by its opponents …
… the correct account of the past few weeks is the simplest. Truss tried to deliver worthwhile reforms and set the country onto a much-needed new direction. I supported this policy direction and still do. But it was rushed and bungled. The markets were spooked. The mistakes were opportunistically seized on by her opponents to undermine her leadership, to blame Brexit, and to stop the party getting out of the social democratic tractor beam of the past few years. And now, under pressure, the Prime Minister has reversed tack completely.
The risk now is that we lose for a generation the opportunity to do anything better. Every time the PM defends her approach, she denounces the policies on which she was chosen. The danger is that necessary and correct reforms are discredited.
Frost held that Truss was ultimately responsible for her own downfall.
As such, she had to go:
We are where we are. I am very sorry about it, because I had such high hopes. Whatever happens to her ministers or the stability of the Government in the next few days, Truss just can’t stay in office for one very obvious reason: she campaigned against the policies she is now implementing. However masterfully she now implements them – and it doesn’t seem that it will be very masterfully – it just won’t do. She said she wouldn’t U-turn, and then she did. Her fate is to be the Henry VI of modern politics – a weak figurehead, unable to control the forces around her, occasionally humiliated, and disposed of when she has become inconvenient. Better to go now.
As for her successor and the Party:
Then the party must do two things: avoid making the economic situation even worse by repeating the policies of the Cameron government in totally different circumstances; and recover some political legitimacy for carrying on – because in our system legitimacy does matter.
Thursday, October 20
After 44 days, Liz Truss resigned as Conservative Party leader on Thursday, October 20.
She served as Prime Minister for 50 days, beating George Canning’s record of 118 days. Also a Conservative, he died of tuberculosis in 1827.
She remained PM until Rishi Sunak succeeded her:
Liz Truss’s final 24 hours: Suella Braverman’s resignation, question over Whips’ resignations (October 19)
Liz Truss’s final 24 hours: fallout over Braverman and Morton, no tears in exit speech (October 19, 20)
Rishi Sunak becomes Prime Minister: a momentous morning of historic significance (October 24, 25)
How Rishi Sunak won the Conservative Party leadership contest — part 1 (October 20, 21, 25)
How Rishi Sunak won the Conservative Party leadership contest — part 2 (October 21, 26, 27)
How Rishi Sunak won the Conservative Party leadership contest — part 3 (October 22-24, 27, 28)
On Thursday morning, The Telegraph posted a Planet Normal podcast in which Lord Frost said he could see Brexit being reversed:
In the wide-ranging discussion, Lord Frost also said that he could see a future where Brexit is reversed.
“Brexit was about giving us the power to do things ourselves and to give responsibility back to British ministers, British governments. And they’ve shown that many of them are not up to the job in the last year or two.”
“I can easily see a situation where Keir Starmer gets in. We drift back closer into the single market and go back into the Customs Union. And then everyone says why are we in these things where we don’t get a say in them? Wouldn’t it be better to be a member? So I can easily see how it could happen. And the way you stop it happening is to prove, while we have the levers of power, that we can do things differently and better. And at the moment we’re not making a very good job of that, unfortunately.”
Little did Truss know that, the day before, she had stood at the despatch box for her last PMQs:
She resigned early on Thursday afternoon. Thankfully, she didn’t cry, unlike Theresa May, who broke down at the podium (Guido has the video):
Sterling began surging the second Truss finished her announcement:
In less than 24 hours, the Conservative Party website deleted her presence from their home page (Guido has the before and after screenshots):
It was a sad ending to a sad episode of British parliamentary history.
Next week, I will look at who, besides Truss herself, was also responsible for it.
Truss is currently spending time in her own constituency and has not yet appeared on the backbenches, an alien place for someone who had been a minister of state for most of her career.
It becomes clearer by the day that most British voters support Home Secretary Suella Braverman and that vociferous Members of Parliament are working against her.
Picking up from where I left off yesterday, on Tuesday, November 1, Labour referred Braverman to the Financial Conduct Authority for her two breaches of the ministerial code during her time as Home Secretary under Liz Truss.
Furthermore, civil servants are still upset over Braverman’s use of ‘invasion’ on Monday in Parliament:
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the Financial Conduct Authority referral, which seems to be grasping at straws in this witch hunt.
The Guardian reports (emphases mine):
Suella Braverman has been referred to the financial service watchdog by Labour over claims she may have breached market abuse laws, as the home secretary also faced growing criticism for her “car crash” handling of a migrant processing facility in Kent.
Fresh questions were raised about the “growth visas” announcement Braverman sent to several figures outside the government that led to her sacking nearly two weeks ago, with one Conservative MP openly saying they did not “accept or trust this home secretary’s word”.
Did she send it to ‘several figures’ or just one or two people by mistake? Earlier reports suggested that she did not send it to a group of recipients.
The article continues. Labour’s premise seems to be a stretch of the imagination:
Labour claimed Braverman’s leak may have had significant economic repercussions, given the policy was designed to be factored into the Office for Budget Responsibility’s projections.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, the shadow City minister, Tulip Siddiq, wrote to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) urging them to launch an investigation and argued the move could “tangibly influence financial markets”.
She said there was a “case to answer”, as public interest and industry confidence in measures to prevent insider trading relied on trust they would be fully enforced.
Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, was also urged to confirm whether he believed the law had been broken.
Siddiq told him it was “not unreasonable to suggest” that the policy leak “could lead to insider trading on the value of sterling” and have other serious repercussions “if it fell into the wrong hands”.
Given Downing Street had briefed journalists when Braverman was sacked on 19 October that the information she leaked was market-sensitive, Siddiq said breaching insider trading laws “does not require proof that market-sensitive information has been acted upon for gain”. Unlawful disclosure “is a serious offence in its own right”, she added. Braverman has denied the leaks were market-sensitive.
Siddiq quoted FCA advice to government departments, which states that they “may hold information that is confidential, non-public and valuable”, which if handled incorrectly could lead to “disorderly markets” and “market abuse, such as insider dealing”.
While the guidance says that the law is not being broken if information is disclosed “in the normal exercise” of employment, Siddiq said it was “difficult to see that the disclosure of market sensitive, confidential, significant policy from a personal email address to someone outside of government is included in this exception to the rules”.
Yes, it does seem to be that Braverman corresponded with one Conservative MP intentionally and another person, a staffer to another Conservative MP, in error. This is hardly ‘several figures’:
Six days after her re-appointment as home secretary by Rishi Sunak, Braverman confirmed that she had forwarded a draft written ministerial statement about the launch of growth visas by Liz Truss’s government to a backbench MP, Sir John Hayes, and another colleague’s parliamentary staffer.
Given the admission, Siddiq said the FCA should launch an investigation into whether Braverman broke market abuse laws or regulations, and confirm that senior ministers should show the highest standards of protecting market-sensitive information.
Interestingly, when Braverman gets on with her job, hardly anyone reports on it.
On Thursday, November 3, she visited the Manston migrant processing centre in Kent. That afternoon, GB News showed the Government motorcade approaching the road to Manston.
No one else seems to have covered the story.
On the other hand, there were reports that two groups of migrants were dropped off at Victoria coach station in central London. With the first group, officials said that the migrants were going to be housed by friends or family. The whereabouts of the second group is less clear.
On Friday, November 4, The Times reported:
A second group of asylum seekers from the Manston immigration centre have said that they were abandoned at Victoria coach station by the Home Office and forced to sleep outside.
The incident is alleged to have taken place less than 24 hours after the Home Office left 11 migrants in the coach station without accommodation or warm clothing. The Home Office denied that the asylum seekers involved in the first incident had been abandoned in error and claimed that accommodation for them had been organised.
About 50 migrants were said to have arrived in London on a coach from Manston at about 9am on Wednesday. Many were picked up by friends or family, but a dozen spent the night outside Victoria as they had nowhere to go.
Members of the second group said the coach driver had told them a lack of accommodation was their problem. Of the group that slept outside the station six remained in Victoria yesterday and the six others went to central London in the hope of receiving support.
The group who remained in Victoria were approached by members of The Passage, a local homelessness charity, which took them to their local service and gave them hot meals, showers and tracksuits. It also provided medical assistance and arranged accommodation for last night …
Danial Abbas, the volunteer who found the asylum seekers, said the Home Office told him there had been an “operational error”. Abbas accused the Home Office of being disingenuous. He said: “I would have a lot more respect if they put their hands up to any mistakes that they made and reassure the voting public that they have put measures in place to prevent this from happening again.”
Hmm …
This has become an intractable situation.
In France, police are now instructed to leave the dinghies alone in certain conditions, which helps the smugglers.
On November 1, the Mail reported:
French police have been ordered not to stop migrant boats in the water departing for Britain because of fears of facing legal action.
The diktat has left ‘overwhelmed’ officers powerless to intervene as people smuggling gangs ruthlessly exploit the system to send thousands more migrants on perilous cross Channel crossings.
The policy was introduced after a campaign group filed a complaint accusing police of endangering human life after officers punctured an overloaded small boat just a few yards from the shore to prevent it leaving.
A subsequent notice from France‘s Departmental Board of the National Police issued on August 26 banned officers from targeting boats already in the water. Only those on the beach or on the road could be intercepted.
People smugglers swiftly responded, setting up almost untouchable ‘taxi boat’ services.
Instead of taking dinghies to the beach by road and inflating them on the sand, as before, gangs now pilot boats along the coast and pick up groups of migrants waiting on the shore at pre-arranged spots.
The same article has a sidebar showing that the British people support Suella Braverman in her use of the word ‘invasion’ in Parliament:
Once the migrants arrive in Britain, younger ones are allegedly urged to lie about their age in order to leave Manston sooner. The Home Office denies the allegations.
The Mail reported:
Child migrants are claiming that they are being pressed by UK officials to lie that they are adults so that they can leave the crisis-hit Manston compound more quickly, a report alleges.
The child asylum seekers, who are said to have crossed the Channel on small boats, are reportedly claiming that they were told by officials that they would be able to get out of the troubled processing plant in Kent faster if they pretend that they are over 18.
A recording was reportedly passed to The Guardian of an apparent 16-year-old Eritrean boy speaking to a guard at Manston on Saturday about the pressure he says he was put under to say he was older.
The Refugee Council also gave the Left-wing newspaper information about three recent interviews their staff carried out with Kurdish boys from Iraq and Iran who made the same claims.
And a fifth child reportedly made the same allegation to the Humans for Rights Network, the report adds.
The Home Office branded the allegations ‘baseless speculation’, with a spokesperson telling MailOnline no evidence has been produced to back the claims. MailOnline has asked the Refugee Council and the Humans for Rights Network for further information.
Add to this the continuous pressure in Parliament to take in more ‘refugees’. Opposition MPs say that Britain takes in far too few, yet, by the end of the year, 50,000 people — mostly men — will have crossed the Channel in 2022.
However, Kelvin MacKenzie, the retired editor of the Sun, says that Britain takes in many more refugees than the largest EU countries:
With all of this mayhem swirling around Suella Braverman, one wonders if she can survive in post, even if she is the most determined to sort out the mess.
On Tuesday, The Telegraph‘s Christopher Hope listed ‘Five reasons why Rishi Sunak will not sack Suella Braverman’:
1. The Right needs a Cabinet champion
… Braverman is a darling of the party’s Right wing, as evidenced by the ovations she received at the party’s conference in Birmingham last month.
The party’s grassroots loved her – and she clearly is in tune with them. None of this is confected – Braverman is rightwing to her irreducible core …
This makes her politically valuable to Sunak. Right-wing Tories want to see one of their own at the top of the party – and Braverman is that person.
Hope’s second reason is to appease the Brexit-supporting European Research Group in Parliament. Braverman is one of their past chairmen.
His next reason is:
3. Cover for huge tax rises
Sunak’s Cabinet is stuffed with moderate Conservatives and fewer bona fide tax cutters. Braverman is one – and this is why she must remain there.
His fourth reason is to complete Brexit in line with sorting out the Northern Ireland Protocol, weighted heavily in the EU’s — and the Republic of Ireland’s — favour.
His last reason is:
5. Beware Suella the backbencher
Braverman’s pronouncements in the Commons last night that the borders “system is broken” and “immigration is out of control” show how desperate things are …
Labour Home Secretary John Reid did in 2006 when he declared the Home Office as “not fit for purpose” and broke it up to create the Ministry of Justice.
Braverman is ambitious. She told me on my podcast that wants to bring net immigration down to “tens of thousands”, adopting the famous target that former PM David Cameron could never meet …
And Sunak won’t want her on the backbenches, where she would emerge as a touchstone for criticism of the Home Office.
He concludes:
For now, at least, Braverman is the answer. As a Right-wing Conservative MP told me today: “She is the last chance we have to deal with the migrant boat crisis before the general election.”
I hope he is right.
For now, Braverman is beleaguered by attacks on all sides, including the civil servants notionally working for her.
I wish her all the best in her continuing quest.
Picking up from where I left off on Friday, October 28, 2022, Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s woes continue in and out of Parliament.
The knives continue to be out for this accomplished barrister in Parliament. Outside of Westminster, all hell is breaking loose at two migration processing centres in Kent: Manston and Western Jet Foil.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has been watching events from across the pond, wrote an excellent summary for UnHerd of the challenges that Britain’s Home Secretary faces: ‘Can Suella Braverman take back control?’
Excerpts follow, emphases in purple mine:
I almost feel sorry for Suella Braverman. One minute, the Home Secretary was living her best life, happily raging against “the tofu-eating wokerati”; the next, she was being blamed for a firebomb attack on a migrant centre in Dover, the latest chapter in Britain’s sorry immigration story. But amid the chaos, the combination of these flashpoints perfectly encapsulated everything wrong with the current immigration system: here we had yet another politician trying to appear tough on immigration while flailing incompetently, only to be followed by an outburst of hateful violence in response to their incompetence. And so the cycle continues.
Hirsi Ali says that focusing on clearing up the immigration mess is a ‘career killer’, but it is worth bearing in mind that Theresa May was unsuccessful as Home Secretary yet served as Prime Minister for three years from 2016 to 2019.
That said, Hirsi Ali is correct in saying that political willpower is central to resolving this issue:
Perhaps the real challenge isn’t actually immigration itself, but a lack of political willpower. After all, the immigration issue is not going away any time soon. If anything, it is likely to get worse.
To put it simply, many, many more will likely make their way to Europe in the very near future. This will mean more political polarisation and extremism in Europe, as those frustrated by politicians’ failure to control their nation’s borders seek radical, even violent, solutions. If there has ever been a time to reverse decades of incompetence on immigration, it is surely now.
However, is it government incompetence causing this problem? Or is it because of intransigent civil servants assigned to the Home Office? It is difficult to know.
Legislation, such as that surrounding modern slavery — brought in during Theresa May’s time as PM — and treaties complicate the immigration problem. Capitalising on these is the bread and butter of immigration lawyers and charities.
Hirsi Ali explains that the 1951 UN treaty on refugees is woefully out of date. We have moved beyond a European-centred Cold War world:
The UK, for instance, remains a signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which, along with its 1967 Protocol, the UN’s refugee agency calls “the key legal documents that form the basis of our work”. What the UN fails to mention, however, is that its legislation dates from the Cold War, and was originally devised as a short-term Eurocentric solution to a post-war problem: to help those fleeing from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Its architects never envisioned a world of mass, global migration from poorer, less stable countries whose people follow very different cultural norms, many of which clash with modern Western values (women’s rights, for one). The 1951 Convention is, in other words, decades out-of-date. Its authors could never have conceived the scale of today’s migrant crisis.
Regular readers of my posts know that the one flight scheduled for Rwanda this past summer never left for its destination. The few dozen of people scheduled to leave for that nation were taken off one by one, as human rights lawyers furthered their cases in the UK. The UK was allegedly violating the European Court/Convention on Human Rights (ECHR):
At present, then, it is impossible for the immigration crisis to be solved, for the simple reason that any effective new laws will clash with other legal obligations. Indeed, it is because of the UK’s membership in the European Convention on Human Rights that the Rwanda scheme failed: at the last minute, the ECHR ruled that the UK could not deport migrants to Rwanda. This is not to say that the Rwanda plan was a suitable solution, but rather that if progress is to be made, a fundamental conflict has to be resolved — and the only way to achieve this is for the UK to revisit its legal obligations and amend or even abandon them completely.
Hirsi Ali concludes:
In the short term, at least, it is unlikely that she will have the parliamentary support to push through a complete overhaul of the UK’s legislative commitments. All of which means that Rishi Sunak has little choice but to step in. This is no longer a battle he can afford to delegate. For immigration is a career-killer — and if it’s not warded off soon, Braverman is unlikely to be its only victim.
On Saturday, October 29, The Times followed up on allegations that Braverman was ‘ignoring advice’ about the problems at the Manston processing centre. These could result in an inquiry or even court action:
The home secretary received advice at least three weeks ago warning that migrants were being detained for unlawfully long periods at the Manston asylum processing centre in Ramsgate, Kent. According to five sources, Braverman, 42, was also told that the legal breach needed to be resolved urgently by rehousing the asylum seekers in alternative accommodation.
Two sources said she was also warned by officials that the Home Office had no chance of defending a legal challenge and the matter could also result in a public inquiry if exposed.
A government source said: “The government is likely to be JR’d [judicially reviewed] and it’s likely that all of them would be granted asylum, so it’s going to achieve the exact opposite of what she wants. These people could also launch a class action against us and cost the taxpayer millions.”
I had not realised that class action suits were allowed in the United Kingdom. Are they?
The article continues:
Asylum seekers are meant to be in Manston, a short-term holding facility, for no more than 24 hours while they undergo checks before being moved into immigration detention centres or asylum accommodation.
But of the 2,600 migrants at the site — which was designed to hold a maximum of 1,600 — some, including families, have been held there for up to four weeks.
The majority are believed to have arrived on the south coast after crossing the Channel in small boats in recent weeks. The centre is now dealing with outbreaks of diphtheria and scabies, with staff at the site also reporting outbreaks of violence as tensions have mounted over the overcrowded conditions.
David Neal, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, told MPs on the home affairs select committee he was left shocked by the “wretched conditions” migrants were being kept in after he visited the centre.
In claims fiercely disputed by the home secretary, it is alleged that after receiving legal advice about Manston, she refused to solve the problem by securing new hotels for the asylum seekers to be transferred to.
I empathise with Braverman, because hotels have been filling up quickly throughout the year, to the extent that Britons have either been unable to book rooms from as far back as Easter or they have had weddings and other booked events cancelled.
On Sunday, October 30, the newly-returned Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Michael Gove, defended his Cabinet colleague on Sky News (video):
Late that morning, a 66-year-old man who lived in Buckinghamshire, two hours away by car, firebombed the exterior of the Western Jet Foil facility. He later died at a nearby petrol station. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
Meanwhile, in Parliament, Labour and other Opposition MPs were still going after Braverman for her resignation when Liz Truss was PM over two violations of the ministerial code.
On Monday, October 31, Braverman sent Labour’s Dame Diana Johnson MP a six-page letter about the events surrounding those violations:
Guido Fawkes has the letter in a more readable format, along with more information and an additional timetable:
Suella also admits to having sent documents from her personal email on six separate further occasions …
On Monday afternoon, Braverman gave a statement to the House of Commons about the weekend’s events at Manston and Western Jet Foil. She also took questions about her resignation in Liz Truss’s government.
Robert Jenrick, the Minister for Immigration, her ‘minder’, of sorts, sat behind her to keep an eye on her for Rishi.
Excerpts from her statement follow:
At around 11.20 am on Sunday, police were called to Western Jet Foil. Officers established that two to three incendiary devices had been thrown at the Home Office premises. The suspect was identified, quickly located at a nearby petrol station, and confirmed dead. The explosive ordnance disposal unit attended to ensure there were no further threats. Kent police are not currently treating this as a terrorist incident. Fortunately, there were only two minor injuries, but it is a shocking incident and my thoughts are with all those affected …
By Tuesday, police were treating it as a terrorist incident, based on social media posts from the perpetrator which later came to light.
Braverman continued:
My priority remains the safety and wellbeing of our teams and contractors, as well as the people in our care. Several hundred migrants were relocated to Manston yesterday to ensure their safety. Western Jet Foil is now fully operational again. I can also inform the House that the Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), visited the Manston site yesterday and that I will visit shortly. My right hon. Friend was reassured by the dedication of staff as they work to make the site safe and secure while suitable onward accommodation is found.
As Members will be aware, we need to meet our statutory duties around detention, and fulfil legal duties to provide accommodation for those who would otherwise be destitute. We also have a duty to the wider public to ensure that anyone who has entered our country illegally undergoes essential security checks and is not, with no fixed abode, immediately free to wander around local communities.
When we face so many arrivals so quickly, it is practically impossible to procure more than 1,000 beds at short notice. Consequently, we have recently expanded the site and are working tirelessly to improve facilities. There are, of course, competing and heavy demands for housing stock, including for Ukrainians and Afghans, and for social housing. We are negotiating with accommodation providers. I continue to look at all available options to overcome the challenges we face with supply. This is an urgent matter, which I will continue to oversee personally.
I turn to our immigration and asylum system more widely. Let me be clear: this is a global migration crisis. We have seen an unprecedented number of attempts to illegally cross the channel in small boats. Some 40,000 people have crossed this year alone—more than double the number of arrivals by the same point last year. Not only is this unnecessary, because many people have come from another safe country, but it is lethally dangerous. We must stop it.
It is vital that we dismantle the international crime gangs behind this phenomenon. Co-operation with the French has stopped more than 29,000 illegal crossings since the start of the year—twice as many as last year— and destroyed over 1,000 boats. Our UK-France joint intelligence cell has dismantled 55 organised crime groups since it was established in 2020. The National Crime Agency is at the forefront of this fight. Indeed, NCA officers recently joined what is believed to be the biggest ever international operation targeting smuggling networks.
This year has seen a surge in the number of Albanian arrivals, many of them, I am afraid to say, abusing our modern slavery laws. We are working to ensure that Albanian cases are processed and that individuals are removed as swiftly as possible—sometimes within days.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper mentioned Braverman ignoring advice about the situation at the processing centres.
Braverman replied:
As I made clear in my statement, on no occasion did I block hotels or veto advice to procure extra and emergency accommodation. The data and the facts are that, on my watch, since 6 September, over 30 new hotels were agreed, which will bring into use over 4,500 additional hotel bed spaces. Since the start of October, it has been agreed that over 13 new hotels will provide over 1,800 additional hotel bed spaces. Also since 6 September, 9,000 migrants have left Manston, many of them heading towards hotel accommodation. Those are the facts; I encourage the right hon. Lady to stick to the facts, and not fantasy. [Interruption.]
The right hon. Lady raised other points. My letter to the Home Affairs Committee, sent today, transparently and comprehensively addresses all the matters that she has just raised. I have been clear that I made an error of judgment. I apologised for that error; I took responsibility for it; and I resigned. [Interruption.]
I apologised for the error, I took responsibility, and I resigned for the error, but let us be clear about what is really going on here. The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast, and which party is not. Some 40,000 people have arrived on the south coast this year alone. For many of them, that was facilitated by criminal gangs; some of them are actual members of criminal gangs, so let us stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress. The whole country knows that that is not true. It is only Opposition Members who pretend otherwise.
We need to be straight with the public. The system is broken. [Interruption.] Illegal migration is out of control, and too many people are more interested in playing political parlour games and covering up the truth than solving the problem. I am utterly serious about ending the scourge of illegal migration, and I am determined to do whatever it takes to break the criminal gangs and fix our hopelessly lax asylum system. That is why I am in government, and why there are some people who would prefer to be rid of me. [Interruption.]
Let them try. I know that I speak for the decent, law-abiding, patriotic majority of British people from every background who want safe and secure borders. Labour is running scared of the fact that this party might just deliver them.
An SNP MP had a go at Braverman over the ministerial code violations.
Braverman replied, talking about false allegations made against her:
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the letter that I sent today to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). I have been up front about the details of my diary on 19 October and co-operative with any review that has taken place. I have apologised; I have taken responsibility; and that is why I resigned.
I hope that the House will see that I am willing to apologise without hesitation for what I have done and any mistakes that I have made, but what I will not do under any circumstances is apologise for things that I have not done. It has been said that I sent a top secret document. That is wrong. It has been said that I sent a document about cyber-security. That is wrong. It has been said that I sent a document about the intelligence agencies that would compromise national security. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. What is also wrong and worrying is that, without compunction, these assertions have been repeated as fact by politicians and journalists. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to clarify the record today.
Chris Philp, transferred from the Treasury to the Home Office, is shown with Braverman. Guido has the video:
Braverman received both bouquets and brickbats from Conservative MPs.
Red Wall MP Lee Anderson stood up for Braverman:
Now then. Albanian criminals are leaving Albania, which is a safe country, and the same criminals then set up shop in France. They then leave France, which is a safe country, and come across the channel to the UK. When they get into accommodation, the Opposition parties say that the accommodation is not good enough for them. Does the Home Secretary agree that if the accommodation is not good enough for them, they can get on a dinghy and go straight back to France?
She agreed. It is true that they are staying in three-star hotels much of the time:
My hon. Friend is right: the average cost per person per night in a hotel is £150. By my standards, that is quite a nice hotel. Therefore, any complaints that the accommodation is not good enough are, frankly, absolutely indulgent and ungrateful.
Late that afternoon, news broadcasts were aghast that Braverman called the tens of thousands of unvited arrivals from the Channel an ‘invasion’.
Robert Jenrick was assigned Tuesday morning’s news round. He took exception to ‘invasion’, then backtracked:
Guido wrote that Jenrick said one thing to Sky News and another to the BBC (emphases in the original):
On Sky News, Jenrick suggested he didn’t exactly agree:
Well, in a job like mine, you choose your words very carefully, and I would never demonise people coming into this country in pursuit of a better life. And I understand and appreciate our obligation to refugees…
Later on BBC Breakfast, however, he’d already diluted his language, claiming he “[thinks] it’s a phrase that expresses very clearly the concern that millions of people feel across the country”. Remember last week when the government claimed he hadn’t been put in the Home Office as a centrist diluting agent to hardline Braverman?
This Home Office lark is far from easy.
As for Braverman’s detractors, Guido suggested using the American plan of relocating asylum applicants:
I will have more tomorrow on this continuing saga.
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.
Yesterday’s post introduced the sad saga of Prime Minister Liz Truss and her first Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng over their fateful fiscal event of Friday, September 23, 2022.
My post ended with the market turmoil and negativity up to Friday, September 30.
Many of us hoped that his plan would work. After all, the market turmoil is global, for different reasons in different Western countries.
What motivates Kwarteng
On Wednesday, September 28, Rachel Sylvester wrote an interesting profile of Kwarteng for The Times, complete with photos of him and Truss from their earlier days as MPs. One from 2013 shows them together at a book awards event and another from 2018 has them enjoying a picnic at that year’s Hay literary festival.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
Kwarteng was pleased with his fiscal event and believed the market’s jitters were temporary:
So sure was he of his plan that he smiled as he announced that he was abolishing the cap on bankers’ bonuses introduced by David Cameron in 2014.
Within hours the pound had tanked, but Kwarteng doubled down, promising that he had “more to come”. As the markets reacted to the UK’s biggest tax cuts in 50 years, the pound fell to a record low against the dollar. One senior figure in the City described the fiscal statement to me as “economically reckless”. Yet the chancellor did not blink, with an ally suggesting that this was just “the City boys playing fast and loose with the economy” and insisting, “It will settle.”
Although it is unclear what Kwarteng thinks today, he and Truss were allies dating back at least a decade:
At 47, Kwarteng is the same age as Liz Truss and is one of her closest political allies. Earlier this year, he moved into a house just down the road from her in Greenwich and now they are neighbours in Downing Street. His appointment as chancellor was one of the first decisions she made when it became clear that she was likely to win the Tory leadership contest. Truss and Kwarteng have been working for weeks on their “shock and awe” shake-up of taxes, including changes to stamp duty and the abolition of the top 45p rate of income tax. The blueprint has been in their dreams for years …
His allies say his politics have also evolved. In 2012 the chancellor was one of a group of free marketeers – including Truss – who published a pamphlet called Britannia Unchained, which described British workers as “among the worst idlers in the world” and railed against a “bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation”. He has since distanced himself from the controversial text.
His parents arrived in England from Ghana. Both received a first-class education and had top-flight careers:
An only child, Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng was born in Waltham Forest, northeast London, in 1975. His parents had come to Britain as students in the Sixties. His father, Alfred, an economist for the Commonwealth Secretariat, was educated in Ghana at an Anglican school with a Winchester-educated English headmaster. His mother, Charlotte, a successful barrister, was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. “It was a self-reliance thing,” Kwarteng once explained. She instilled in her son a ferocious work ethic and education was of fundamental importance to the family.
When his father was posted to Switzerland, Kwasi was sent at the age of eight to board at the fee-paying Colet Court – now St Paul’s Juniors – in southwest London. He admits it was probably too young to be separated from his parents but he not only survived, he thrived. He won a scholarship to Eton where friends recall a “lanky malcoordinated” but hard-working teenager who was determined to make the most of the opportunity he had been given.
Like Boris Johnson, Kwarteng played the wall game – a brutal mixture of football and rugby. “He’s so tall that he was a great addition to any team,” one fellow pupil recalls.
Kwarteng is not attracted to identity politics:
Kwarteng never expressed his desire to be “world king” in the way that Johnson did. “I was slightly surprised when he went into politics,” says a contemporary from Eton and Cambridge. “He wasn’t in a political activist circle at university. People sometimes think one Etonian is just like another, but Boris and Kwasi are very different. Boris wants to rule the world; Kwasi wants to solve problems, rather than just being in power for the sake of it. He’s not going to go out there to break rules. Kwasi does listen to people and wants to discuss ideas” …
Kwarteng’s 2011 book Ghosts of Empire is a far more nuanced analysis than the rose-tinted version of British history favoured by Tory traditionalists. He rejects the “sterile debate” over whether “empire was a good or bad thing” and concludes, “Much of the instability in the world is a product of its legacy of individualism and haphazard policymaking.” According to those who know him well, the chancellor is uncomfortable with “culture war” politics and describes his own philosophy as “relentless pragmatism”. One aide insists, “He is sometimes lazily pigeonholed as a ruthless, black and white free market ideologue. It is true that he is a low-tax Conservative. He’s a free marketeer, but there are occasions when the state does need to intervene.” In 2019, the chancellor told a Tory party conference event: “There’s nothing [better] to convert someone from being a radical free marketeer to seeing the virtues of government action than making them an energy minister.”
He focused on his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge:
“As a student he was charismatic and a bit chaotic,” says a friend from that time. “He was scholarly. The everyday run of things didn’t worry him. He would be immersed in his books.”
He began meeting the great and the good in the Conservative Party:
… the future chancellor was spotted by Dr John Casey, an English fellow and legendary figure among Conservative thinkers, who invited him to his dining club, the Michael Oakeshott Society. There Kwarteng met Tory politicians and journalists such as Norman Lamont, Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit and Charles Moore. Casey insists it was never a political society: “It is devoted to intelligent conversation and strong views don’t go with that.
“He has a first-rate mind and a first-rate personality,” Casey continues. “He is intellectually and personally equipped to be chancellor. He’s a cultured man, an intellectual – there are very few in politics. He’s not like anybody else; he’s himself.”
After Cambridge, Kwarteng won a Kennedy scholarship to Harvard. When he finished his time there, he returned to Cambridge to earn a doctorate in economic history, after which the City of London beckoned:
He then worked as a fund manager at the bank JP Morgan and at Odey Asset Management, run by the Brexit-backing investor Crispin Odey, as well as chairing the Bow Group, a conservative think tank.
His political career began afterwards:
In 2005 he stood as the Conservative candidate for Brent East, coming third, before being elected as MP for the safe Tory seat of Spelthorne in Surrey in 2010, the same year as Truss entered politics. He spent several years on the back benches after criticising coalition policies including the help-to-buy scheme. “He’s genuinely clever, with a very strong academic, scholarly mind,” one old friend says. “But that academic, scholarly mind meant he was happy to speak out against David Cameron and George Osborne and didn’t really worry about the consequences.”
Kwarteng understands the importance of a Prime Minister and Chancellor working closely together:
For now, Kwarteng and Truss are united on economic policy. The chancellor tells colleagues that his role is to support the PM, explaining: “I will facilitate; I won’t emasculate.” One ally says, “Kwasi was completely disillusioned with the battles between No 10 and No 11 under Rishi and Boris. When No 10 and No 11 are at war, nothing works. Kwasi will deliver what the prime minister wants. She is the first lord of the treasury, Kwasi is the second lord of the treasury. That will change the entire mood and approach of government. The institutions will try to break No 10 and No 11 apart, but they underestimate the strength of the relationship between Kwasi and Liz.”
Hmm. Interesting.
British public gaslit
The last week of September was one of news about unfunded tax cuts, the Bank of England stepping in to calm the UK markets, how Kwarteng and Truss didn’t bother to communicate their economic plan and how awful everything was.
On Friday, September 30, Tom Harwood, GB News’s political correspondent and Guido Fawkes alum, put things into perspective, rightly saying that the media were gaslighting Britons:
That day, The Telegraph‘s Matthew Lynn wrote, ‘There’s no such thing as unfunded tax cuts — it’s our money’:
It is hard to imagine that three simple words could be quite so lethal. But over the last few days “unfunded tax cuts” have been held responsible for the potential destruction of the British economy, and, come to think of it, the global financial system as well.
We are told that the Government’s £45bn package of cuts announced last week have crashed the currency markets, sent mortgage rates soaring, and left the stock market to keel over and die. Any government crazy enough to even attempt unfunded tax cuts can expect to be evicted from office within days if not hours.
Tosh. Although the phrase has become ubiquitous, we should be a lot more cautious about how we use it. In reality, tax cuts don’t need to be funded, for the same reason that staying home instead of going out to dinner doesn’t need to be ‘funded’, and nor does opting to spend Christmas with your parents rather than flying off to Mauritius need to be ‘funded’ either.
It isn’t spending. It is simply taking less of your citizen’s money. It is state spending that needs to be ‘funded’, and not its opposite – and until we get that straight, and change the language we use, we will never be able to have a grown-up debate about how to manage our economy.
If Kwasi Kwarteng had a grand for every time our broadcasters, newspapers, a think tank, or indeed a growing legion of City analysts, used the term “unfunded tax cuts”, or UTCs as we should probably call them, he’d have enough money to wade into the markets and send sterling back over the two dollar mark. The phrase probably has its own emoji by now, just to make it easier to discuss on WhatsApp (some sort of variant of the scowling face, I’d imagine).
Ever since the pound started falling modestly against the dollar on Monday – because after all “crashing” seems a slightly extreme term for a downwards correction of less than 10pc – the phrase has dominated the headlines.
According to just about every think tank, constant broadcasts from the BBC, dozens of newspaper analysts, the IMF, and just about every major City bank, not to mention a small army of retired central bankers, it was the Chancellor’s decision to cut a few taxes without announcing accompanying decisions on reducing spending that led immediately to a dramatic sell-off in sterling and a rise in bond yields that could only be controlled by emergency intervention by the Bank of England.
A quick Google search yields 28,000 mentions of the phrase, and that is without even counting social media. According to the credit ratings agency Moody’s “large unfunded tax cuts are credit negative” while according to the former Bank Governor Mark Carney “the message of financial markets is that there is a limit to unfunded spending and unfunded tax cuts in this environment.”
And yet, in reality, we should be a lot more careful about the language we use. We can leave aside the point that the “unfunded” parts of last Friday’s fiscal package amount to no more than a few billion pounds, a trivial sum give the size of state spending, and that by far the largest part of it was made up of the energy support package that all sides of the political spectrum had been calling for. The more important point is this: we shouldn’t ever describe tax cuts as “unfunded”.
By definition a tax cut is not spending any money. It is simply a decision to take less from a particular group of people in one particular way …
Next, the term ignores the possibility that tax cuts might pay for themselves …
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it concedes the argument before it has even begun. “Unfunded” is a boo word, and even more so when you put the inevitable “reckless” in front of it. The language deliberately skews opinion against a reform of the tax system. Even worse, it is used by banks and broadcasters who pretend they are staying neutral – when in reality they are anything but.
… fundamentally it is only state spending that needs to be funded – not leaving more money in the pockets of long-suffering taxpayers. If we could be a little clearer about that we might be able to have a slightly more sane debate about how much tax the government should be raising and how – instead of hysterical catastrophizing about UTCs.
On Saturday, October 1, The Sun rightly defended the Truss-Kwarteng plan, citing other Western economies’ woes:
On Sunday, October 2, GB News’s and The Telegraph‘s Liam Halligan, formerly of Channel 4 News, was on the money when he said that the market meltdown was the fault of quantitative easing (QE):
… This week of financial turmoil has left millions frightened and angry.
While Kwarteng’s statement sparked last week’s alarming debt repricing, it was by no means the underlying cause. There are far bigger forces at play …
… what we saw last week was just the beginning of a long-term shift away from over a decade of ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing. We’ve indulged in ultra-loose monetary policy since the 2008/09 financial crisis – a necessary emergency measure, which ossified into a lifestyle choice.
And now, the obvious excesses, dangers – and crass stupidity – of this policy, are coming home to roost.
Since that financial crisis, the Bank of England has created hundreds of billions of pounds of QE money, as have similarly aligned central banks, which have blown huge asset price bubbles in stocks, bonds and property.
QE has helped governments borrow cheaply, while making the rich even richer – which is why, having begun as a £50 billion temporary measure to inject liquidity into bombed-out banks, it has morphed, thirteen years on, into an £895 billion monster.
The early tranches of QE stayed largely within the financial system – so didn’t cause serious inflation. But the Covid-era variant, funding furlough and an avalanche of business support loans, has fed directly into the real economy – helping to explain today’s inflation predicament.
This is an inconvenient truth that no-one wants to admit – certainly not the likes of the International Monetary Fund and central bankers who oversaw QE. Better to blame an incoming Tory government – one led by a politically vulnerable Prime Minister, with only lukewarm support from her own MPs.
… the idea that this “unfunded cut crashed the pound” is preposterous. Yet that is now the accepted political narrative – that a greed-driven Tory policy collapsed sterling and sent 10-year gilt yield surging as fears swirled of government insolvency, sending higher borrowing costs rippling across the economy, damaging hard-working families and firms.
What I suspect happened is that global currency traders, understanding the top tax cut was politically tin-eared, could see ministers were in for a kicking. With the Government introducing a potentially expensive energy price cap, the moment seemed right to start shorting – that is, betting against – the pound, knowing the media would pile in.
When that happened on Asian markets on Monday, and we woke to a plunging currency, I was astonished that ministers fell silent – given the strength of the arguments on their side …
For now, the Bank of England’s intervention on Wednesday – buying gilts to rein in borrowing costs – seems to have worked. By Friday, the pound was back where it was pre-statement, the 10-year yield having retreated from over 4.5pc to around 4.0pc.
But the City and Wall Street moneymen, having loaded pension schemes with billions of pounds of debt, yet again have the upper hand – effectively forcing the UK authorities to restart the QE asset-boosting machine. This cannot end well.
“Tory tax cuts”. It’s such an easy and convenient scapegoat. The truth is we’re in for a sustained period of painful adjustment – one which our political and media class must urgently start to explain.
The Times‘s Robert Colvile pointed out the global aspects of market turmoil, driven in part by the United States:
The markets were already primed to punish the UK, he [Albert Edwards of Société Générale] argues, because of the Bank of England’s decision the previous day to raise rates at a slower rate than the US and to keep trying to dispose of the assets accumulated under quantitative easing. So Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision to throw in a few more tax cuts just gave an extra push to a boulder that was already rolling …
Admittedly, the attempts of some in government to blame last week’s rout in the markets entirely on global factors strained credulity. But they did have the core of a point. A year ago the Bank of England believed interest rates would stay below 1 per cent. A month ago they were set to top out at 3 per cent. By the time Kwarteng got to his feet, the expected peak had risen to 5 per cent — soaring over 6 per cent at the height of last week’s panic.
Now, some of that rise in September was probably due to anxieties about the new government. But it was also driven, yes, by global factors — in particular decisions made in Washington. Even if Kwarteng had replaced his planned statement with a lusty rendition of the Marseillaise, mortgage-holders would still be facing eye-popping jumps in interest rates. For example, at that 6 per cent rate a typical UK mortgage would, according to the Resolution Foundation, cost an excruciating £4,800 a year extra — but £3,800 of that was already on the way before Friday’s speech. The age of cheap money is over not just for Britain but for everyone.
Over the past three years, a number of conservatives must have wondered why Boris Johnson never delved deeper into economic policy. A letter to The Telegraph gives a possible explanation — global forces at work:
SIR – It takes great strength of character and conviction to stand up and face a baying mob, especially a political one. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have my admiration.
I always wondered why Boris Johnson did not attempt to enact some of his early policies after Brexit, for which he had great public support. Perhaps he understood how the pro-EU and socialist contingents in Parliament and the wider political world would react, and was fully aware of the force that would be against him.
I wish Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng good luck. They have shown enough courage in their beliefs to see this challenge through.
Conservative Party Conference
The Conservative Party Conference opened on Sunday, October 3, in Birmingham.
That day, The Times reported that Kwarteng had requested Cabinet ministers to cut expenditure in their respective departments:
Kwasi Kwarteng has told ministers to make cuts in their departments and warned them “we have a duty to live within our means”.
The chancellor has asked cabinet ministers to send him their “proposals to support growth” by the end of the month.
He is also launching a reprioritisation, efficiency and productivity review across the public sector, which will re-examine “existing spending commitments” and repurpose budgets to deliver the government’s “core priorities”, including growth.
I wrote about the conference, including Truss’s and Kwarteng’s U-turn on abolishing the 45% tax rate, the prominent Conservative MPs in disarray, the rebels and Truss’s closing speech.
On Monday, October 3, the duo pulled out of a fringe event, which cost £3,000 a ticket:
Nigel Farage, looking on from the outside, predicted a Labour rout in the next general election:
Meanwhile, Guido Fawkes kept us apprised of market movements, which weren’t nearly as alarming as expected that week:
He rightly criticised Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves for stirring the pot unnecessarily:
On Wednesday, October 5, as the conference closed, Guido wrote (emphases his):
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…
At the weekend, while anti-Conservative pundits were still banging on about the 45% tax rate, which Truss and Kwarteng did a U-turn on …
… The Telegraph‘s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard pointed out that gas prices were already falling, indicating that ‘Liz Truss may be winning her gamble on the energy price cap after all’:
Plummeting global gas prices have slashed the cost of the UK’s energy price cap and may ultimately reduce the monthly subsidy to zero, greatly alleviating the strain on Government borrowing.
NatWest Markets estimates that the price guarantee would cost approximately £30bn over the first six months based on current futures contracts, half the £60bn figure assumed by the Treasury and the rating agencies …
While NatWest remains wary of gilts after the mini-budget and the bond shock last month, it said pessimism over the UK’s public finances may have gone too far. Gilts may no longer be a one-way bet for traders …
Goldman Sachs thinks European wholesale prices may fall a further 40pc by late winter. Average energy bills in the UK would in that case fall to £2,000 or less.
The Government could put its cheque book back in the drawer.
Douglas McWilliams, from the Centre of Economics and Business Research, says that the public finances are in better shape than widely-supposed.
An odd week that began well
By Monday, October 10, things appeared to be looking up for Truss and Kwarteng.
Mel Stride MP, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee and not one of their best friends, was satisfied that the then-Chancellor agreed to review his economic plan on Halloween rather than in November:
Tuesday, October 11, was a red-letter day.
The head of JP Morgan said that Truss deserved a chance:
Guido wrote:
… Speaking last night from London with US broadcaster CNBC, Dimon backed Liz’s tax plans and hammered home the need for laser-like focus on growth – adding he’d “love to hear that out of their mouth every time a president or prime minister speaks”…
It’ll take time to execute the policies and kind of drive growth and what’s important … [but] there’s a lot of things the UK has going for it and proper strategies to get it growing faster … then it can accomplish some of the other objectives it wants to accomplish too […] I would like to see the new Prime Minister, the new Chancellor, be successful […] I think every government should be focusing on growth. I would love to hear that out of their mouth every time a president or prime minister speaks.
Another proud member of the Pro-Growth Coalition. Although he did warn the US will likely tip into recession in about 6 months…
The IMF did an about-face, as The Telegraph reported:
Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cutting mini-Budget will help Britain to be the fastest growing major economy this year at the cost of higher long-term inflation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said.
Strong momentum at the end of 2021 means UK economic growth will outpace the rest of the G7 this year. Tax cuts announced in the mini-Budget are expected to lift it even higher than the IMF’s current forecast of 3.6pc, which was published on Tuesday but finalised before the Chancellor announced his plans …
The paper‘s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote, ‘Rejoice: we may be very close to Fed capitulation’:
Not only is the Fed rushing through jumbo rises of 75 points each meeting, it is also draining global dollar liquidity with $95bn a month of quantitative tightening (QT). It has never done the two together before. And it does not understand how QE/QT actually works, as admitted cheerfully by one Ben Bernanke, Nobel Prize laureate as of yesterday …
Ben Bernanke flagged the dangers of a strong dollar and the capital exodus from emerging markets yesterday. Without naming the British gilt market, he said financial stress in the international system was building up and posed a threat. “We really have to pay close attention,” he said.
On Wednesday, October 12, it was noted that a Federal Reserve hike in interest rates took place before Kwarteng’s economic statement:
Furthermore, the US was also experiencing an unusual increase in mortgage rates, meaning that the UK was not the only country with that problem:
On Thursday, October 13, Truss had her weekly meeting with King Charles, who greeted her with ‘Dear, oh dear’ while the press were there:
What did he know?
He would have heard Foreign Secretary James Cleverly defend Truss and Kwarteng on that day’s news round. The poor man.
The Telegraph has a running diary of what went on that morning. This is the summary:
James Cleverly has warned it would be a “disastrously bad idea” to replace Liz Truss as Prime Minister.
Ms Truss is under intense pressure from some of her own MPs to abandon her economic plan following a market backlash to the measures set out in the mini-Budget.
The Prime Minister’s leadership is being questioned after little more than a month in the job, with some Tory MPs already considering who could replace her.
ConservativeHome‘s editor Paul Goodman was also on the airwaves. He told BBC Radio 4 that some Conservative MPs had suggestions for Truss’s and Kwarteng’s replacement:
The former Tory MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “All sorts of different people are talking about all sorts of different things because the Conservative backbenchers are casting around for a possible replacement for Kwasi Kwarteng, even for a possible replacement for Liz Truss.
“All sorts of names are being thrown about, Rishi Sunak, even Boris Johnson, Kit Malthouse, Sajid Javid.
“But one idea doing the rounds is that Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak, who, after all, between them got pretty much two-thirds of the votes of MPs, come to some kind of arrangement and essentially take over.”
The King probably also knew that Truss and Kwarteng were going to do a U-turn on corporation tax, which they planned to lower to 19%, as it is in Ireland:
On Wednesday, at PMQs, Truss stood by the cut:
What we are doing is simply NOT putting up corporation tax. It’s not a tax cut, we’re just not raising corporation tax. And I feel that it would be wrong, in a time when we are trying to attract investment into our country, at a time of global economic slowdown, to be raising taxes. Because it will bring less revenue in. And the way that we are going to get the money to fund our National Health Service… is by having a strong economy with companies investing and creating jobs.
On Thursday, October 13, Guido wrote:
What a difference 24 hours makes: this lunchtime The Sun broke the news that Truss “is considering raising Corporation Tax next year in spectacular mini-Budget U-turn”. A source tells Harry Cole that while the U-turn is being seriously considered, it wouldn’t be back up to the 25% proposed by Rishi before leaving the Treasury.
An unpleasant surprise for Kwarteng
Meanwhile, Kwarteng was in Washington at the annual IMF meeting.
Guido’s post had an update:
Channel 4 doorstepped him on his way in, where he said “I’ll be coming out with a statement on 31st October and I’m not going to pre-empt that.” As The Speccie’s James Forsyth points out, if the markets are now pricing in a U-turn, and the government decides against one, they’ll likely be in a worse position than they were 24 hours ago…
On Friday, October 14, we woke up to the news that Kwarteng was summoned back to London, under the guise that emergency budget negotiations had to take place. The IMF meeting was to last into the weekend:
This could mean only one thing — that his time as Chancellor was over.
Guido reported that Mel Stride was happy that Kwarteng’s economic package was about to be shot to bits:
… one source quoted in the Financial Times claims “Almost everything in the Budget is now up for grabs” …
For those who enjoyed the excitement of tracking Priti Patel’s flight back to the UK ahead of her sacking by Theresa May, you can follow Kwasi’s flight in real time here …
Mel Stride, Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, spoke on the Today Programme and welcomed a U-Turn. He called it a “powerful” signal to markets and added the government’s “fiscal credibility is now firmly back on the table”. He added the Conservative party should give the government “more time” and space to “rest”. How generous…
Sterling and bond markets had rallied following the first reports of a U-turn, which only adds on the pressure for more reversals. Elsewhere in the markets, today is the final day of the Bank of England’s gilt operations. Although gilt markets appeared steady this morning, the real test will come on Monday…
A Downing Street source tried to downplay Kwarteng’s return:
Kwarteng had scrambled to take the last commercial flight from Dulles Airport to Heathrow:
The next bit of news was that Truss was going to hold a press conference that afternoon.
Guido wrote:
Liz is set to U-turn on the corporation tax freeze at 2pm this afternoon. It’s rumoured she’ll whack it all the way up to 25% in the spring. Kwasi won’t be appearing alongside her…
Speculation began on who the new Chancellor would be. The Sun‘s political editor Harry Cole tweeted the following in the hours before the press conference, indicating Jeremy Hunt:
Cabinet members were correct about Jeremy Hunt:
King Charles approved the following appointments from Truss:
Nigel Farage was rightly furious about a Remainer assuming the post of Chancellor:
Harry Cole got a copy of Truss’s letter to Kwarteng, thanking him for his hard work:
The nation now had a new dream team. This seconds-long video is a must-see. The UK is doomed:
I’ll go into Truss’s press conference tomorrow.
In short, it was absolutely dire and lasted only eight minutes, which included four questions, one of which was from Harry Cole. His face is a picture:
I’ll have more tomorrow on how shocked Kwarteng must have been as well as what this means for Truss’s premiership.
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.
Churchmouse Campanologist 