Keir Starmer’s painstakingly thrashed out plan to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is facing renewed challenge.

Donald Trump originally backed the deal, under which the UK would relinquish sovereignty of the archipelago in return for a 99-year lease on the crucial US-UK Diego Garcia military base. But he began to waver after intense lobbying from US and UK politicians, including Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch. And now, perhaps irked by the UK’s refusal to allow him to use the British base there to launch potential attacks on Iran, he’s said the deal would be “a big mistake”.

UK opponents of the deal are now “increasingly optimistic they can block” Parliament from voting it into law and “force Starmer into a U-turn”, said The i Paper’s deputy political editor Arj Singh.

What did the commentators say?

The amount of time, effort and political capital Labour has spent over this deal may seem “odd”, said former Foreign Office special adviser Ben Judah in The Sunday Times but “it was not human rights waffle or some misguided fantasy about pleasing the global south that brought us to this point”. Following a 2019 International Court of Justice “advisory opinion” against continued British ownership of Chagos, both the UK and US risked losing access to the strategically vital military base or, worse, it falling into the hands of China.

The problem for Starmer is that the “three-step logic” driving the deal “cannot be expressed in a Tweet, or by a government spokesman, without causing diplomatic pain and embarrassment”. This means the deal is open to attack “from all sides for what it is not”: “woke” lawyer activism, “a misguided soft power exercise drawn up by brain-dead diplomats, even treason”. Actually, it is “a piece of Realpolitik firmly grounded in geopolitical trade-offs”.

Despite his latest salvo on Truth Social, Trump “hasn’t explicitly stated whether he will veto the Chagos agreement”, said Kamlesh Bhuckory and Ellen Milligan on Bloomberg. “The UK government is looking into whether he has the power to do so”, aware that former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, a vocal critic of the deal, has said it will fail without US support.

Mauritius, for its part, has accused a group of Chagossians, who have “settled” on a remote island in the archipelago, of staging a publicity stunt to scupper the deal. There are also reports that Mauritius “may launch legal action for compensation” if the treaty is cancelled, said The Telegraph’s editorial board. This only shows that “the financial aspect of this deal is far more important to Mauritius than the spurious claim to sovereignty under international law”. Trump’s “new-found antipathy” has offered Starmer “a way out of the hole he has dug for himself. He needs to take it.”

What next?

Starmer “has to get the treaty ratified before May or it fails”, said David Maddox in The Independent. The government has pulled plans for a vote in the House of Lords on Tuesday but there is still “some small hope” for the PM with signs that Liberal Democrat peers may abstain when the vote returns in early March. Even then, it still has to return to the House of Commons for final ratification.

Whatever brickbats have been thrown his way, Starmer has been praised for “his international statesmanship” but “now the Chagos nightmare suggests even that is unravelling for this ill-fated PM”.

It has been more than three years since Liz Truss’ disastrous 49-day premiership ended, with the Daily Star declaring victory for its “very own 60p lettuce” in its tongue-in-cheek longevity contest. Now the former PM is back with her own weekly streaming show, pitched as the “home of the counter-revolution”.

In the first episode of “The Liz Truss Show”, which appeared on YouTube at the weekend, the ex-Tory leader declared that “Britain is going to hell in a handcart”, laid into the “fake news BBC” and claimed the “steel towns, mill towns and car towns” of middle England “are being killed off by eco zealots”.

‘Coping mechanism’

“The show started an hour late because Liz forgot to put her watch back in October” and things didn’t get much better from there, said John Crace in The Guardian. Despite her omnipresence on the lucrative right-wing speaking circuit and her ex-prime ministerial allowance, the show appeared to have been filmed in a “makeshift studio”, with editing reminiscent of “a 12-year-old intern doped up on ketamine”.

Viewers were treated to a “deranged diatribe” on “the deep state”, “Islamists” and the “governing elite”, all of whom apparently were more to blame for her downfall than Truss herself. “It’s almost painful to watch someone so lacking in any self-awareness.” This was nothing less than watching Truss “commit a drive-by on herself”.

Ultimately, this show is “less about charting a new redemptive path than it is about rewriting the story of her humiliation”, said UnHerd. A figure “defined entirely by her public fall from grace” and “ostracisation from the political class she had dedicated her life to joining”, this is “more about providing her with a coping mechanism than her viewers with thought-provoking content”.

‘Liz lectures’

“The Liz Truss Show” should be understood not just as the “classic conspiracy theorist’s yearning to make their bonkers views heard”, but also as “an audiovisual cover letter addressed to Donald Trump”, said Imogen West-Knights in The Independent.

Yet despite calls for Britain to undergo a Trump-style revolution, it seems “highly unlikely” that this show “is going to have a wide appeal among Maga types on either side of the Atlantic”. In truth, if “you’re into small boats rhetoric and hand-wringing content about raising the birth rate, you already have so many more eloquent nutters, more possessed of a kind of demonic alt-right charisma, to pick from”.

Truss “can’t start a revolution by chatting with polished media performers in a TV studio”, said Lloyd Evans in The Spectator. Her guests, such as academic and right-wing commentator Matthew Goodwin, “agreed with everything she said”, making the show feel more like a “bank holiday book-club or a gripe session at Wetherspoons”.

With its “mixture of invective, self-justification and political brainstorming”, the show’s “emotional theme is ‘Liz lectures’ rather than ‘Liz learns’. If she were to embrace her foes with an open mind, she may win over a few recruits” but “being angry and radical is pointless. And until her enemies start watching her show, she’s an irrelevance.”

Grab “the popcorn”, said William Pesek in Asia Times (Hong Kong): Japan’s next prime minister, and its first female premier, is set to be the self-described “Iron Lady”, Sanae Takaichi – a hardline, Margaret Thatcher-idolising right-winger and long-time China critic who has vowed to stand up to Donald Trump on tariffs. Takaichi, 64, is expected to be confirmed by parliament after defeating four other candidates to head the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Complicated milestone

And it was a polarising choice, to say the least, said The Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo). Described by some as an ultranationalist, Takaichi wants to loosen constitutional restrictions on the size of Japan’s self-defence forces, and is a regular visitor to the Yasukuni Shrine, home to 13 WWII “class-A war criminals”. In her victory speech, she vowed to abandon a “work-life balance” in her bid to turn round Japan’s ailing economy. “I will work, work, work and work,” she said.

In theory, the arrival of Japan’s first female PM should be a cause for celebration, said The Mainichi Shimbun (Tokyo) – particularly in a country with one of the world’s worst gender gaps. But even that milestone is complicated by Takaichi’s “old-fashioned” views on women. She “supports the imperial family’s male-only succession”, and opposes a revision to a 19th century civil law that would allow women to keep their surname after marriage. (Takaichi has been married twice, to the same man: the first time, she took his surname; the second time, he took hers.)

Sanaenomics

And while Takaichi wants to be Japan’s answer to Thatcher, “some fear she might be its Liz Truss”, said Gearoid Reidy in The Japan Times (Tokyo). Under her economic vision of “Sanaenomics”, she advocates higher government spending yet lower taxes – a combination that caused mayhem in the UK markets when Truss tried it.

And during an increasingly xenophobic leadership race, Takaichi made off-the-cuff and often rambling accusations against foreigners – accusing tourists of “harassing deer” in Nara Park, and claiming that police have been unable to charge foreign criminals because of a lack of interpreters.

All things considered, “there’s a certain recklessness about her that’s a worry”. Takaichi’s first real test will come with the visit of Trump at the end of the month, said Pesek. Will she actually clash with the hotheaded US leader over his 15% tariff on Japanese goods? Or will she follow the playbook of her late mentor, former PM Shinzo Abe, who “perfected the art” of Trump flattery? “Time will tell.”

Rachel Reeves' Spring Statement has once again thrown into question the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), with claims that the quango holds too much sway over the UK's fiscal policy.

The "increasingly influential role of the OBR" was the "most remarkable" thing about the statement, said Michael Simmons in The Spectator. Reeves was forced to take "hasty decisions to restore a thin £9.9 billion 'headroom' needed for emergencies", said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. These include the "controversial" move to "slash Personal Independence Payments to disabled people". The OBR, a "once-gentle advisory organisation", has become the "puppet master".

What did the commentators say?

Part of the problem is that the media increasingly treat the OBR's forecasts "as if they are certain", said Dr Gerard Lyons at CapX. But "the margin of error on one-year-ahead growth is 0.5%". It is a concern then, "that the growing political need for an endorsement from the OBR may now be influencing policy".

One backbench Labour MP told PoliticsHome that the government "needs to do something about the OBR's remit and forecasting". It is "forcing elected politicians to follow its lead", in fear of "spooking the bond markets".

"The Truss budget showed the cost of ignoring" the OBR, said Theo Bertram, director of the Social Market Foundation thinktank. But the current "extremely strict adherence to rules" based on "micro-haggling" between the Treasury and the OBR over "unreliable forecasts" is "consequential and questionable".

The OBR is not too powerful, said Henry Hill at Conservative Home. It "has no more 'power' than do your bathroom scales". Neither of these can "issue commands" but "consulting either on a regular basis has a strong tendency to influence your behaviour".

The problems the OBR causes politicians is "very often because they lie to it and themselves", said Hill. "It is legally obliged to take the government at its word; if you continually tell it you will raise Fuel Duty the day after tomorrow, you will continually need to make fresh cuts" if you then don't.

What next?

But "what’s the alternative?" asks Adam Smith in The Telegraph. "Taking the impact of growth policies back in house to the Treasury" would see chancellors deciding "what boosts growth", rather than "have to prove what might to an independent body".

The OBR holds chancellors to account for their fiscal rules "to reassure the financial markets that the government's finances are sustainable", said The Independent's John Rentoul. It certainly "could be argued" that having "transparent rules" and "independently set benchmarks" is "more democratic than the alternative, which would be to have a politician say, 'I'm sure this will work, trust me'".

Rishi Sunak's general election campaign got off to a damp start as he announced the date of the vote outside No. 10 as heavy rain fell.

The D:Ream song "Things Can Only Get Better", used widely in Labour's 1997 election campaign, blared from a protester's speakers outside the Downing Street gates as the prime minister "became increasingly soaked", said the London Evening Standard. It was more like "Things can only get wetter". 

It joins the list of memorable moments in Downing Street in recent years.

Theresa's tears

When Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street in November 1990, she "dissolved into floods of tears", said Sky News. 

And nearly 30 years later, Theresa May did the same. "I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold," she said, after failing to deliver Brexit. She left with "no ill-will" but with "enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love".

This was the moment May's "usually steely demeanour collapsed", said The Guardian, her voice "cracking with emotion as she uttered those last few words". It was "like watching a woman shake off the patriarchal shackles she's been chained with for more than two years" and "finally exhaling", said The Independent.

Classic Cameron

In 2016, David Cameron was heard humming a tune as he walked back into No. 10 after announcing that he would resign as prime minister and hand the levers of power to May.  

There was immediate speculation over his choice of tune, with suggestions ranging from the theme tune to US political saga "The West Wing" to something from Winnie-the-Pooh.

Classic FM analysed the tune and said it was "almost fanfare-like in that confident leap of a fourth from G to C", but "quickly loses confidence when it mirrors the ascent later in the bar".

Them's the breaks

During her reign as PM, May used a podium made of "cedar", but her successor, Boris Johnson, went for a "darker wood and a sturdier design" because "aides knew he was fond of thumping it during speeches", said Mark Mason in The Spectator.

When he stood down in the summer of 2022, Johnson's farewell speech was not as gracious as that of his predecessor. He said he had "tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we're delivering so much", but "as we've seen, at Westminster the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves it moves".

 "I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world," Johnson added. "But them's the breaks." 

Some were confused over exactly what the last phrase meant. It "deliberately breaks grammatical rules", said The Independent, and was "shorthand for suggesting he was unlucky".

Truss tower

"Never has a politician's lectern been more symbolic", said The Guardian. As Liz Truss stood outside 10 Downing Street to give her resignation speech, "all eyes were on the bizarre wooden structure that stood before her", which was "seemingly made from Jenga blocks, ready to take a tumble".

Eyebrows were raised when it later turned out that the "wonky tower" cost taxpayers nearly £4,200, said Metro. A year on, said The Mirror, the government had found no use for the "higgledy-piggledy pile of bricks".

Former prime minister Liz Truss has stepped back into the political spotlight with the publication of her ambitiously titled new memoir, "Ten Years to Save the West".

Since being ousted in 2022, Britain's shortest-serving PM has remained a largely fringe figure in the Conservative Party. But in recent months, said David Runciman in The Guardian, Truss has "hitched her wagon to a newly launched organisation called Popular Conservatism".

Her "British version of much of the American alt-right agenda", said Adam Boulton at Reaction, has helped to ensure that Truss and her new book are making headlines.

'Unfinished business'

Truss has said that she has "unfinished business" in politics, said Sky News, and she has "refused to rule out running" to be Tory leader again in the future. Her book, she said, was intended to "build support for her political ideas".

 But there "isn't much evidence" that the "hysterical pitch of American conservatives" that she has adopted "resonates across the Atlantic", argued Rafael Behr in The Guardian.

Reading the "Alan Partridge-esque anecdotes" in Truss's book, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman, what becomes clear is that she believes that the "first step" to saving the West is "saving the Conservative Party from itself". Truss's awareness that the current government "would prefer to pretend she doesn't exist", and that the mainstream party members consider her "an irrelevance", is why she has reappeared with a book of "tell-all revelations" and "bombastic end-of-the-world rhetoric".

Truss clearly has a "self-awareness problem" that "leads her to blame her failures on anyone and everyone" else, said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator, but it is worth asking whether "there are points she makes that Westminster can actually learn from". Although Truss's focus is "largely limited to what stopped her", she also points to the "resistance from the civil service to reforms" and Whitehall's "obstructing" of elected politicians.

'A deeper problem'

Her specific policies and opinions aside, Truss's book highlights a greater problem in Westminster: "it has stopped listening", said Kate McCann at the i news site. Although many will "baulk at the idea" of a Truss comeback, the response to her memoir exposes the "deeper problem" of a "narrowing of the lens" and a tendency to "scoff and shrug" off ideas that "don't fit". Truss is "not the perfect messenger", but she is not the only one to identify the "failure to properly consider things which don't fit the narrative".

The question remains whether, despite making a return to public view, Truss could drum up enough support to make a concerted bid for power again. So far, her "attempt at a comeback" appears to be working, said Bouton, and she is "getting another hearing – at least in Conservative circles".

Her voice is "listened to and influential among her party members", agreed Chris Mason at the BBC, and while Tories "privately anticipate" losing the next election, Truss is hoping to be in the mix as they "consider their future after it".

If Truss's "is the only story anyone can hear", said Behr, it raises bigger questions for the future of the Conservatives. It indicates that they "don't have a leader" and "don't have an argument" and eventually "could end up without a party". In the long term,  there simply aren't "enough Trussite MPs, let alone Truss-supporters in the country", to "inspire much beyond ridicule" for the former PM.

Liz Truss is rebranding herself in a bid to relaunch her stalled political career over in the US. 

Following her stint as Britain's shortest-serving prime minister, the former Lib Dem-turned-centrist Tory is "plotting a new course back to relevance as a darling of the American far-right and as the bridge in a transatlantic conservative movement" said the Daily Mail's US political reporter Bob Crilly.

Since leaving No. 10 in October 2022,  Truss has doubled down on her free-market policies and "worked tirelessly to build ties with US conservatives, including key Members of Congress", said Nile Gardiner, a former aide to Margaret Thatcher, in The Telegraph. Truss is "widely admired in conservative circles" as "one of the few British politicians who really understand the United States and the direction America's conservative movement is taking".

'Martyr of the Conservative cause'

Following her year in the "political wilderness", said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman, Truss is now "ubiquitous". An appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last week provided the latest opportunity for the former Tory leader to "try out the persona she has adopted since her enforced departure from Downing Street: the martyr of the Conservative cause".

The annual event has "long been one of the most influential conservative gatherings in the world", said Crilly in the Mail, and is now a "showcase for Donald Trump's Maga movement".

Making her CPAC debut alongside former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, Truss "positioned herself as a fierce defender of history against the mores of the left", said The New Statesman's Matt McDonald – and "then proceeded to retell her own". Rehashing the platform she stood on in the Tory leadership contest, Truss portrayed herself  as the "populist conduit for the policies of her party's base" and claimed the "deep state" brought down her her tax-cutting plans. 

Referencing the title of her upcoming book, Truss warned that there were only "10 years left to save the West". She derided "wokenomics," Joe Biden and "the usual suspects" in the media and corporate world who allegedly undermined her as PM. And she ended with a call for Americans to elect Republicans "who aren't going to cave into the establishment" and are willing to be unpopular with elites, even if it means "they don't get invited to any dinner parties".

'Differences with her new audience'

Whether Truss's US bid to "remake herself as a right-wing celebrity will succeed is anyone’s guess", said The Independent's White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg. Her CPAC debut appears to be part of a "new offensive" to gain "new allies in the populist, antidemocratic milieu inhabited by Trump, Farage, and other authoritarian-friendly gadflies such as ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon".

Yet while her focus on the "enemies within" might have come straight from the Trump playbook, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times, there are "lots of reasons" why Truss might not want to "explicitly endorse" the former president. She knows "full well" that it is "hard" to "reconcile" her hawkish positions on foreign policy, particularly her support for Ukraine, with Trump's stances. 

Her foreign policy views "might be a harder sell to the American right, which is held in Trump's isolationist grip", agreed Crilly in the Mail. And she faces other "potential differences with her new audience", including her rejection of the widespread belief amongst Maga supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Little wonder that her CPAC appearance was met with a mixture of confusion and scepticism, said Jack Montgomery in The National Pulse. Her support for action against climate change and backing for "woke" policies while in government show that Truss "wasn’t ousted by the deep state", he wrote. "She is the deep state."

Keir Starmer today promised to "do the hard yards" to fix the economy, in a critical bid to win over businesses ahead of the next election.

Unveiling his party's plan to reverse wage stagnation and boost growth, Starmer said the attendance of 400 corporate leaders at the launch event, in central London, showed the "depth of the changes we've made to transform the Labour Party's relationship with business". That tickets reportedly sold out within hours "suggests it is pushing on an open door", said the Financial Times's leader column.

It is the culmination of a remarkable journey for the party since 2019. After the 2008 financial crisis occurred on Labour's watch, Jeremy Corbyn's time as leader did little to improve the image of Labour's economic competence. But five years on – and following Liz Truss's disastrous short-lived tenure as PM – the tables have turned, with research by polling firm Redfield and Wilton Strategies suggesting the public now trust Labour more on the economy than the Conservatives.

'Boring, snoring' right-hand woman

Labour's new-found reputation for fiscal responsibility is largely down to the party's shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves.

Once a Labour outcast, dismissed by Corbyn as too right-wing and derided by a TV executive as "boring, snoring", her "relentlessly pro-business, pro-caution approach chimes with the 'no drama Starmer' image that the Labour leader had cultivated", said Politico, "in contrast to the chaotic governing Tories".

Such is the sway that the former Bank of England economist now holds over the party, she topped The New Statesman's "left power list" last year, beating her boss into second place.

Crucially, Starmer "needs business help to deliver the growth that is at the heart of his agenda", said the FT. Although "little detail" has been provided yet, said Sky News, the headlines set out today include a promise "to get Britain building again after 14 years of stagnation"; "plans for skills to drive growth"; "the need to partner with business to make work pay for working people"; "backing British business"; and "creating the stable economic conditions required for delivering growth".

'Unhappy times to come'

The new-found love-in between Labour and business is not without its critics, however.

Yesterday, Reeves announced the party would not reinstate the cap on bankers' bonuses scrapped by Liz Truss – "less than 100 days after her own Treasury team lambasted the move", said Steerpike in The Spectator. "The move is part of Labour's big push to prove they're on the side of business," said the columnist, and "tells you everything you need to know" about the current Labour Party.

Then there is Labour's £28 billion-a-year Green Prosperity Plan. The fate of the flagship economic policy "has become the Ark of the Covenant", said Andrew Marr in The New Statesman, "furiously contested between Israelites and Philistines". As reported last year, the true figure has been diminished by already committed government spending, "and had been put off until the midterm of any Labour government". And "it may soon disappear completely", Marr predicted.

After what Steerpike called "another Labour U-turn" on the economy, some – including Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar – have signalled that the party must ensure "fairness" alongside its attempt to win over business in the hope of boosting growth. 

James Schneider, Labour's director of strategic communications under Corbyn, went further. He told Politico there are "unhappy times to come, given that on current trends, and applying Labour's publicly stated policies to trend outcomes, most people in the country will be less well off two years into Labour governments than they are at the beginning".

Rishi Sunak may have hoped that this year's Conservative Party conference would focus on his new policies on net zero and motorists, but it was the future of HS2 that dominated the agenda in Manchester.

It is likely that "there wasn't a grand plan in Downing Street" for the conference to be "overwhelmed" by the controversial high-speed rail link, said the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman, "but make no mistake: that is what's happened".

But amid "the spectacle of a prime minister trying in vain not to talk about HS2 before his big speech", there are other numerous key stories emerging, said Sky News's deputy political editor Sam Coates. Not least the "existential questions about what the next iteration of the Conservative Party stands for".

Rishi's reset

"We’ve had 30 years of a political system which incentivises the easy decision, not the right one," Sunak said in his hour-long keynote speech to the conference. "Thirty years of vested interests standing in the way of change. Thirty years of rhetorical ambition which achieves little more than a short-term headline."

The speech was an "attempt to reframe his administration", said Bloomberg's Joe Mayes and Emily Ashton, that "reflects both the 20-point deficit to the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls and the lack of time to turn it around".

But "the thing that stood out about the prime minister's speech was he wasn't unveiling a whole bunch of guaranteed crowd pleasers", said the BBC's political editor Chris Mason. The scrapping of the HS2 Manchester link and the ban on smoking for the next generation are "ideas that provoke and divide within the Conservative Party – let alone the wider country".

"It is a big ask for the PM to prove he is the 'change candidate' after 13 Tory years," agreed The Sun. "But he genuinely believes it."

A shift to the right

From the Tory faithful "embracing the Liz Truss agenda" to "senior figures echoing and legitimising the tropes, language and politics of Donald Trump" to "a home secretary mobbed by activists wanting selfies", the "centre of gravity of the Tory party" is changing, said Coates. "Key figures" are now "invoking the membership to abandon the centre ground," he said. 

"Labour may revel in its enemy's slide towards oblivion," said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. "The further right the Tories go, the more beatable they look in the short term." 

However, she added, Labour "should be careful what it wishes for… When the Tory civil war begins in earnest post-election, the moderate platoon looks frighteningly invisible."

Tough immigration stance

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, "appealed to the party's hard right", said The New York Times, with a "fiery address" that warned of an imminent "hurricane" of immigration. 

Braverman, whose own parents came to the UK from Kenya and Mauritius in the 1960s, used her speech at the conference to warn that "unprecedented" migration is "one of the most powerful forces reshaping our world".

Following the speech, Braverman's cabinet colleague Grant Shapps was asked about comparisons that have been made to former Tory minister Enoch Powell's infamous "rivers of blood" speech, which was widely blamed for inflaming racial tensions in the 1960s.  

Shapps replied that the home secretary's rhetoric was "certainly no Enoch Powell situation" and, despite the apparent unease it had caused some senior Conservatives, he insisted that Braverman was "absolutely correct" to warn about the scale of the global movement of people.

Gender and trans issues

This week, policies on gender and trans people issues have "dominated announcements by ministers", said the Financial Times, "sparking a backlash among Tory MPs anxious about the party's deepening politicisation of the subject".

Six cabinet ministers discussed trans and gender issues at the podium in a signal that the topic is likely to be a "prominent theme" in the Tories' campaign leading up to the next general election, the paper added.

Yet some Tory ministers think the issue could cast the party in a "hostile light" and would distract from positive efforts to ease the cost of living crisis.

One minister said the party should be "compassionate" towards trans people, adding: "It's not an issue that voters notice like pump watch [a scheme to monitor and compare petrol prices], it doesn't come up on the doorstep."

A party that likes to party

People who have not been to the Conservative Party’s annual conference "might assume that the 'conference' bit is what matters", said The Economist. For many Tory members, though, "this is all about the party".

A conference does take place "but all that is a sideshow", the paper said. "The real action goes on in between sessions, as people in blue suits, blue shirts and brogues go to parties, drink white wine and use words such as 'thus' in conversation."

Elsewhere at the event, in a queue for a speech, "one woman looks irritated when they cannot find her name on the list. Look for me, she says, under 'Lady' instead," The Economist reported, adding "it requires a lot of effort and aspiration to appear this out of touch". 

Rishi Sunak hoped a picture of party unity at the Conservatives' conference in Manchester would provide the platform to reset his premiership ahead of next year's general election.

Instead, the first few days of the annual gathering have revealed bitter infighting, with different tribes vying for influence and attention.

Membership of what are mainly unofficial groupings overlap, said The Guardian, and "divisions are often more Venn diagram than hard borders". 

The free-market ultras

It may surprise those not used to the idiosyncrasies of internal Tory politics that exactly a year on from her disastrous 49-day term as prime minister – when her radical tax-cutting programme spooked the markets and turbocharged interest rates – Liz Truss is back as the darling of the Conservative Party conference.

Leading the call against what she first described in office as the "anti-growth coalition", Truss is the standard-bearer for small state, low tax, supply-side reforms.

These ideas still have "significant currency across a swathe of the Conservative Party", said The Times, while several of her former ministers "retain enough of a profile to carry significant sway".

Presenting themselves as keepers of the Thatcherite flame, these free-market ultras include former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, former home secretary Priti Patel, former housing minister Simon Clarke and Ranil Jayawardena, who leads the recently formed and increasingly influential Conservative Growth Group.

As Richard Vaughan and Hugo Gye wrote in i news in February, those backing Truss's revivalist mission leave Sunak "at risk of becoming sandwiched" between the two previous incumbents.

Northern Tories

With the Tories trailing Labour by double digits in opinion polls, this group of MPs from the North "are focused on policies that could appeal to Red Wall voters who switched their allegiance from Labour to give Boris Johnson his landslide victory at the general election four years ago", said The Independent.

Known as the Northern Research Group (NRG), they have lobbied the government for more tax responsibilities to be devolved from Westminster, the prioritisation of an east-west rail line linking Liverpool and Hull, and the creation of a "minister for the north".

Made up of prominent figures including former party chairman Jake Berry and current Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson, "the yearning for the party to look beyond England’s south-east finds an echo among Scottish Tories and others including the north-east mayor Ben Houchen", said The Guardian.

This group will be crucial to how Sunak's impending decision to scrap HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester – and the government's wider levelling up agenda – will go down with voters in the North. Channel 4 News reported that "they’d accept a compromise over connections to London as long as East-West links connecting Northern cities get built".

Culture warriors

Promoting an anti-woke, anti-immigration message, this group of right-wing pro-Brexit MPs could make the running at the next Tory leadership contest. Champions of what they term "national conservatism", leading lights include Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch.

While there is an overlap with the social conservatism of Northern Tories, theirs is a "more pessimistic, authoritarian, explicitly Christian and anti-woke world-view, closer in spirit to some of the national populist movements in Europe than to neoliberalism", said The New Statesman.

Among the most vocal are Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, who lead the so-called New Conservatives group of MPs from the 2017 and 2019 intake. It has called for a ban on "gender ideology" being taught in schools, curbs on legal migration and the withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

This tribe may be on "the fanatic fringe", wrote Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in i news, but to an extent it has already been "absorbed into the mainstream of Conservative politics", said The Guardian, "with even Sunak, once mistakenly viewed as a largely ideology-free technocrat, expected to lean increasingly into culture war issues as the election approaches".

'One Nation' Tories

Probably the largest group, centrist 'One Nation' Tories are also the least formalised. They "have struggled for influence under recent prime ministers" and "currently lack a standard-bearer for the internal debates convulsing the party", reported The Times.

Made up of MPs who present themselves as serious politicians for serious times, they boast the likes of the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, security minister Tom Tugendhat, Tobias Ellwood and Damian Green among their number.

Less vocal than other Tory factions, the group appears to be "biding their time for what could be a bare-knuckle fight against the culture warriors and Truss's rump group of ultra free-market devotees for the future direction of the party", The Guardian concluded.

It's a year since Liz Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, unveiled a mini-budget that included £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts and caused chaos, confusion and controversy.

Many people feel Truss is to blame for the high interest rates that have caused worry and worse for homeowners, but her supporters deny this. Here are the legacies of her headline-grabbing growth plan, which led to her swift demise.

Are we still paying a 'moron risk premium'?

Dario Perkins, of research firm TS Lombard, coined the term "moron risk premium" to describe the effect he believed Truss had on Britain's economic credibility.

To see if that "risk premium persists", said The Economist, we should look at credit-default swaps, the instruments that "insure investors in the event that the bond-issuer goes bust". These, said the newspaper, give a "clearer indication of financial competence".

Last September, the price of insuring British government debt against default for five years rose from 29 basis points to 49 basis points after Truss's plans were announced. Today, that instrument trades once more at 29 basis points, with "financial order" appearing "to have been restored".

Not everyone agrees. Truss's "catastrophically failed" attempt to change the country's course in a mini-budget "crashed the pound, punished mortgage holders and destroyed her party's reputation for economic competence in one fell swoop", wrote Richard Partington for The Guardian, and the UK economy is "still stuck in first gear".

Is the mini-budget to blame for high interest rates?

"The short answer is no," said Callum Mason on the inews site. Interest rates are now at 5.25%, "far higher than after the mini-Budget", he wrote, and as a result average fixed-rate mortgages are "now higher than they ever were". According to some economists, had we had not had the mini-budget, "we would have reached the rate we have now, more slowly".

But, argued Partington, policymakers are preparing to hold rates at "restrictively high levels", which will "create a grim backdrop for the next election, stoking the chances of recession and maintaining pressure on businesses and households".

What about gilt yields?

A "recurring refrain" from Truss's supporters is that gilt yields, or government bonds, are higher now than they were in the immediate aftermath of the mini-budget, said City A.M.

The Trussites argue the steady rise in yields during Rishi Sunak's premiership has received "much less commentary" than the surge seen last autumn. However, Dan Hanson, an economist at Bloomberg Economics, told the paper that while last year's surge "signalled a loss of confidence in the UK", yield prices now reflect a "rational response" rather than a total loss of confidence.

Or, as Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at Oxford Economics, said: "If Truss and Kwarteng were in power today and announced a budget like they did last year, then it's likely that gilt yields would surge again… because markets thought their plans lacked credibility."

And the pound?

Sterling is now "much stronger than the depths it slumped to last autumn", said City A.M. Then, it "approached parity with the dollar as international investors abandoned the UK putting downward pressure on sterling".

It has since recovered and, until relatively recently, was one of the strongest performing currencies of 2023. This recovery “reflects the more credible direction of fiscal policy since Jeremy Hunt took over" as chancellor, "both from the perspective of a less inflationary stance but also in terms of fiscal sustainability,” said Phil Shaw, chief economist at Investec.

What about the political legacy?

The Conservative Party is "still reeling" from Truss's plans, said The Economist. The Tories’ deficit to Labour is close to 20 points in the polls and the party's "reputation for economic competence has been shattered" but Truss "shows little contrition".

Labour has vowed to give Britain's economic watchdog more powers to avoid a repeat of what it called the "disastrous mistakes" of Truss's mini-budget, The Times reported.

Labour said that, should it win the next election, the Office for Budget Responsibility would be given the freedom to publish forecasts and analysis alongside any fiscal changes.

What does Truss say?

Truss and her supporters are "attempting to revise history", said Partington, aiming to "shift the blame" for the "clearest rejection of a prime minister's economic policy since Black Wednesday".

This week, an "unrepentant" Truss sought to blame a "left-wing infiltration of thinktanks, the Bank of England and other 'institutions' for the market turmoil during her brief premiership", said Sky News.

Liz Truss has defended the policies she tried to push through during her short time as prime minister, adding to speculation that she wants to return to high office.

In a speech at an event held by the Institute for Government think tank, she argued that she could not deliver her plans because of the "political and economic establishment".

"The Trussites may be in exile," wrote Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman, "but they do not believe their ideas have been defeated."

However, a survey by YouGov this month found that 81% of respondents felt she had done badly as prime minister, including 80% among Conservative voters. 

So can Truss win back the grassroots and mount a political comeback?

'Loyal rump'

Although her speech "prompted a furious response from some colleagues", Truss "still commands the backing of a small but loyal rump of MPs on the Conservative right", said the Financial Times.

Her "ability to galvanise some quarters of the right of her party to speak up on tax and the green agenda is only part of the problem she presents for [Rishi] Sunak", it said. Another difficulty for the prime minister is "her willingness to pick fights with the economic establishment over her doomed economic strategy".

Truss's popularity among those on the right of the party and her appeal, "in particular, to the Tory grassroots" remains "unabated", said the inews site. It is "from this base" that she aims to "push the party into more pro-growth policies".

She "gets invited to speak to grassroots members at events around the country", an ally told the news site, boasting that she receives "so many" invitations that she "can’t possibly attend them all".

She will speak at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester next month, but a source from within her camp insisted this was not an attempt to undermine Sunak by indulging in "personality politics". Rather, it is "purely about ensuring the Tory party is pushing the right policy platform that she believes the country needs".

"Publicly – and privately – there are many in the Conservative Party who think the pendulum has swung too far under Rishi Sunak," said Ali Fortescue, political correspondent for Sky News, and they "want a more coherent plan for growth". 

But "any remarks worth listening to" are "drowned out by the facts of history", she added, and Truss's "unwillingness to accept what happened" during her brief and disastrous reign.

So, although her speech "may have been the starting gun in her big comeback attempt", the "bigger question is whether anyone is really listening".

'Brass neck'

Her plans have been dismissed by "more centrist Tories", said the inews site, including George Osborne’s former adviser and prospective Tory MP Rupert Harrison, who criticised the "brass neck" of Truss. "Happily, nobody in the Conservative Party or the government is listening," he said.

Truss has made it clear she is not "going away", wrote John Crace for The Guardian, "even though that's precisely what most Tories want her to do. To shut up and stop embarrassing herself and them."

A former MP who worked alongside Truss in government described her as "really lacking in EQ [emotional intelligence], the way she goes about things", said Politico.

Another former colleague of Truss told the news site that "every time she says anything conspicuous, the public is reminded that Liz Truss was prime minister and that it wasn't some sort of fever dream". The Tories "should be trying to push that further into the past", they added.

Nevertheless, wrote Iain Watson, political correspondent for the BBC, "it is worth remembering that a majority of rank-and-file party members had backed her leadership bid last year".

Labour has accused the Conservatives of promoting a culture of “lavish spending” after an investigation into the use of government-issued credit cards in 2021 – but commentators have claimed the move could backfire.

According to the figures, 14 Whitehall departments spent at least £145.5m using taxpayer-funded “government procurement cards” (GPCs) in 2021 – a 71% increase on 2011. Labour hopes that the data dump, which it has dubbed “the GPC files”, will “reopen questions of financial profligacy or worse over handling of public money by the Conservative government”, said the Financial Times.

Among the most “eye-catching” of the revelations were Liz Truss and her Foreign Office officials “spending nearly £1,500 on lunch and dinner at two of Jakarta’s most exclusive restaurants”, said The Guardian as well as Rishi Sunak’s Treasury department “spending more than £3,000 on photographs to hang on the walls when he was chancellor and £4,500 on hotel rooms in Venice”.

Angela Rayner, deputy Labour leader, said: “Rishi Sunak has failed to rein in the culture of lavish spending across Whitehall on his watch.”

But the Conservatives hit back saying that the last Labour government had introduced the procurement cards and Rayner was “forced to defend” her own expenses after “putting hundreds of pounds of Apple electronics on expenses”, said The Daily Telegraph. The Foreign Office has also defended its expenses, with a source telling The Guardian that serious diplomacy requires generous spending to “enhance and promote British interests”.

‘Waste for waste’s sake’

In an interview with transport minister Richard Holden about the dossier, LBC’s Nick Ferrari asked: “How do my listeners benefit from £3,000 worth of – I’m going to call it artwork – on the chancellor’s walls?”

When Holden said he wasn’t going to justify every piece of government spending, Ferrari then referred to the cost of living crisis and the ongoing strikes from public sector workers. Ferrari said: “We’re all asking everyone, don’t take a pay rise, nurses get back to work, rail workers go and drive your trains. Meanwhile, the chancellor had £3,000 on his wall.”

That line of questioning hits home because “when more than half the country really doesn’t have a clue how it’s going to pay its bills”, government departments are “very obviously indulging not just in a bit of occasionally justifiable largesse, but in waste for waste’s sake”, said the Independent’s Tom Peck.

And while it would be “wrong to conclude that all government largesse is a waste of money… a lot of government largesse is, frankly, a waste of money”, Peck said, citing the fact that for many departments spending “tended to increase towards the end of the financial year”. For a very long time, Truss “flew all around the world, breathlessly announcing copy-and-paste trade deals that served no purpose beyond making her popular with Conservative Party members (and look how that ended)”.

‘Entirely unremarkable’

​Most of the entries, though, do “seem to be entirely unremarkable and obviously concerned with the machinery of government, from training courses to tea and coffee”, said John Oxley in The New Statesman.

Labour’s is an “attack which has missed the mark and may backfire”, Oxley wrote, as it “invites a return level of scrutiny on their own small spending”. Oxley also said that Labour’s own spending plans in government may also be affected as “it’s harder to argue for billions more of public money when you act like £500 can be scandalous”.

A lack of trust in politics and politicians “cuts across party lines”, agreed CapX’s John Ashmore and the opposition are “kidding themselves if they think they’ll be immune from exactly this kind of attack if they get into government”, he added.

Even more grating than that, though, according to Ashmore, is the way the report “feeds into some of the worst tendencies in British politics”, mainly the “fantasy that if only we clamp down on perks for politicians and civil servants, we’d be able to spend loads more on public services, state pensions or whatever.” He continued: “Sure, we could slash the FCDO hospitality budget, but it would probably fund the NHS for all of two minutes – and all while making us look like skinflints to our international partners.”

Liz Truss’s remarkable reintroduction into political life has caused yet more internecine strife for the Tory party as MPs continue to grapple with the debate over tax cuts.

“I was brought down by the left-wing economic establishment” was The Sunday Telegraph’s headline over a 4,000-word essay marking Truss’s political comeback.

In the piece, Truss “took aim at Treasury officials, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK media, US President Joe Biden, Tory MPs and the International Monetary Fund for the disaster that unfolded after her mini-budget four months ago,” said Politico’s London Playbook.

“I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support,” Truss wrote.

According to The Times, Truss “implicitly criticised” her successor Rishi Sunak as he marked 100 days in office. She said that as chancellor Sunak increased corporation tax from 19% to 25%, a move that was “counterproductive” and had damaged investment in the UK and “people’s wages”.

What did the papers say?

While aspects of her argument for growth “may have merit as the UK stares down the barrel of a recession and have struck a chord with some sensible senior Tory MPs”, said the i news site’s Arj Singh, “the nature and timing of her intervention means the woman once dubbed the ‘human hand grenade’ is once again causing damage to the Government and her party”.

The former PM has “reopened bitter Tory divisions over tax cuts”, said the Daily Mail, with one former minister telling the paper that it’s “an incredibly delusional essay, and most people in the party will probably want to forget her very short period in office”.

The editor of Conservative Home Paul Goodman expressed his surprise that “rather than concede, move on, and focus on the future, she denies, digs in and reimagines the past”.

And economic historian Charles Read said Truss’s claim that her government was not warned of the risks of the mini-budget was “highly misleading”. In a series of Twitter posts he explained the personal warnings he had made concluding that the Truss government “did not heed this warning, did not take care to avoid financial instability, and faced the political consequences”.

But Jake Berry, chair of the Conservative Party in her administration, said Truss had offered the right “diagnosis of the disease that is facing the country”. He told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “I think her point of ‘we need to lower taxes, we need to create a growing economy’, that’s what people want.”

It appears, though, that allies from her time in Downing Street are not lining up to support a Truss return. Although hers “are the actions of someone keen to re-enter the political fray”, said The Guardian’s deputy political editor Jess Elgot, “it very much has the feel of a one-woman comeback” as “there are very few [Tory MPs] who would risk the possibility of Truss blowing up the party again”.

What next?

Truss is reportedly poised to support upcoming interventions on lowering taxes from the Conservative Growth Group, which has 50 Tory MPs on board. But David Davis told the Independent that Truss’s backers had no chance of ousting Sunak before the next election. “Anybody who thinks she can challenge before the next election is dealing in fantasy,” he said.

On the surface then, Truss’s claims “should not matter”, said The Times, given she “destroyed her political credibility” but “in the context of Conservative Party politics, the reality is far more complicated”. Truss’s intervention is “likely to embolden the growing number of Tory MPs inside and outside of the government who want tax cuts to come sooner rather than later”, the paper said.

The problem for Sunak “isn’t so much the messenger as the message itself”, agreed Sky News’s Ali Fortescue. As one backbencher told Fortescue: “No one thinks Liz Truss is returning as the Messiah but I do want a plan for growth.”

Another issue for the PM is that “whatever you think of Truss’s philosophy, she did at least have some democratic mandate via the party vote”, said The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley. “Sunak, who was airdropped in to replace her, has absolutely none at all,” he added.

Those party members who voted for Truss this summer “consistently supported spending cuts and tax cuts marching in step together”, said Conservative Home’s Goodman.

And the future may bring a Conservative leader “who offers both within a framework of reducing the demand for government”, he wrote. But the present offers “either Sunak’s policy or Trussism revisited – that’s to say, Tory MPs floating big tax cuts without big spending cuts to match, as though last September had never happened”, he added.

“Are memories really so short?”

News that the UK is expected to be the only major global economy to shrink in 2023 has renewed calls from some Conservative MPs and commentators for immediate tax cuts to stimulate growth.

Forecasts released by the International Monetary Fund said the UK economy will contract by 0.6% in 2023, rather than grow slightly as previously predicted. This would mean it performing worse than other advanced economies, including sanctions-hit Russia, as the cost of living continues to hit households.

The BBC said the IMF has painted a “bleak picture” for the UK. However, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has so far resisted “pressure from some in his party to cut taxes to stimulate the economy”, warning it was “unlikely” that there would be room for any “significant” tax cuts in the spring Budget, and that lowering inflation “is the best tax cut right now”.

‘Targeted tax cuts will help growth’

A new pro-tax cuts group of around 40 Tory MPs – enough to deprive the government of a Commons majority – called the Conservative Growth Group is already meeting to discuss ideas. They are expected to be joined by the last two occupants of No.10, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, who are both reportedly planning pre-Budget public interventions.

The Financial Times reported that Truss, whose dramatic tax-cutting experiment nearly crashed the UK economy and forced her to resign as PM after just 50 days only a few months ago, will push for tax cuts “despite new forecasts warning of slower growth and lower tax revenues than expected”.

Some Conservative MPs have blamed the chancellor for the disappointing IMF figures, arguing that his decision to increase taxes was dragging down growth. They have been joined by some of the more Conservative-friendly newspapers, including the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, in calling for immediate tax cuts.

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith told the i news site: “I have said for some time we need growth or our debts will get bigger. Targeted tax reductions will help achieve that,” he argued.

Among proposals being discussed by the Conservative Growth Group are a drive to reduce regulation, short-term fiscal stimulus, lower government spending, stalling the planned corporation tax rise, and a review of IR35 payroll rules.

“Those who make up this new growth group see the Spring Budget as a test – but ultimately the autumn statement and then the pre-election Budget are the most important events,” said Katy Balls in i news. But “by getting the arguments in now, they hope to shape the debate around those – and the debate on the direction of the Tory party if they head to an electoral defeat (as polls currently imply)”.

‘People seem to have very short memories’

Setting out his vision for the country in a speech at Bloomberg on Friday, Hunt said that the “biggest and quickest tax cut” the government could deliver “for families up and down the country” was to “halve inflation”. It is this focus on bringing inflation down rather than cutting taxes that has put him on a collision course with many in his party.

The FT went further and said: “The insistence of the Tory right that tax cuts are needed in the Budget exasperates Sunak and Hunt, whose strategy is to stabilise the economy and bring inflation under control.”

“People seem to have very short memories,” an ally of Hunt told the paper, referring to his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-budget” statement last September that sent markets into turmoil and the pound tumbling.

“Whatever sympathies one may have for the Trussites of the Conservative Growth Group, there is no responsible case for cutting taxes on income or consumption against this macroeconomic background,” said The Telegraph’s world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.

“Whatever is gained from the countercyclical stimulus is more than lost on higher bond yields, higher mortgage rates and higher refinancing costs for companies, as well as higher Treasury payments on inflation-linked gilts,” he wrote. “Rishi Sunak is surely right: we are not ‘idiots’”.

Thousands of pieces of European Union law will lapse at the end of the year unless they are repealed or renewed by the government.

Under the Retained EU Law Bill – also known as the Brexit freedom bill – introduced during Liz Truss’s short tenure as prime minister, the government has committed to repealing or replacing around 4,000 pieces of legislation tied to the UK’s membership of the EU, many to do with employment and environmental laws.

It is a mammoth task with a tight deadline – under the timeline set by ministers, the government has until the end of 2023 to decide which laws they want to either scrap, retain or replace. Unless restated or replaced by the end of December, many of these EU laws will automatically lapse, a process known as “sunsetting”.

Why are they doing it now?

Sir Jonathan Jones, the former head of the government legal department, said the government had left itself a “needlessly short space of time to review such a vast quantity of legislation”, calling it a “terrible way to make law”, said PoliticsHome.

Three government departments – the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Transport and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – are expected to extend the deadline until 2026, said The Times. The government, however, has so far said it has no plans to extend the deadline, but a senior government source told the paper that it was “inevitable” the 2023 deadline would have to be scrapped.

One reason for the original deadline of the end of this year is political, said The Times. Any delay “is likely to anger Eurosceptic Tory MPs, who believe that the legislation is critical in showing that the government is delivering on the benefits of Brexit”, the paper said.

Employment laws

Several key employment laws could be impacted or disappear at midnight on 31 December, unless the government replaces or restates the law, or extends the deadline it has set itself.

Legal news site Lexology has identified several laws that could be affected. The average weekly working limit of 48 hours, introduced under the Working Time Regulations 1998, could be affected and either “lifted or amended”, although it noted the impact of this being done could be “minimal” given that many employees opt out of this limit when starting their jobs.

Rules over the automatic transfer of employees following the acquisition or merger of a company – also known as TUPE – could also change, said the legal site. In particular, “current restrictions on the ability to change the terms and conditions of transferred employees can impede or undermine the post-acquisition integration of businesses”. It added that there was also “considerable uncertainty” around pay and holiday entitlement.

Environmental laws

Concerns have been raised over what the bill could mean for environmental protections. Experts are “especially concerned that controls on nitrogen dioxide, one of the most harmful types of air pollution, could be dismantled”, said The Times.

There are even more “hard-won protections and safeguards in environmental law” that are at risk of being lost “in one fell swoop”, said Prospect, “either because there is a conscious unilateral decision to deregulate, or by accident in the bonfire of legislation that is lit by the bill”.

Water UK, which represents water companies, has said that up to 80% of water legislation comes from the UK’s membership of the EU, meaning that legal protections for rivers, seas and drinking water could be jeopardised. A “similar” number of animal welfare laws are also derived from EU-era legislation, said the magazine.

Science funding

Rishi Sunak hopes that the scrapping of EU regulations will be able to unleash an an “£80 billion science funding boom”, said The Telegraph. The government wants to “seize” the opportunity offered by mooted regulation reforms in the City to “unlock huge reserves of cash” that will be used for new research and development projects across the UK.

It is part of government plans to turn the UK into a “science superpower” now that it has left the EU, said the paper. This comes as Sunak is said to be “seriously considering” an alternative to Horizon, the EU’s science innovation programme.

Pre-packaged alcohol

In a move that would have “delighted” former prime minister Winston Churchill, according to the Daily Express, champagne could once again be sold in a pint bottle.

The government is considering reversing EU legislation that abolished imperial measurements, including the pint bottle for champagne, according to Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake. In a written response to former minister Tim Loughton, Hollinrake stated that the government is reviewing EU-derived laws, including the sale of pre-packed alcohol in specific quantities.

But industry experts have noted that reintroducing pint bottles for champagne would be a significant logistical challenge, with any new bottles unlikely to hit shelves until at least 2027 “because of the time it takes for the fizz to age sufficiently”, reported the Express.

Jeremy Hunt will raise taxes, cut public spending and rein in energy support to fill what the Treasury has called an “eye-watering” black hole in the nation’s finances.

In his Autumn Statement this morning, the chancellor said the UK needed to give “the world confidence in our ability to pay our debts” as he laid out plans to “deliver a consolidation of £55bn”.

However, some economists have questioned the Treasury’s calculations because they are created by arbitrary fiscal rules set by the government.

What did the papers say?

The black hole is “the gap, the space, between future tax revenues and public spending, which, if big enough to bust the fiscal rules, has to be tackled”, wrote David Smith, economics editor of The Sunday Times.

However, there was “no hint” of this “fiscal mess” when Rishi Sunak campaigned for the Tory leadership over the summer, he added. The former chancellor promised further tax cuts because, “on the face of it, the public finances were in good shape”.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had warned in March that the chancellor’s fiscal headroom “could be wiped out by relatively small changes in the economic outlook”. Since then, a drop in GDP and surges in interest rates and inflation have caused a “shift in the OBR’s assessment of the public finances”, wrote Smith.

By July, the £30bn of headroom had been lost because of higher inflation, higher interest rates and slowing economic growth. Some have pointed the finger of blame at Liz Truss and her controversial mini-budget, but although she has “undoubtedly made a bad situation worse” she is “not to blame”, wrote Joel Hills, business and economics editor at ITV News.

The problem, he argued, is that the UK has been “hit by a series of economic shocks: Brexit, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine”, while “inflation is rampant, interest rates are rising and the labour market is tight”.

Meanwhile, “left-of-centre economists” have questioned the very idea of a “measurable ‘black hole’ in the public finances”, said The Guardian. It argued that “its existence is only created by whatever fiscal rules the government has set itself” and that estimates of its size are “highly sensitive” to economic projections.

In a paper he co-authored for the Progressive Economy Forum, the economist Jo Michell spoke of the “dangerous fiction” of a fiscal black hole at a time when there are a number of “turning point signals” that mean it makes more sense to wait before introducing tax and spending measures.

What next?

Speaking to the Daily Mail at the weekend, Hunt admitted there is “some choice” over the fiscal rules a government chooses to follow and “also uncertainty in any projections”. However, he warned that if the UK failed to show the world that “we are going to pay our way”, there will be “higher interest rates, higher inflation, more instability and more worries for families and businesses”.

His Autumn Statement is “seen as crucial for restoring economic stability and credibility” after former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget in September “sparked market turmoil”, said the Nick Eardley, the BBC’s chief political correspondent.

Sunak “wants to be the premier fiscal hawk in Britain”, wrote Sam Coates, deputy political editor of Sky News, “unafraid to take difficult decisions and cut the state”. But, warned Coates, “this comes at a political, as well as an actual, cost”.

How the mighty have fallen, said Stephen Collinson on CNN. The UK used to be one of the “bastions of Western stability”, along with America. But allies who once regarded the country as “an exemplar of good governance” have been left “baffled” by its recent behaviour. It started with Britain’s perverse decision to pull out of the EU, which caused needless disruption and left the UK, as Barack Obama warned, at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal with the US.

Then came the collapse of Boris Johnson’s chaotic premiership. And now, in short order, has come the spectacular fall of Johnson’s successor Liz Truss, who succeeded in a matter of weeks in vaporising both her own credibility and London’s reputation for sound financial management. This latest disaster has “cemented Britain’s bewildering new image as a nation locked into a repeating cycle of self-harm”.

Truss’s fall is “a warning to populists everywhere”, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. The Tories have “pandered their way to ruin”, offering “simplistic” right-wing policies that don’t work. US Republicans should take note.

Britain’s standing has certainly suffered a blow, said an editorial in the same paper, but it’s in the interests of allies to now help the country “right itself”. Europe should help bring about a softer Brexit; the Biden administration should reinvigorate US-UK free-trade talks. “Britain should be more than an exporter of royal gossip and lurid political news.” Its friends must help it “regain its place in a liberal global order under attack by Russia, China and other adversaries of freedom”.

It has been an embarrassing few weeks for the UK, but it doesn’t reflect that badly on the country, said Brian Klaas in The Atlantic. At least its political system is still responsive enough to eject incompetent leaders. That’s not the case in America, where politics has become so polarised that even the worst candidates can count on a sizable level of partisan support. Donald Trump’s approval ratings never fell below 34%, no matter what he did.

Even now, Republican candidates fear losing primary elections if they so much as “whisper the mildest criticism of Trump”. The speed with which Truss was chucked out suggests Britain’s democracy is still in rude health. When you juxtapose recent events in Westminster with the past six years in Washington, “it’s clear that America’s democratic dysfunction is far worse”.

Keir Starmer will face off against his third Tory prime minister in as many months after Rishi Sunak enters No. 10 today.

The former chancellor brings a new set of challenges for his Labour rival as Starmer seeks to maintain his party’s hefty lead in the polls. And as Sunak prepares for his first Prime Minister’s Questions as Tory leader, he too will be aware that “while he has won the keys to Downing Street”, his “next opponent will be the Labour leader in a general election”, said Sky News.

What did the papers say?

“Sunak is bad news for Labour and the opposition parties, and they may as well face up to it,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. The Tories now have not only “a decent new leader”, but also “a new ‘narrative’”.

Boris Johnson was accused of damaging the Tory party’s moral and ethical authority, while Liz Truss shredded the party’s long-fostered reputation for economic competence. By contrast, Sunak resigned from Johnson’s government over the Partygate scandal and foresaw the financial catastrophe of Trussonomics.

As Sunak takes the helm, the Tories have finally got “what they really needed above all” – an “aim and purpose”, wrote O’Grady. “Fixing the economy” will mean “tough choices now, better times ahead. No more chaos and confusion. Simple as that, and endlessly repeated.”

But other commentators pointed out that while Sunak focuses on the economy, many voters will remain focused on his personal wealth, as the cost-of-living crisis worsens. The new Tory leader is the wealthiest MP in Parliament, with a family fortune estimated to be greater than that of the King.

While Sunak did “improve and sharpen up his message” during his first, failed bid for the Tory leadership, said the i news site’s Paul Waugh, the long summer campaign “also exposed weaknesses that Labour is sure to exploit mercilessly”.

As Sunak’s “sharp switch from furlough hero to too-little-too-late energy bill helper showed, he’s already found out it’s infinitely easier for a rich man to play Santa than it is to play Scrooge”, Waugh continued. And “his wife’s non-dom status” and “botched” plan to hike National Insurance, along with “his job as a former Goldman Sachs analyst and his decision to send his children to elite public schools”, all provide “fertile attack areas for Labour which can be neatly summed up as “the ‘4 Ts’ – technocracy, tax, tycoonery and treachery”.

Sunak’s personality has also come under attack by the opposition. “The most common word that Labour figures use to describe the chancellor is ‘vain’,” said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman earlier this year. The opposition “believe he makes political miscalculations” because he is “self-regarding, inexperienced and sensitive”, Rea wrote.

The Tories, turn, are likely to counterattack by pointing to Labour’s history of all-white, all-male leadership. The Conservatives “have left Labour in the dust on diversity”, said The Times’s social affairs editor James Beal, by assembling “the most diverse senior team in British political history” headed by the country’s first ethic-minority PM

“Much will depend upon how Labour choose to tackle our new prime minister,” said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. “It would only take one undisciplined Labour MP to disparage Sunak’s ethnicity as ‘superficial’ or ‘fake’ on account of his personal wealth and political opinions to remind voters of how committed to the rabbit hole of identity politics Labour is these days.”

What next?

With Britain engulfed in political and economic crisis, his party divided and pressure growing to call a general election, Sunak needs to hit the ground running (to paraphrase his predecessor) in order to win back public support.

All eyes will be on who Sunak appoints to his top team in a re-shuffle that is expected to bring together his own supporters with backers of Johnson and defeated leadership contender Penny Mordaunt. Whether Jeremy Hunt remains as chancellor ahead of next Monday’s much-anticipated fiscal statement may offer insights into how Sunak will try to revive the economy and stabilise the markets.

Tomorrow’s PMQs should also provide a flavour of how Sunak intends to tackle his main Labour rival.

“Inside the opposition leader’s office, Sunak is widely thought to be beatable,” said Politico’s Esther Webber. One such insider reportedly pointed out that “this is the man who spent the summer being embarrassed and outperformed” by Truss.

But Harris cautioned in The Telegraph that while Starmer may be “tempted” to try to embarrass Sunak over his personal wealth, the riches of the PM and his family are “land mines” that Labour “must be very wary of stepping on”. Instead, “Labour needs to be seen as a party of aspiration, and not just for those at the bottom of the economic pile”.

According to Webber, an unnamed “Labour MP suggested the party would now focus on the Conservatives’ tarnished brand and their 12-year record in power rather than on specific individuals in the next election campaign, hammering them on the fall in many people’s living standards and on struggling transport and health services.”

As the two leaders prepared to go head-to-head in the Commons, Webber concluded that “Sunak may need to up his game again for the challenges ahead”.

Rishi Sunak, 42, was declared the new leader of Britain's Conservative Party on Monday, putting him on course to become the next prime minister of the U.K.

This comes after his rivals, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt, withdrew from consideration. Sunak will be the first person of color to ever hold the position of prime minister in the country, and will be the third leader in seven weeks, The New York Times reports. Sunak will be coming into the position with the country facing high levels of inflation and economic uncertainty.

The sudden appointment comes after prime minister Liz Truss resigned from her position after just 45 days due to the failure of her fiscal plans, which put Britain's economy in turmoil. Her policies caused the value of the pound to plummet, causing major economic damage, CNN reports. Sunak predicted her plan's failure during their summer leadership contest, reports the Los Angeles Times.

After the failure of both Johnson and Truss, there has been debate within the country as to whether the Conservative Party should be appointing a third leader, with many in the opposition pushing for a general election. The Conservative Party is losing to the Labour Party in record numbers amid the chaos, Bloomberg reports.

Sunak's leadership is noteworthy for British Asians — as Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, put it: "This simply would not have been possible even a decade or two ago."

Liz Truss departs 10 Downing Street as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, resigning after just 45 days in the job and leaving office after barely seven weeks.

“History books will not speak kindly of Liz Truss,” wrote The Economist shortly after she announced she was stepping down as PM. “She had promised a radical new era of economic growth,” said the newspaper, but instead she will be remembered for her “many U-turns, unforced political and economic blunders, and having the shortest tenure of any British prime minister in history”.

Although she will serve as prime minister until Rishi Sunak is formally appointed by King Charles, which is likely to be on Tuesday, it means her tenure will be 50 days, allowing her to claim the title as the shortest-serving prime minister in British political history.

Shortest-serving prime ministers

Until Truss’s resignation last Thursday, the briefest British prime ministerial reign was that of George Canning, who served 119 days in office before he died of either tuberculosis or pneumonia on 8 August 1827. Although he served just five short months in office, his tenure was “75 days longer” than that of Truss’s premiership, said The Telegraph.

The Conservative Alec Douglas-Home also had a short premiership, lasting 363 days as PM before he was defeated by Labour’s Harold Wilson in the 1964 general election.

In India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s first stint as prime minister lasted only 13 days in May 1996, after his Bharatiya Janata Party “failed to muster the required support on the floor of the house”, said The Telegraph. He returned to power for another short stint in 1998, serving for 13 months, and then again in 1999 when he served a full term until 2004.

Siaka Stevens, of Sierra Leone, was arrested “an hour after he was sworn in” as prime minister after narrowly winning an election in 1967, according to FirstPost. The military removed him from office and seized control for two weeks before a counter-coup saw him return to power, and he then served for 17 years.

Other heads of state

William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, had the shortest tenure of any president, dying just 32 days into the job in 1841. Aged 68, he also became the first president to die in office.

He took the presidential oath on 4 March, “a cold, wet day during which he rode on horseback and delivered possibly the longest inaugural address in American history, taking about two hours”, said The Guardian. It is thought that his “refusal to wear a coat or hat that day” contributed to the illness that cut his life and presidency short, and he died a month later on 4 April.

However, the record for the shortest-ever presidency most likely goes to Pedro Lascuráin, who was president of Mexico for just 45 minutes on 19 February 1913. His extremely short tenure was “completely intentional”, said Mental Floss, with Lascuráin being used “as a pawn in a political coup” that allowed General Victoriano Huerta to seize power from the democratically elected government of Francisco I. Madero.

Monarchs and emperors

Known in popular culture as “the nine days queen”, Lady Jane Grey had the shortest reign of any British monarch. Despite being only fifth in line to the throne, she was named as heir to the throne by a dying Edward VI, who wanted England to retain a Protestant monarch.

Upon Edward’s death, Grey was proclaimed Queen on 10 July 1553, but the country would rise in favour of the true heir to the throne, Edward’s half-sister Mary, who was out of favour with the young King due to her fervent Catholicism.

Jane was deposed as Queen on 19 July, just nine days after she ascended the throne and with “her own father even abandoning her cause”, said Royal UK. Jane and her husband would be executed the following year.

The shortest reign of any monarch is probably that of Louis-Antoine, the Duke of Angoulême, who became Louis XIX when his father, Charles X of France, abdicated the throne in 1830. But Louis followed his father’s example by abdicating – just 20 minutes later.

Liz Truss is facing an uncertain future after making history as the Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.

Her resignation after just 45 days in office triggered immediate speculation about what Truss will do after quitting No. 10 next week. But pundits say the outgoing Tory leader may not have as many money-making options as other former PMs including her predecessor Boris Johnson.

Will Truss stay in politics?

Truss has not indicated any plans to step down as MP for South West Norfolk, the consitutency that she has represented since 2010. But her record-low approval ratings also appear to rule out a major political comeback like that being tipped for Johnson, who is one of the favourites to take over as Tory leader.

It is also “highly unlikely” that she will be given a spot in the cabinet by whoever succeeds her, said the i news site. “just as Johnson was not a member of hers, despite the pair being allies”.

But after returning to the backbenches, Truss will be free at least to earn money from jobs outside of a Parliament, an option from which ministers are barred.

What else might she do?

“Given the nature” of Truss’s time as PM, “it is likely she will keep a relatively low profile for the foreseeable future”, said the i site.

She might eventually move into the world of publishing, by following in the path of the string of former PMs who have signed lucrative deals for memoirs about their times in office. In 2016, David Cameron reportedly sold the rights for his memoirs to William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins, for £800,000.

And publishing insiders told The Guardian in July that Johnson could command “north of £1m” for such a book after leaving Downing Street.

But a book deal might not be the obvious route for Truss, since her reign lasted less than six weeks.

Another option could be public speaking. Theresa May earned more than £2m from paid speeches in less than three years after standing down as PM, including “£109,000 for a five-hour speaking engagement”, according to the Daily Mail.

Critics have been less than impressed by Truss’s public addresses during her time as Tory leader, however, claiming that her delivery is disjointed and lacking in passion. Even her Tory leadership victory speech was “crushingly banal”, said Freddie Hayward, political reporter at The New Statesman.

Indy100 has created a tongue-in-cheek list of other potential post-PM options for Truss. The news site suggested that she might make a bid to become leader of the Liberal Democrats, having been a member of the party during her youth. Alternatively, she might retrain as a driving instructor, since she’s already “done so many U-turns”, or become a demolition worker, “since she seems to like wrecking everything”.

How else can she make money?

Truss will continue to earn the basic MP’s salary, which rose to £84,144 a year in April.

She is also eligible to receive an annual allowance of up to £115,000 that is available to all former PMs. The government guidance on the Public Duty Costs Allowance states that those “still active in public life” can claim for the “reimbursement of incurred expenses for necessary office costs and secretarial costs arising from their special position”.

High-profile figures including Labour’s Keir Starmer and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey have called on Truss not to take the perk for having served for so short a time.

“Most people have to work at least 35 years to get a full state pension,” Davey told LBC radio. “I think working 45 days shouldn’t give you a pension that is many many times what ordinary people out there get after a lifetime of work.”

It has been another turbulent week in British political history after Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned from her post just six weeks after she came to power.

In a statement made outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday afternoon, Truss said that she could not “deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party” and had spoken to King Charles to tender her resignation. She is to remain as PM until a successor is chosen in a leadership election that is to be “completed within the next week”, she said.

Truss is now the holder of an ignominious record as the shortest-serving prime minister in modern British political history and leaves her party in chaos as – in the words of the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason – they attempt to “dredge a name” out of their ranks to avoid going to a general election.

As the Conservative Party leadership race begins, former prime minister Boris Johnson has reportedly flown back from a holiday in the Caribbean to launch his campaign – just three months after he was ousted from the job by his own MPs. His allies say they are confident he can secure the 100 backers needed to get his name on the ballot.

Johnson’s former chancellor turned leadership rival Rishi Sunak has also secured early backing from MPs, as has the leader of the House of Commons Penny Mourdant, who was knocked out in the fifth round of the last leadership race, which took place over the summer.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Citizens across China have marked the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th congress this week as officials came together in Beijing for the occasion. President Xi Jinping is expected to begin an unprecedented third term as the CCP’s leader and military commander-in-chief.
• A Hong Kong pro-democracy protester described how he was beaten in a “barbaric” attack by Chinese diplomats after being dragged into their consulate grounds in Manchester.
• Iranian competitive climber Elnaz Rekabi was greeted by hundreds of supporters at Imam Khomeini international airport outside Tehran as she returned home from the Asian championships in Seoul, South Korea, where she had competed without wearing a hijab.
• BBC chair Richard Sharp insisted that the broadcaster’s “best days are ahead” as the institution turned 100 this week.

“The lettuce outlasts Liz Truss,” announced The New York Times within an hour of the prime minister’s resignation.

In a “ludicrous statement befitting of a ludicrous moment”, the paper explained to US readers, the UK’s Daily Star had pitted a piece of salad against the embattled Tory leader in a web-cam stunt as Truss’s premiership descended into chaos. And “in the end”, said The Atlantic, “the lettuce won”.

But while the pound rallied as markets reacted favourably to Truss’s imminent departure, international commentators pointed out that the challenges facing her successor will be no laughing matter.

‘Long winter of discontent’

Truss’s successor will have to “navigate a political crisis and economic turbulence”, said The Wall Street Journal, as Britain battles “stagflation – the combination of slow growth and high inflation”.

The next PM is “almost sure to face a long winter of discontent”, added the paper’s UK correspondent Max Colchester, “with real wages forecast to fall, labour unions promising a series of strikes and many voters demanding elections”.

The House magazine editor Rosa Prince found it “hard to believe” that less than six weeks had passed since Truss met with Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral before taking over in No. 10. The Conservatives – “the most electorally successful party in British political history” – is now “battle scarred, riven into multitudes of factions and overhung with an air of bitterness”, Prince wrote in an article for CNN.

Zurich’s 20 Minuten noted that the UK government “was in a state of chaos” before Truss was “forced to vacate her post”. Hamburg’s Der Spiegel agreed that in just “six weeks at the head of government”, Truss caused “turbulence in the financial markets”.

At least Britain’s next PM “will not be subject to a months-long election like last time”, said Time’s London-based reporter Yasmeen Serhan, following reports that the Tory party leadership contest will be completed within the next week. Members are likely to “seek out a unity candidate who can bring the party together after a fractious six weeks and improve its standing in the polls”, Serhan predicted.

‘The failed lady’

Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel described Truss as “the failed lady”, and said that while she was “by no means to blame” for the death of the Queen, the circumstances under which she took office were now seen by “many Britains” as a “bad omen”.

In Russia, the Foreign Ministry publicly welcomed the resignation of Truss, who had pledged her support to Ukraine. Spokesperson Maria Zakharova declared that Britain had “never seen such disgrace from a prime minister”. Truss would be remembered for her “catastrophic illiteracy”, Zakharova added.

State-owned Russian news ageny RIA Novosti summed up the situation even more bluntly, with the headline: “Truss Humiliation. UK loses second prime minister in a year.”

A power outage that hit nearly 2,000 customers in Oregon has been blamed on a squirrel, reported UPI. Portland General Electric said 1,953 customers in East Salem lost power for around 90 minutes after a squirrel caused disruption. This is not the first time a rodent has been blamed for an outage. Dominion Energy said about 10,000 customers in Virginia lost power last month when a squirrel came into contact with substation equipment. Power was restored after about an hour.

Lettuce beats Liz Truss

A 60p lettuce has beaten Liz Truss in a tabloid stunt to see which would last the longest. “Lettuce wins as Liz leafs,” said the Daily Star after Truss announced her resignation. The paper began live streaming the vegetable on 14 October as the prime minister's grasp on power began to wobble. “Will Liz Truss still be prime minister within the 10-day shelf-life of a lettuce?” the newspaper asked. The stunt was inspired by The Economist which called Truss an “iceberg lady” with the “shelf life of a lettuce”.

UK’s first wild bison birth for a millennia

The first wild bison has been born in the UK for a millennia after “surprise pregnancy”, said The Guardian. When three bison were released in Kent in July as part of a rewilding project, the rangers were unaware one had a “secret passenger on board”, said the paper. The female calf was discovered when rangers did not see the mother, who had found a secluded location to give birth. Bison conceal their pregnancies to prevent predators targeting pregnant animals or their offspring.

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Just 44 days into her premiership, Liz Truss is standing down.

At a podium outside 10 Downing Street, she admitted that she “cannot deliver the mandate” on which she was elected and has therefore spoken to King Charles to tender her resignation.

Truss said she will remain as PM until a successor has been chosen in a leadership election “to be completed within the next week”.

Country left ‘leaderless’

Even before the announcement, MPs of all parties had been saying Truss was “prime minister in name only”, said David Maddox at the Daily Express.

Jeremy Hunt was brought in just a week ago as chancellor to help Truss shore up power. But as he “picked through the debris clearing up the mess of an orgy of tax cuts and spending promises” her authority “utterly evaporated”, Maddox said.

Hunt, seen as the “de facto PM”, was then overruled “by a coalition of Tory MPs and newspaper editors” on pensions policy yesterday, said Sam Coates at Sky News. After the “turmoil” of Wednesday, when Suella Braverman quit as home secretary and further in-party rows broke out over fracking, it was “very hard to say” who was in charge, said Coates.

This “chaotic 24 hours” has “rocked Britain’s political scene” and left the country “leaderless”, said CNBC.

Ending the paralysis

Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, is now drawing up plans for “a quickfire leadership election which will be concluded by the end of next week”, said The Telegraph.

The newspaper suggested that candidates might be shortlisted by Monday, whittled down in a series of ballots by Conservative MPs and then put to an online vote by party members on Friday unless a unity candidate emerges.

But MPs told the Telegraph there was “little sign” of such a candidate emerging as “there didn’t appear to be ‘a very high level of organisation’ among the camps of possible successors”.

After weeks of government “paralysis”, Truss’s resignation has left businesses uncertain of the plan for “policy issues such as the taxes they will pay and the extent of future energy subsidies”, said The Guardian.

Tony Danker, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, warned that the next PM “will need to act to restore confidence from day one”.

But in The Spectator, Isabel Hardman said Brady is “about to lead the party’s backbench trade union to its fifth prime minister and probably its most chaotic period yet, even worse than the chaos of the past few months”.

Liz Truss has become the shortest-serving UK prime minister on record after resigning as Tory leader following just 44 days in office.

In a statement outside Downing Street this afternoon,Truss said that she could not “deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party”. She and 1922 Committee chair Graham Brady had “agreed that there will be a leadership election to be completed within the next week”, which would “ensure that we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country’s economic stability and national security”, Truss said.

Her 89-second resignation speech followed what The Telegraph described as “a day of political upheaval and chaotic scenes in Parliament” that left Truss “clinging on to power”. After insisting yesterday that she was a “fighter not a quitter”, the “level of chaos in government, Parliament and the Conservative Party” swiftly led “Truss to a point where she knows she can’t continue”, said the BBC’s political correspondent Nick Eardley.

What do the papers say?

The final 24 hours of the Truss premiership began with a PMQs in which she sounded “confident and combative”, said The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow. Underlining her commitment to the triple lock on pensions “meant at least she was on the front foot at one point”.

But Truss’s standing suffered another major blow shortly after PMQs, with the announcement that Suella Braverman had quit as home secretary.

Braverman’s resignation letter contained “thinly veiled” digs at Truss, said the BBC. “I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility; I resign,” wrote Braverman, who also criticised Truss’s stance on issues including reducing migration numbers.

If Truss’s “grasp on power was precarious” before Braverman quit, her premiership from that point looked “doomed”, wrote The Times’ policy editor Oliver Wright. The resignation fractured an “already fragile coalition”, with many members of the European Research Group fearing that having junked the right-wing economic policies of her mini-budget, Truss was also “about to jettison all the other policies for which they supported Brexit”, said Wright.

In a sign of her “desperately weakened position” amid the “unprecedented chaos”, Truss appointed one of her “arch-critics”, Remain-supporter Grant Shapps, as her new home secretary, said Politico.

As Wednesday drew towards a close, Truss then turned “a minor vote” on fracking into “a make-or-break test of her authority”, said Bloomberg. But she “managed it in such clumsy fashion that she may have convinced most of her party that her time is up”.

When Truss’s climate minister did “yet another U-turn” to say the vote would not be deemed a confidence vote, “it seemed the PM’s entire whipping operation had been decimated too”, amid reports that the chief whip and deputy had quit, said i news’s political editor Paul Waugh. And while those reports proved to be premature, few believed that Truss could “make it to Halloween”.

What next?

The key problem for the Tories is that the party isn’t “bitterly divided and unable to reliably pull together parliamentary majorities” because it was led by Truss, said the Financial Times’s Stephen Bush. It was led by Truss “because it is bitterly divided”.

The party’s “rows over tax and spend have not been quelled by the market panic caused by Trussonomics, and its adherents will be a challenge for the next Conservative leader, whoever they may be”, Bush predicted.

This leader, “if they can find someone who can unite the party – and that is a massive if – will then face a huge challenge around legitimacy”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason.

Truss’s “resignation speech proves why she was not up to the job”, tweeted The Atlantic’s Tom McTague. “Was there a single thought in there, a sentence that conveyed an emotion or a reflection, even an attempt at a narrative to explain the last six weeks to an angry country? No. Appalling.”

As the hunt began for Truss’s replacement, The Times’s Francis Elliott related a story told by Truss’s brother about how, when playing Monopoly as a child, the now ousted PM would create “some special system” because she “had to win”.

Now, “the woman who ‘had to win’ instead leaves office as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, her project and reputation in ruins”, wrote Elliot. “Game over.”

If you think your day is off to a bad start, well, at least you're not short-lived U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose extremely-truncated tenure was outlived by a well-dressed head of lettuce.

The embattled Truss resigned from her position as leader on Thursday, after her policies triggered economic turmoil and inspired rebellion within her Conservative party. She served for just six weeks.

But independent British tabloid The Daily Star has been preparing for this moment since at least Oct. 14, when it shared a livestream titled "Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?" The popular video, reportedly inspired by a quip from The Economist, per The New York Times, originally featured a photo of Truss next to a bland head of lettuce purchased at a Tesco grocery store for about 68 cents, per the Times. The leafy green was later dressed up with eyes, a smile, and a floppy head of blonde hair, among other gags.

Of course, the lettuce won out in the end. After she resigned, "[s]omeone flipped the photo of [Truss] face-down on the table, colorful lights swirled, and a recording of 'God Save the King' played on repeat as nearly 20,000 people watched live," the Times writes.

As of 10 a.m. ET Thursday morning, the stream also featured some celebratory alcohol and a few fruit and vegetable friends to keep the lettuce company. The text "This lettuce outlasted Liz Truss" was plastered in big letters onto the screen, just above the ticker: "Breaking: The lettuce will make a speech to the nation at 18:00."

Jeremy Hunt has been described as “the most powerful man in government” and “de facto prime minister” following his surprise appointment last week.

After the new chancellor axed most of Liz Truss’s mini-budget, the ever-influential power-dynamic between No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street is back under the spotlight.

While Hunt’s position is seen as exceptionally strong, Truss has shown her power by already sacking one chancellor during her short reign. Prime ministers and chancellors are “rarely the friendliest of neighbours”, said The Guardian, as there is a “history of rivalry”, between them.

Who really has the power?

There have been many “power struggles between No. 10 and the Treasury”, agreed policy experts Dave Richards, Diane Coyle, Martin Smith and Sam Warner for LSE Blogs.

The authors recalled how, in 1964, the new Labour PM Harold Wilson created the “ill-fated” Department for Economic Affairs with responsibility for driving economic policy, in the hope of “clipping the wings of the Treasury”.

In 1989, Margaret Thatcher and her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, were at “loggerheads” over whether to join the exchange rate mechanism (ERM), recalled The Guardian. The chancellor demanded that the PM sack her own economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters. When she refused, Lawson quit, which unleashed a series of events that ultimately ended Thatcher’s premiership.

With Tony Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown there was “more than a decade of festering resentment��� between the Treasury and No. 10, recalled Jon Davies, co-author of a book about the Blair years, in The Telegraph.

So “jealous of his perceived terrain” was Brown, said The Telegraph, that in 2000, when the PM announced on TV that Britain would reach the European average for health spending, Brown stormed into No. 10, shouting: “You’ve stolen my f***ing Budget!”

Do they need to be friends?

After Brown finally took over in No. 10 in 2007 he often clashed with his own chancellor, Alistair Darling. Perhaps mindful of the political damage that such tensions caused, David Cameron and George Osborne, who were already friends and godfathers to each other’s children as they settled into No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street, formed a comparatively positive relationship.

Osborne was Cameron’s “closest ally” in government, said the BBC, and served as his chancellor for the six years Cameron was prime minister – from 2010 to 2016. However, Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, reverted to form and endured a “tense” relationship with her financial colleague, Philip Hammond, said The New Statesman.

During the Covid pandemic, Rishi Sunak’s furlough programme, made the then-chancellor the most popular member of the government – “a status ‘Dishy Rishi’ burnished with slick social media messages that stressed his own brand more than the government’s”, said AP. His Eat Out to Help Out policy also saw Sunak take “centre stage” in 2020, noted the Daily Express.

Ultimately, it was said that Sunak “wielded the dagger” that knifed Boris Johnson in the back and brought about his departure from Downing Street, said The Independent, as another ruined PM/chancellor relationship changed everything.

Why does it matter?

The connection between PM and chancellor is “probably the most important, and potentially the most problematic, of all ministerial relationships”, wrote history professor Richard Toye on the Exeter Blog.

Domestic economic management is “the most important factor in determining electoral success”, wrote Toye. Therefore, the chancellor becomes “a unique point of strength or weakness” for a prime minister. If the relationship goes well and the economy thrives, the PM can feel “fairly secure in 10 Downing Street” but if it goes wrong the consequences can “rock a government to its foundations”.

Getting the balance right is easier said than done for the MP in No. 11. A problem for chancellors is that “if they get too close to the prime minister, then like George Osborne, they become tarnished when the PM is out of favour and the political parties look for a ‘clean break’,” said Tax Journal.

“If, however, chancellors fall out with prime ministers,” then “their careers tend to be cut short by the prime minister”.

Liz Truss has declared her commitment to the pensions triple lock, a Conservative manifesto pledge in successive elections since 2010, despite rumours that she was set to renege on the promise.

Earlier this week, Downing Street said the prime minister was “not making any commitments” on government spending. Pushed on pensions specifically, a spokesperson said that reviewing the previous triple lock commitment was a “mutual decision” by Truss and the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, and it was their “agreed position” to prioritise economic stability.

But at a tumultous PMQs, Truss told MPs that she was “protecting the triple lock” after all, adding: “We have been clear in our manifesto that we will retain the triple lock. I am completely committed to it and so is the chancellor.”

After a morning of front pages “screaming about the prospect of the state pension shrinking - and sending the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly out this morning to defend that - Truss has now about-turned again, back to where she was originally”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason.

Describing it as a “U-turn on a U-turn”, The Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar tweeted that the chancellor’s “clenched jaw” suggested he wasn't quite so committed.

With today’s announcement that inflation has returned to over 10%, keeping the triple-lock means state pensioners would see a rise in their weekly payment from £185.15 to just over £200 in April 2023, “helping to alleviate some of the other pressures on their budgets during the cost-of-living crisis”, said The Guardian.

What do the papers say?

“It is not hard to see why” the chancellor was refusing to guarantee the triple lock, said The Times’s Oliver Wright and Steven Swinford. “If Hunt decided to raise pensions by average earnings rather than inflation it would save the Treasury £4 billion to £5 billion a year,” they added.

But news of the potential U-turn had not gone down well in the Conservative party heartlands. “Don’t dare go back on pensions triple lock” was the Daily Express’s front page as it claims Truss is “betraying” pensioners. “Millions face pain on pensions” was the Daily Mail splash.

The pensions triple lock “has been a central pillar in Tory policy towards the elderly for the last decade”, said The Telegraph, “appearing in successive Conservative election manifestos”. But with annual inflation growth hovering around double digits, well above wage growth which sat at 5.4% in August, this promise “would cost the government at a time when it is trying to reel back with tax cut reversals and spending cuts”, said the Financial Times (FT).

It would, though, “cause real hardship for some of the least well-off people in the UK and would be certain to trigger a political backlash”, said The Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott. In total, pensioners would be £471 a year worse off than they expected to be next April, and those who retired after 2016 will see their payments decrease by £614.

Senior pensions and retirement analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, Helen Morrissey, told the FT there will be many pensioners banking on this increase, especially after last year’s increase of just 3.1% “was rapidly swallowed up by rising inflation leaving many people struggling to cope”.

What next?

There remain serious doubts that the government would be able to push through any changes to the triple lock, given the serious disquiet among Conservative MPs.

Maria Caulfield, the Tory MP for Lewes, tweeted: “I will not be voting to end the pensions triple lock. Pensioners should not be paying the price for the cost of living crisis whether caused by the war in Ukraine or mini budgets.” MP for St Austell and Newquay Steve Double added: “Nor me”.

Others have cited that the decision to remove universal help with energy bills in April may mean the government can ill afford another blow to the pockets of pensioners in the same month. “A reduced pension rise, combined with a cut in help on energy bills, could be part of a ‘double whammy’ for millions of pensioners,” said former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb.

However, “it could be argued that it is unfair that pensioners should be protected from inflation while urging wage restraint on firms”, said The Times’s Wright and Swinford. “Against this, the triple lock is politically totemic.”

Indeed one Tory backbencher told the i news site: “They are joking. Who was it that voted for us last time? Brexiteers and pensioners. Sorry but it’s not going to happen.”

Households are facing average energy bills as high as £5,000 from April following Liz Truss’s latest policy U-turn.

Under the government’s energy price guarantee, a typical household using both gas and electricity would have paid £2,500 annually for two years.

However, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced yesterday that the guarantee will finish next April, with a review being launched on how to support consumers after that.

The government said its new policy will “cost the taxpayer significantly less than planned” and will target those most in need of support.

Speculation is already underway on where this will leave energy bills in the spring. Ofgem, the regulator, has yet to set a cap for April, but the consultancy Auxilione “predicts that average bills could hit £5,078”, according to The Times. Other forecasters’ predictions are lower: RBC Capital Markets expects £4,684 a year, the Resolution Foundation £4,000 and Investec £3,923.

Meanwhile, tweeted Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, if Hunt lets Ofgem set the price cap again from April, “then current wholesale prices point to a 73% jump in energy bills, to £4,334, for those no longer receiving any support”.

There is uncertainty about who will receive support from April. The U-turn on energy “was of course forced by turmoil in the markets”, wrote Helen Thomas in the Financial Times, but the change of plan means “it is entirely unclear who will be supported, at what prices and in what way come spring”, she added.

National Energy Action told Sky News that ending the energy guarantee after six months is an “almighty trade-off” that has already caused “huge uncertainty”.

The fuel poverty charity’s chief executive Adam Scorer said: “Many vulnerable people were holding on by their fingertips. Government has to be very, very careful it doesn’t prise them away.”

The Liz Truss era is off to quite the disquieting start.

According to a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll released Monday, Britain's new prime minister has a net approval rating of negative 61 percent, down 13 percentage points from a similar poll last Thursday. Only 9 percent of respondents approve of her overall performance, while 70 percent disapprove.

Truss is underwater even within her own party, with 67 percent of 2019 Conservative voters disapproving of her performance. "Among those who would vote Conservative now, her net approval is -15 percent," R&WS notes.

Meanwhile, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is seeing a bump in his approval rating, which jumped 3 points from last Thursday to a net positive 8 percent, R&WS reports. Starmer also leads Truss "by 47 points on who would be the better prime minister at this moment — larger than any lead Starmer had held over [former Prime Minister Boris Johnson] before Johnson resigned."

Truss was named Conservative Party leader and the next U.K. prime minister in early September, following an internal party election in which she prevailed over former finance minister Rishi Sunak. She replaced the outgoing Johnson, who stepped down in the wake of numerous scandals, including the COVID-19 protocol-flaunting controversy known as "partygate." And though many expected the start of Truss' term to be turbulent, "few were prepared" for her policies to, after just six weeks, trigger a "financial crisis, emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns, and the firing of her Treasury chief," writes The Associated Press.

The poll was conducted Oct. 16 among a sample of 2,000 eligible voters, and its margin of error for the full sample is ± 2.19 percentage points, with a 95 percent confidence interval.

Jeremy Hunt has announced the reversal of “almost all” of the tax measures proposed in the growth plan put forward by Liz Truss and his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng only three weeks ago.

In a statement this morning, the new chancellor also said that Truss’s flagship energy cap price guarantee, which was due to last for two years, would now be reviewed in April. A Tory party insider described the energy and tax U-turns as “an utter humiliation of the prime minister”, according to the Financial Times’s Sebastian Payne.

Pundits had expected the reversal of the tax cuts, which triggered market turmoil, but the axing of Truss’s long-term spending commitment on energy was a “big surprise”, said The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow. “There is nothing left of the Truss agenda at all.”

What the papers said?

The pound “spiked” and “borrowing costs are falling further” following Hunt’s statement about the government’s medium-term fiscal plan, said The Telegraph.

The announcement was brought forward from 31 October amid growing calls from both outside and within the Tory party for Truss to quit. The aim will be “to appease markets and Tory MPs alike” following the “disastrous fallout” from Truss’s original plan, said Politico.

But “abandoning the existing energy price cap scheme from April leaves this government holed below the waterline”, argued Sky News’s political editor Sam Coates. As well as households now having to face energy bill rises from April, “just as millions face mortgage payments too”, the reversals also suggest that “Labour got it right when Truss got it wrong” by proposing universal rather than targeted support.

And if the bid to steady market nerves is successful, Hunt is likely to get all the credit, according to some analysts. Truss “is no longer leading”, wrote The Telegraph’s associate editor Christopher Hope. Instead, “she is being led”.

What next?

One of Truss’s “biggest political problems is that cabinet ministers and senior MPs are already leadership plotting and organising in private”, tweeted the FT’s Payne. “Much like the end of Boris Johnson, it’s very hard to put all that back in the bottle once it's out.”

Amid mounting speculation yesterday about Hunt’s announcement, Payne reported that “even at the most senior levels of government, there is a sense that the arrival of a new chancellor has not saved the prime minister”.

But a “senior” Conservative ally of the PM told The Sun that “it is time the plotters thought about who they work for, it is the British people”.

“Those wanting a People’s Vote-style rerun of the summer contest will simply bring about an early general election,” the unnamed insider reportedly warned.

Like Truss and the Tories, the markets are also facing an uncertain future. Bloomberg economist Jamie Rush said that “Hunt has taken meaningful steps toward restoring fiscal sustainability”.

“But there’s a huge amount still to do to convince markets the UK is on the right path,” Rush continued. “His next challenge will be to identify spending cuts that are actually deliverable – that will be hard to do.”

Benjamin Nabarro of US bank Citi told The Times that the UK still had a “chronic credibility issue” that “doesn’t look set to be addressed anytime soon”.

Some believe that the damage to the credibility of both Truss and the country from last month’s mini-budget could be irreversible. “When I saw that 6am emergency statement from the Treasury, I had a flashback to my frenetic time reporting on the financial collapse of Greece during the global financial crisis 14 years ago,” tweeted ITV’s Political editor Robert Peston.

“The UK is still a long way from being in the kind of hole that Greece was in. But I genuinely never thought I’d see this kind of rolling series of tax and spending u-turns by any British government, a crisis caused exclusively by the ill-judgement of that same government.”

British Prime Minister Liz Truss, in her first substantive act as Britain's leader, unveiled dramatic tax cuts in a mini-budget released Sept. 23. The markets hated her combination of steep tax cuts and higher spending in a period of high inflation, the British pound fell to a record low against the dollar, government borrowing costs shot up, and Truss' approval rating plummeted into single digits. The Bank of England had to step in to prop up financial markets.

On Friday, Truss sacked her treasury secretary and longtime ally, Kwasi Kwarteng, the coauthor of her supply-side budget. She replaced him with Jeremy Hunt, a former health secretary and foreign secretary who has supported her rival, Rishi Sunak, in the Conservative Party leadership race to replace ousted Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Truss had already dropped some of her proposed tax cuts, and Hunt suggested over the weekend he will toss the rest of her keystone budget plans. With markets still jittery, Hunt will release an interim statement Monday laying out new budget priorities, ahead of a longer mid-term budget update Oct. 31.

"There has to be, in a pretty short time, an apology and a fundamental reset of the government by the prime minister," Conservative lawmaker Robert Halfon said Sunday. "The government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice to carry out ultra, ultra free market experiment."

"Truss is still prime minister in name, but power in government has shifted to Hunt," The Associated Press reports. Hunt said on Sunday that Truss is "in charge," adding, "She's listened. She's changed. She's been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack." But the Conservatives have to decide if Truss is permanently damaged goods in the eyes of the voters. Her party currently has a substantial majority in Parliament, but "polls suggest an election would be a wipeout for the Tories, with the Labour Party winning a big majority," AP notes.

"This is a hand-to-mouth government, living hour by hour," BBC political editor Chris Mason wrote Monday. "If you pick up the hint of panic in the air, you're right, too." Monday's statement by Hunt "is about two things. Restoring the government's financial credibility. And propping Liz Truss up in office," Mason adds. "Both remain imperiled and no one can be quite certain what will happen next."

At the start of the week, Liz Truss set out to quell dissent within Tory ranks as ministers returned to Westminster from party conference season amid reports of plots to oust her.

After a series of bruising meetings with Conservative MPs in the days that followed, criticism of her leadership had only intensified by Friday afternoon. The prime minister responded by sacking her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and announcing a U-turn on their plan to halt a rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25%.

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has been appointed as the new occupant of No. 11. During a Downing Street press conference this afternoon, the PM told reporters that she had taken action to “make sure we have economic stability” during a “a very difficult time globally”.

BBC Newsnight’s political editor Nicholas Watt reported that a group of senior Tories plan to “call publicly” on Truss to resign next week following Kwarteng’s sacking.

In the opposition camp, Keir Starmer put his party on “election footing” by restructuring Labour’s top team. Starmer told Labour staff that the “government’s collapse has given us a huge chance”.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Buckingham Palace is reportedly reconsidering whether Queen Consort Camilla should wear the controversial Koh-i-Noor diamond when she is crowned alongside King Charles III next year
• Newly declassified records revealed that Cold War double-agent Kim Philby could have been unmasked more than a decade before he fled to the Soviet Union
• Members of the Swedish and Dutch royal families came together in a glamorous state visit
• Scientists believe that microbes on ancient Mars may have triggered life-destroying climate change.

Tory MPs are in “open revolt” against Liz Truss and her plan for “growth, growth, growth”, according to reports.

Conservative politicians are “openly plotting how to put this government out of its misery”, an unnamed MP told the i news site, following a meeting between the prime minister and the 1922 Committee that backbenchers described as “painful”, “awful”, “funereal” and “brutal”, according to The Spectator.

Amid ongoing economic turmoil following Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, many MPs and commentators are wondering whether Truss can deliver the economic growth that has been at the heart of her message. Others are questioning whether growth is the right goal for the country.

What did the papers say?

Economic growth refers to an increase in a country’s gross domestic product, or GDP – the total value of goods and services produced over a specific period. It matters because “sustained rises in GDP have been shown, over the course of history, to improve our health, our wealth and our happiness”, said Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist.

In the post-war period there was a “good reason” to pursue growth, wrote Michael Jacobs in The Guardian, because it gave us “falling unemployment, rising incomes, lower inequality, higher tax revenues to pay for public services”, and “even some environmental improvement”.

However, said Jacobs, professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield, growth averaged around 2% a year from 2010 to 2019, “but disposable income has barely increased”. Why? Because the rise of “rentier capitalism”, in which ownership of land, property and company shares are “highly concentrated”, has meant the benefits of economic growth flow mainly to asset holders, “whose riches grow with no labour or effort on their part”. As a result, he believes “the obsession with GDP has to change”.

Matthias Schmelzer, at The New Statesman, also thinks Truss’s “focus on economic growth is politically misleading, economically wrong-headed and profoundly outdated”. The economic historian and social theorist believes her plan is “concealing a radical agenda of austerity” that will lead to fewer planning regulations and “lower social and ecological standards”.

Even if these policies were to achieve growth, it would be “a kind of economic expansion that curtails the prosperity of middle-income voters and further aggravates the ecological crisis”, he argued.

At the Financial Times, Tim Harford said that “a fashionable line of attack against Liz Truss’s single-minded focus on growth” is “what about the poor? What about the planet?” But he thinks this is “misguided”.

She is “absolutely right to believe that economic growth should be her top priority”, said Harford. “The problem is that she seems to have no idea how to go about it.”

He explained that it is “striking how countries with a high GDP also have flourishing citizens”.

“Pick your issue, from life expectancy to child mortality, from opportunities for women to the protection of basic human rights, cleaner streets, lower crime, even better-quality art, from TV to opera… somehow, people who live in richer countries are likely to be enjoying more of the good stuff.”

Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed that Truss is “absolutely right to focus on economic growth” because Britain is the only G7 country with a smaller economy today than in the fourth quarter of 2019, before the pandemic.

Writing for The Washington Post, Strain said that slow growth means “fewer opportunities for economic advancement”, “conflict over distribution”, as well as workers’ talents being “underutilised and energy untapped”. Ultimately, he wrote, slow growth means “dimmed aspirations and more modest dreams for the future”.

What next?

Truss and her chancellor hope to restore public, political and economic confidence in their plans. During the financial turmoil that followed his mini-budget on 23 September, Kwarteng said he would set out his economic plan and an independent forecast of the nation’s finances on 23 November.

Following an outcry from backbenchers and the markets, he said he would announce his plan on 31 October. This will “set out how he will fund tax cuts and reduce debt after his mini-budget sparked market turmoil”, said the BBC. An independent forecast of the UK’s economic prospects will be released at the same time.

Sky News today suggested that talks were under way in Downing Street “over whether to reverse parts of mini-budget”, but Truss’s aim for “growth, growth, growth” is unlikely to change.

Prime Minister’s Questions returned today after a stop-start few months interrupted by the Tory leadership election, summer recess, the Queen’s death and party conference season.

Liz Truss, who had taken part in just one PMQs since she was elected as leader of the Tory party and prime minister in early September, faced a second bruising round of questions, this time on her tax-cutting growth plan.

Keir Starmer accused her of being “lost in denial” about the impact of her policies on mortgage rates. Even the “guttural welcome” from her own MPs was “unconvincing and overwrought”, said Freddie Hayward at The New Statesman.

What is PMQs?

Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) sees the prime minister of the day answer questions from MPs on a wide range of issues but “what began as a sedate affair under Harold Macmillan has now become the centrepiece of the weekly parliamentary calendar”, said The Spectator.

Informally established in the 1880s, PMQs, as it is now known, was held over two 15-minute sessions on Tuesdays and Thursday from the late 1950s until 1997, when Tony Blair changed it to a weekly half-hour slot at midday every Wednesday that parliament is sitting.

The session normally starts with a routine “open question” from an MP about the prime minister’s engagements. Following a response, the MP then raises a particular issue, often one of current political significance.

The real exchange then begins with the leader of the opposition following up on this or another topic, being permitted to ask a total of six questions. They are the only MP allowed to come back with further questions.

The PM will then take questions from MPs who have entered their names on the Order Paper and are called by the Speaker to ask an untabled, supplementary question. “This means, in theory, that the prime minister will not know what questions will be asked of them,” said Parliament.uk. “However, the prime minister will be extensively briefed by government departments in anticipation of likely subjects they could be asked about.”

If the prime minister is away on official business, their role is usually filled by the deputy prime minister if one is appointed.

What are some PMQs traditions?

Parliament has many bizarre regulations and conventions but “watch PMQs and you’ll spot one of the more baffling traditions as MPs stand up and sit down in quick succession”, reported National World.

In order to participate in a debate or ask the PM a question in the Commons, “MPs have to stand, or half-rise to catch the Speaker’s eye – and then wait until they are called upon to speak,” said i news site. “They will then have to remain standing when addressing the room, unless they are not able to stand in which case they can remain sat on the bench”.

A more recent development is applauding an outgoing prime minister at their final PMQs – the only time clapping is permitted in the House of Commons.

The practice was started for the outgoing Tony Blair and continued through successive PMs until this year, when Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer “decided to bring that tradition, now 15 years old, to an end” and not applaud Boris Johnson as he signed off as prime minister, reported The Telegraph.

Does it matter?

The Institute for Government has described PMQs as “the most distinctive and internationally famous feature of British politics” but, as Blair wrote in his memoirs, it was also the “most nerve-racking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience in my prime ministerial life without question”.

PMQs has been “a punishing, weekly punctuation point” for every prime minister of recent times, said Ailbhe Rea on Politico’s Westminster Insider podcast. “Whatever the political backdrop, be it sex scandals or police investigation, foreign wars or backbench rebellions the prime minister is dragged to chamber every Wednesday at 12 o’clock to face the music.”

“Over the years there have been numerous zingers, gaffes, probing questions and shameless defences, contributing to the public’s perception and understanding of its leaders in the cockpit of British democracy,” said The Spectator.

Sometimes an exchange at the despatch box can move the political needle. One such example is Blair’s famous put-down of John Major in 1995: “I lead my party, he follows his”, over his inability to control his anti-European backbenchers. Major later described it in his memoirs as “the best one-liner he ever used against me” and it proved so effective precisely because the Conservative leader was in a weak position with a divided and fractious parliamentary party.

Another defining moment is David Cameron’s quip to Blair in his first PMQs, “you were the future once,” which cemented his position among both Tory MPs and the public as the true “heir to Blair”, said the New Statesman.

Yet more often than not what happens at PMQs fails to make an impression on the wider public.

William Hague who, as leader of the Tory party from 1997 to 2001, often got the better of Blair, said his PMQs performances did him no good electorally and there has long been a sense that those in the Westminster bubble place more importance on it than it deserves.

“Robust and aggressive performances at PM’s Questions boost the morale of backbenchers sitting behind you and party supporters in the country and can affect media assessments of a prime minister’s image,” said the Institute for Government, “but they seldom make any impact outside”.

Kwasi Kwarteng is to unveil his debt-cutting plan almost a month earlier than planned in a bid to reassure jittery markets following weeks of economic turmoil.

The chancellor will “rush forward” his statement and the release of forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to 31 October, said the Financial Times, as “he attempts to prove he can get a grip on the public finances and fill in a fiscal hole” left by £43bn of tax cuts.

The plan – to be revealed before the Bank of England votes on whether to raise interest rates for an eighth time this year – is expected to include further “supply-side” reforms aimed at growing the UK economy.

What is supply-side economics?

The macroeconomic theory came to prominence in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US, and is based on the idea that the supply of goods and services within the economy is a main driver of growth.

Supply-side economics is similar to “trickle-down” economics, in which wealth benefits are felt by all classes. However, the latter is based on the idea that targeted tax cuts are more effective than the general tax cuts and deregulation at the core of supply-side economics.

Such deregulation may include changes to rules on planning, childcare, immigration, agricultural productivity and digital infrastructure. Kwarteng’s plan is also expected to include further post-Brexit loosening of regulation governing the UK’s financial services sector.

Supply-side economics is visually represented in the so-called Laffer Curve, which charts the theoretical relationship between rates of taxation and government revenue. The curve was created by Reagan-era US economist Arthur Laffer, who argued that lowering tax rates boosts government revenue through higher economic growth.

As Liz Truss and her allies have repeatedly stated, the key point is “growing the economic pie”, with the ultimate goal of benefitting everyone, rather than worrying about exactly how the pie is divided up.

This theory has been challenged by a series of economists in recent years. A London School of Economics analysis of 18 OECD countries between 1970 and 2020 found that big tax cuts for the rich increased the share of national income earned by the top 1%, but had no significant effect on the wider economy in terms of unemployment or GDP per capita.

What are the Truss government’s options?

Supply-side economics “used to have a bad name”, wrote economist Allison Schrager for Bloomberg. But “a more modern view” of the theory has won “converts on both the right and the left”, although “how to achieve it is dividing policymakers”.

One policy that Kwarteng may consider could be relaxing Britain’s strict Sunday trading laws, “which increases convenience for the consumer by allowing larger superstores to stay open for longer, giving shoppers greater choice and encouraging them to make purchases”, said The Independent.

“But the downsides of such a step have to be taken into account too,” the news site continued. The measure “could eat into the tactical competitive advantage awarded to smaller shops and increase the likelihood of their larger retail rivals cannibalising trade and developing a monopoly”, which would leave customers “with fewer options and held hostage to flatlining prices”.

The chancellor has already announced the introduction of new “investment zones” with greater tax reliefs and allowances and easier planning processes. Other reforms could include tax reliefs to companies developing low-carbon technologies; building new rail links between cities to encourage trade; and investing in a faster broadband network to support businesses.

The “long-term success” of the government’s growth plan “now largely hinges on these supply reforms”, said Ryan Bourne, chair in public understanding of economics at the Cato Institute think tank, in an article for Conservative Home. These supply-side plans “have always been more important that the modest net tax cuts”, he added.

Will it work?

A “key problem” with Kwarteng’s plan is that “there seems less scope for a supply-side boost than in the early 1980s”, said MoneyWeek.

The Times’s economics correspondent Arthi Nachiappan explained that “today the UK already boasts some of the lowest headline corporate tax rates among rich countries”. But these low taxes have “failed to generate substantive growth and productivity”, he added.

Pundits are suggesting that, having already bowed to political pressure to abandon the scrapping of the top rate of tax, the government’s supply-side revolution may be dead in the water.

Rather than stimulating the UK's economy, Truss’s first financial update as prime minister “very nearly killed it – and with it, perhaps, the notion that supply-side economics is a good fit for the challenges of the 21st century”, said Canada’s National Observer.

Liz Truss made a number of speeches this week with the aim of strengthening relationships – between members of her party, and between the UK and its international neighbours.

At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, the prime minister stressed that her three priorities for the economy are “growth, growth and growth”, adding: “I will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back.” She indicated that these anti-growth opponents included taxi-riding North Londonders, the “Twitterati” and podcasters.

Yesterday, Truss addressed the leaders of 43 other European countries during the inaugural meeting of the European Political Community in Prague. In an op-ed published by The Times, the PM said that while she welcomed the opportunity for collaboration during the forum, “it must not be a talking shop. I want concrete action.”

Meanwhile, industrial action continues to cause disruption across the UK. Rail workers took part in a strike on Wednesday, and will walk out tomorrow as part of a continued pay dispute with the government. The Royal College of Nursing has also begun balloting its members as to whether or not to strike – the first time in the union’s history it has taken such action.

The PM is reportedly planning to extend laws that will mean minimum services must be provided across all public sectors during industrial action.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Brazil’s presidential candidates Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro will again head to the polls at the end of this month after neither politician secured 50% in the first round of voting.
• The UK is reportedly hoping to sign a new natural gas deal with Norway to shore up supplies amid warnings of blackouts this winter.
• The death of an Iranian teenager has raised tensions further as protests continue after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in police custody three weeks ago.

UK households may be hit by a series of three-hour power cuts this winter if gas supplies run extremely low, National Grid has warned.

The government has dismissed power-supply fears as Liz Truss looks to secure a long-term deal with Norway, and National Grid has said that blackouts are “unlikely”. But that hasn’t prevented scare headlines on many of this morning’s front pages, with Metro warning of a “winter of disconnect” and The Mirror forecasting a “return to the dark ages”.

Some Whitehall insiders fear “the narrative could run out of control”, with “prominent voices offering doom and gloom assumptions sparking frustration”, said Politico’s London Playbook.

What did the papers say?

Despite the “doom and gloom” warnings, Truss’s government “has resisted mounting a public information campaign of its own to try and reduce consumption”, said the Financial Times.

“The last thing you want to do is tell someone, you know, switch things off for the national need when it makes no difference to the national security position,” Climate Minister Graham Stuart told Sky News. “We think that we’ve got a diverse, strong supply and in all the central scenarios we’re going to be fine, but we plan for everything.”

All the same, said The Telegraph.,memories of “Ted Heath’s cabinet convening by candlelight will loom large in Westminster all over the coming weeks and months as for the first time in half a century, the spectre of blackouts has returned”.

In an update on the UK's state of readiness for the cold months ahead, the National Grid warned of a worst-case scenario in which families and businesses could face planned outages to ensure that the grid does not collapse.

If there were insufficient energy supplies, the system operator said, emergency measures would be “necessary to ensure the overall security and integrity of the electricity system across Great Britain”.

National Grid “warned that gas imports from Europe may be at risk because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, potentially jeopardising Britain’s energy security”, said The Times. And “even if gas supplies were adequate, household electricity supplies could still be at risk if temperatures plummeted, if there was insufficient wind and if there were no power imports from mainland Europe”.

Although Truss has ruled out an energy-saving campaign, the prime minister yesterday refused to reprise her pledge during the Tory leadership election that there will not be blackouts this winter.

Speaking to reporters in Prague, while attending a summit of European leaders, Truss insisted that “we do have a good supply of energy in the UK” and are “in a much better position than many other countries” – but stopped short of explicitly offering a guarantee of no blackouts.

Health leaders have warned that power cuts “could endanger thousands of people who use life-saving machines at home”, The Guardian reported.

Given that “Truss was unable to rule out blackouts”, said London Playbook, fears and speculation “are not going to disappear in the near future”.

What's next?

The UK is much less directly reliant on Russian gas than many countries in mainland Europe, and the National Grid’s latest forecasts indicate that margins between peak demand and power supply will be sufficient.

If blackouts were required, however, prior notice would be given and vulnerable households would be exempted.

Energy suppliers operate a priority service register to ensure that vulnerable customers are “given advance warning of power cuts, are at the front of the queue when electricity is reconnected, and in some cases are eligible for portable generators, hot meals and drinks, and alternative accommodation”, said The Guardian.

In a bid to conserve Britain’s energy supplies, households with smart meters will reportedly be offered up to £10 a day to reduce their energy usage at peak times from November. “They could do this by taking steps like using the washing machine overnight, for example,” said PoliticsHome.

A now-scrapped public information campaign signed off by Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg would also have encouraged householders to lower the temperatures of their boilers, turn radiators off in unused rooms and switch off heating when no one is home.

But Truss “is said to be ‘ideologically opposed’ to a public information campaign this winter amid concerns that it would be too interventionist”, according to The Times.

An unnamed cabinet minister reportedly told PoliticsHome that the campaign was unnecessary, because the public is “smarter than you think”.

Kwasi Kwarteng has been sacked as chancellor following the economic and political fallout from his mini-budget.

Amid growing calls from Tory MPs for Liz Truss to stand down, the prime minister “ripped up her leadership promise to cut corporation tax on the most chaotic day of her six-week premiership”, said The Telegraph.

Kwarteng cut short a trip to Washington D.C. and was seen entering Downing Street for a meeting with the PM today. The BBC soon announced that he had become the “second shortest-serving UK chancellor on record”, behind only Iain Macleod, who died of a heart attack after 30 days in the job in 1970. Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, has been chosen to head the Treasury instead.

What did the papers say?

Kwarteng “has a reputation for his cucumber-cool approach”, said Politico’s London Playbook, but his “rush back across the Atlantic” looked like the “frantic move of a chancellor frightened of losing his job after his fiscal spunking sent the markets spiralling into chaos”.

The chancellor told The Telegraph yesterday that he was “not going anywhere”. While Kwarteng conceded that he had faced what the paper described as a “baptism of fire”, he said: “I really enjoy the Treasury. I really enjoy No. 11.”

But in a Downing Street press conference this afternoon, Truss confirmed that Kwarteng would be replaced by Hunt, describing the former health secretary as “one of the most experienced and widely respected government ministers and parliamentarians”.

By the time the press conference had begun, “the big question was whether Truss would be able to survive herself”, said Andrew Sparrow at The Guardian. Her eight-minute performance “will have done little or nothing to persuade her MPs, or anyone else, that she will, or even that she should”, he said.

The “astonishing truth” is that a government that has “barely begun” is facing “open questions about its imminent end”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason.

Tory grandees have been in talks about replacing Truss with a partnership of Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, according to another scoop in The Times.

Some backbenchers reportedly argued that, even the climbdown over corporation tax would not be able to save her premiership. Senior Tories have discussed replacing Truss with a “unity candidate”, with either Sunak or Mordaunt put forward to succeed the PM in a “coronation” by MPs, said the paper. Between “20 to 30” former ministers and senior backbenchers were allegedly trying to devise a way for a “council of elders” to tell Truss to quit.

“Conversations are stepping up,” a former minister reportedly said.

The BBC’s Mason speculated that the party might choose a former Tory leader to replace Truss. “What about Boris Johnson? Theresa May? William Hague? I’ve heard all these names being mentioned as the future is pondered,” Mason wrote.

What happens next?

An unnamed MP told the BBC’s Mason that by sacking her chancellor, Truss “removes a lightning rod, and you know what happens then? The lightning will hit her instead.”

As things stand Truss cannot face a confidence vote until a full year has elapsed since the start of her leadership, although some MPs want to change the rules.

Sky News looked at the options for the party after their leader took the “nuclear option” to sack her chancellor. “Fuelled by cabinet resignations”, she might see “the writing on the wall” and resign, suggested the broadcaster. The rules on confidence votes could change if there is enough “clamour” and there is the potential for MPs to back one unity candidate to avoid putting the choice to the party members again.

Or Truss could make the “extremely bold decision” to hold an election, said Sky. “Then the voters would decide her fate.”

Liz Truss has hit out at an “anti-growth coalition” of critics including environmentalists, podcasters, the “Twitterati” and even taxi passengers from North London.

“I will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back,” the prime minister told her party faithful at the Tory conference yesterday. “Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP, the militant unions, the vested interests dressed up as think tanks, the talking heads, the Brexit deniers and Extinction Rebellion.”

Truss claimed that members of the coalition “prefer protesting to doing”, as they “taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studios to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo”. She added that “from broadcast to podcast”, the anti-growth coalition “peddle the same old answers” of “more taxes, more regulation and more meddling”.

The prime minister used the word “growth” 29 times during her 34-minute keynote speech, and is also “clearly very taken with the idea of ‘the anti-growth coalition’”, which she mentioned six times, wrote The Guardian’s Peter Walker.

What did the papers say?

The Daily Express reported that the PM was “cheered on” as she blasted critics “looking to derail her vision for the country”. Truss “successfully ridiculed the ‘anti-growth coalition’”, agreed Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail.

Mark Littlewood, director of the Conservative-leaning Institute of Economic Affairs, told ITV News that Truss had “drawn her battle lines” and “invented a new catch phrase of British politics”.

Members of the coalition prefer “talking on Twitter to taking tough decisions”, the PM said. “Whether she had certain backbench Tory MPs in mind,” Andrew Lilico wrote in The Telegraph, “she was at least mainly referring to media talking heads”.

The main “problem” with the anti-growth coalition, said Henry Hill for the i news site, “is that she leads it”. None of the “villains she listed” are “more staunchly opposed to the sort of policies that would deliver transformative growth than the alliance of older voters and southern homeowners that form the core of the Tory coalition”, he added.

While her conference speech “gave us no new policies”, said Walker in The Guardian, Truss “did give us a fresh rhetorical framing” of her unpopular economic plans as “a distinctly Brexit-reminiscent battle between plucky, patriotic reformers and a cabal of liberal, urban elitist naysayers”.

The PM “will hope she can, again as with Brexit, enlist some culture war energy into what risks otherwise being a somewhat dry economic debate” that is causing divisions within her party in the wake of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget, added Walker.

If that is her aim, it appeared to work, said Quentin Letts in The Times. “Her riff against ‘the anti-growth coalition’ of Twitterati and snoots taking taxis from their north London townhouses to denounce growth met with shouts of ‘yes!’” he wrote.

However, The Independent reported that beyond the conference hall, Truss’s anti-growth claims triggered a “furious backlash”. The CPRE countryside charity said the PM’s “disingenuous and misleading” words presented a “false choice between the economy and the environment”.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that “ranting about an imaginary ‘anti growth coalition’ is just an attempt to obscure the hard reality that the biggest brake on UK growth is Brexit – and that’s on the Tories”.

What next?

“This new ‘coalition’ includes a range of individuals you’d expect Ms Truss to be fairly cheesed off with at the moment,” said Indy100.

But along with Labour, the Lib Dems and the like, the coalition membership is “mainly the Conservative Party’s voting base”, according to Capx.

Speculation is rife about who else might be part of the coalition, with wags on Twitter suggesting bats and David Attenborough as possible candidates. The Guardian’s John Crace quipped that Truss had “declared war” on taxi passengers.

The PM’s spokesperson was also asked if healthy eating campaigner Jamie Oliver had been identified as a coalition member, after Truss said during her speech that “I’m not interested in how many two-for-one offers you buy at the supermarket”. The spokesperson responded: “I’m not going to name individuals.”

Truss told the Tory conference that “the anti-growth coalition just doesn’t get it because they don’t face the same challenges as normal working people”.

“This is confusing, though,” said HuffPost, “as the growth plan Truss and Kwarteng have unveiled mainly benefits the wealthiest in the country – not the ‘normal working people’.”

Liz Truss attempted to rally her party today with a message of unity following what pundits described as “a ropey few days for the government”.

In her maiden Conservative Party Conference speech as leader, the prime minister “focused on selling her economic vision and persuading people it would work”, said the BBC’s chief political correspondent Nick Eardley.

“Whenever things change, there is disruption, but everyone will benefit from the result – a growing economy and a better future. I have three priorities for our economy: growth, growth and growth,” Truss told delegates in Birmingham.

But only a month into the Truss premiership, the mood at the conference was “grim to funereal”, said The Spectator’s Tim Stanley. “There’s a sense that something has changed in British politics and we ain’t going back.”

Divisions within the party have been compounded by Labour’s soaring lead in the polls, which has fuelled questions about the future direction of what The Economist described three years ago as “the world’s most successful political party”.

What did the papers say?

“I’ve never seen a conference dissolve quite like this one”, said Andrew Marr on LBC radio. “The real question is, is this the beginning of the great unravelling of much more?”

The former BBC presenter said the mood of the conference felt “fatal” for the government, even though the “real opponents” of Truss had “stayed away”.

The conference has been a “festival of internal discord and division”, wrote Freddie Hayward in The New Statesman. The unrest was highlighted by the government’s U-turn on the cutting of the 45p top tax rate, which was intended to “pacify the government’s rebellious MPs”, he continued. A subsequent speech “riven with contradictions” by Kwasi Kwarteng failed to quell anger against the chancellor and the PM.

The government’s refusal to commit to raising benefits in line with inflation has created “a fresh battle with MPs”, said The Guardian, and has triggered “concern from among her cabinet”. Penny Mordaunt and Robert Buckland are among the ministers who have questioned reported plans to increase benefits in line with wages instead.

There is also “growing anger” from some MPs over the comments made by Home Secretary Suella Braverman that they had “staged a coup” in order to force Truss into reversing the decision on the top rate of income tax, said Politics Home. MPs including former cabinet minister Michael Gove said “they were simply doing what we believe to be right”.

What next?

The turbulent conference has led to talk of the possible end of a Conservative era. “The Conservative Party seems to be stuck,” wrote Harry Lambert in The New Statesman. For the past 15 years “it has been the Conservatives who have set the pace of British politics” however, a “general election held today would see the parties switch places”.

The Tory party isn’t “​​certain to lose the next election but we have reached the point where everyone in politics expects them to”, wrote Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. The party “seems to want to be at war with as many people as it can find” and there has been a “narrowing” of support within the government after Liz Truss excluded “almost anybody who didn’t support her” in the leadership contest. “How can it possibly win from such a narrow position?” he added. “It becomes a sect not a party.”

The Conservatives’ downfall could be brought about because of how Western conservatism has changed, said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. Liz Truss is “out of touch” with the “electoral sweet spot for right-of-centre governments”, he wrote. Recent elections in Italy and Sweden have seen “anti-libertarian right-wing politics, favourable to the welfare state and sceptical of immigration” succeed because of constituents “buffeted by globalisation and anxious about national identity”.

Liz Truss is going in the “opposite direction” he argues, on a “Reagan-Thatcher nostalgia trip, that’s carried the Tories away from their own constituents” and away too from the populism of the previous Boris Johnson government.

Across Europe there has been “collapsing support for moderate right-wing parties” alongside the centre-left, said Benjamin Fox at Euractiv. Though it maintained power, the Conservative Party has “morphed into an increasingly nationalist and populist party since Brexit”. Populist and nationalist parties have replaced established conservatism by offering “quick-fix policies” and “easy answers”.

In contrast, Philip Johnston in The Telegraph suggests the Tories have simply “run out of steam” in a seemingly natural “finite term for governments of around 13 or 14 years”. At the time of the next scheduled general election it will have been 14 years of a form of a Conservative government, and “there is nothing to suggest that they can get past this invisible barrier”.

The UK is reportedly on the brink of agreeing a natural-gas contract with Norway for up to 20 years in a bid to avoid gas shortages this winter.

Ministers are “still locked in negotiations with their Norwegian counterparts on price, the amount of gas and the length of the contract”, a source told Bloomberg, but “a deal is expected to be secured next week”.

Norway is already the UK’s largest supplier of gas – providing around half of Britain’s gas – but there is “growing competition for its output”, said The Telegraph, as countries across Europe respond to the loss of Russian supplies.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, warned on Monday that there’s a “significant risk” of gas shortages this winter that could see some power stations switched off. Just 24 hours later, energy bosses warned of risks to gas supplies next winter even if the continent manages to avoid a crisis this year.

Liz Truss told Sky News that ministers were “looking” at multi-year gas deals with Norway and elsewhere. “I have not signed any deal,” she said, “but what I’m saying is that Britain’s energy security is vital and what we will be doing is always looking for value for money”.

Earlier, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg told a fringe meeting at the Tory Party conference that he’d been in talks with a “friendly country” about energy supplies.

However, Treasury officials have privately warned that Britain could end up locked in expensive long-term energy deals under proposed arrangements to secure gas from Norway and elsewhere.

The UK would have to pay a “security premium” to foreign states in return for boosting the country’s future energy security, senior government figures have told the Financial Times. Therefore, said The Sun, a new deal with Norway “risks spooking nervous markets even more”.

Liz Truss is refusing to say whether benefits will rise in line with inflation as her government looks to make billions of pounds in savings to pay for controversial tax cuts.

Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, the prime minister told the BBC that “we have to be fiscally responsible” and reduce the national debt.

Although disability benefits and carer’s allowance “must increase in line with inflation by law”, said the broadcaster, “no decision has yet been made on whether a rise will be linked to prices or wages” for working-age benefits such as Universal Credit.

‘New front in Tory infighting’

Speculation about Truss’s economic plans has been mounting after Treasury Secretary Chris Philp said last week that a commitment by Rishi Sunak to uprate benefits in line with inflation was “under consideration”.

Both the former chancellor and Boris Johnson vowed to increase benefit and pension payments next April in line with this September’s Consumer Prices Index measure of inflation, “which is currently 9.9%, subject to a review by the work and pensions secretary”, the BBC reported.

Raising benefits in line with wages instead could save an estimated £5bn, amid reports that government departments have been asked to set out plans for “efficiency savings”.

According to the i news site, experts have calculated that the policy shift “would amount to a cut of four percentage points and cost the average low-income working family with two children more than £1,000 a year”.

The possible move risks another row within the Tory party and cabinet as Truss faces unrest following the disastrous fallout from last month’s mini budget. The benefits battle “looks set to be the new front in Tory infighting”, said The Telegraph, which reported “unease at the top of government, with some cabinet ministers understood to believe that refusing to increase benefits by inflation is a ‘non-starter’”.

Former Tory leadership contender Penny Mordaunt told Times Radio this morning that increasing benefits in line with inflation “makes sense”.

“We want to make sure that people are looked after and that people can pay their bills,” the Commons leader said. We are not about trying to help people with one hand and take away with another.”

An unnamed cabinet minister told The Times that pushing ahead with a curb to benefits would be “mad” and “politically unsustainable” as households across the UK struggle with the cost of living.

But another told the paper that increasing benefits at a rate higher than wages are increasing would be “unfair”. Allies of Truss reportedly asked: “How can it be right that someone who gets up at 6am and works hard all day is seeing their pay go up by 5% or so and someone who is not working and is on benefits gets a 10% rise?”

Weighing up priorities

Despite the threat of a Tory revolt, No. 10 “is preparing to question whether it is fair for people on benefits to get inflation-linked rises while scores of workers get real-terms pay cuts”, said The Telegraph. Record-low levels of unemployment in Britain is also “leading to calls for more to be done to incentivise people to take jobs”, the paper added.

The Times reported that “some in government believe Truss’s U-turn on scrapping the 45p rate of tax will make it easier to impose real-terms cuts in benefits”.

“In an effort to mitigate a backlash,” the paper continued, “some are seeking to link any Universal Credit squeeze to the £650 cost-of-living payments being given to eight million households claiming the benefit this winter.”

But Work and Pension Secretary Chloe Smith was “thought to be resisting this line of argument and is warning against attempts to see the welfare budget as an easy source of savings”. She told the Tory conference yesterday that “protecting the most vulnerable is a vital priority for me and this government”.

The Treasury is understood not to have yet made formal suggestions” to Smith’s department, said The Times, and the minister stressed that “she would not make a decision for at least two weeks”, until the inflation data for last month has been reviewed.

The threat of Austerity 2.0 is looming as Tory ministers prepare to “trim the fat” from the welfare state amid the fallout of Liz Truss’s planned tax cuts.

Following a backlash from voters and Conservative MPs, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has confirmed that proposals to axe the 45p top rate of income tax, announced in his mini budget just ten days ago, are being scrapped. But spending cuts needed to pay for the government’s other tax giveaways and borrowing spree are “raising the prospect of a return to austerity”, said ITV News’ political correspondent Carl Dinnen.

Speaking ahead of the Tory party conference, which kicked off in Birmingham on Sunday, Levelling-up Secretary Simon Clarke told The Times that Britain had been “living in a fool’s paradise” but now needed to reduce public spending to help to fund the government’s £45bn worth of tax cuts. Truss ally Clarke warned that Whitehall departments would have to “trim the fat” from the “very large welfare state”.

What is the government planning?

During the Tory leadership contest, Truss said she was not planning “public spending reductions” despite proposing vast tax cuts. But last week she said that her ministers were looking for cuts across government and that there are “plenty of areas” where taxpayers’ money could be saved.

According to The Sunday Times’ political editor Caroline Wheeler, Kwarteng has told ministers that “we have a duty to live within our means” and has ordered spending reductions in their departments.

In an approach “similar to that of the former chancellor George Osborne, who set up the public sector efficiency challenge”, Wheeler wrote, Kwarteng is also “launching a reprioritisation, efficiency and productivity review across the public sector”. This review will re-examine “existing spending commitments” and repurpose budgets to deliver the government’s “core priorities”, including growth.

Be in no doubt, Wheeler warned, “austerity 2.0 is on the way”.

The Resolution Foundation has also predicted that Britain’s public sector is heading for a replay of the austerity imposed by the David Cameron-led coalition.

Truss’s government “is likely to need to announce fiscal tightening of between £37bn-£47bn” a year in order to meet commitments to be reducing national debt by 2026-27, the independent think tank reported. The “painful” policy choices facing the Treasury include cutting public investment projects and “uprating benefits (including the state pension) by earnings instead of inflation”.

“To avoid even deeper spending cuts, the prime minister will also need to abandon her pledge to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030,” the foundation added.

The Sun reported yesterday that government insiders had confirmed that benefits “may only rise in line with earnings rather than inflation next year, as ministers look to cover the cost of the £650 energy bailout for Universal Credit claimants”.

The Guardian said that Tory MPs had “hinted at a deep unease” about spending cuts, with at least 14 “publicly expressing concern about the plans”.

Former cabinet minister Damian Green, who chairs the One Nation group of Conservative MPs, told a rally at the Tory conference that the party should always be about “helping people make the most of opportunities whatever their background”.

“If we end up painting ourselves as the party of the rich and the party of the already successful, then funnily enough most people won’t vote for us,” Green added.

What next?

An unnamed former cabinet minister described Truss as a “dead woman walking” who would not last until Christmas if she refused to U-turn on cutting the 45p tax rate, The Mirror’s political editor John Stevens reported yesterday.

Former chancellor Osborne told Channel 4’s The Andrew Neil Show that it was also “touch and go” whether Kwarteng would survive the fallout.

The chancellor’s announcement today that the much-criticised cut was being ditched “may quell some of the political criticism”, said the BBC’s chief political correspondent Nick Eardley. But Labour has warned that “the damage is done – that the increase in the cost of borrowing has already happened and that will mean higher mortgage rates”, Eardley added.

Kwarteng has promised to publish the government’s medium-term fiscal plan to get debt falling, along with economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), on 23 November. He also aims to set out reforms to support growth, including changes to business regulations, planning rules and immigration policies.

But for now, “All eyes” will be on Kwarteng’s speech at the Tory conference this afternoon, ahead of Truss’s speech on Wednesday, said Rachel Wearmouth in The New Statesman.

“If neither manages to satisfy the markets and MPs that they have a plan to transform their fortunes,” Wearmouth warned, “their demise may only be a matter of time.”

The government is ditching much-criticised plans to scrap the 45p top rate of income tax, the chancellor has announced.

In what the BBC described as a “humiliating climbdown”, Kwasi Kwarteng told the broadcaster that the proposal, announced ten days ago in his mini budget, had become “a massive distraction on what was a strong package”.

“We just talked to people, we listened to people, I get it,” he said.

At least 14 Tory MPs had come out publicly against the plan, The Times reported yesterday, including former ministers Michael Gove and Grant Shapps.

The latter had predicted this morning that Liz Truss would lose a Commons vote on cutting the top tax rate. “I don’t think the House is in a place where it’s likely to support that,” Shapps told the BBC.

The Sun described the tax U-turn as a “body blow to the new government”. The Financial Times said the “retreat” would “add to Tory concerns” that Kwarteng and Truss have “lost a grip” on the economy.

The pound hit a record low against the dollar after Kwarteng announced the tax cuts, but sterling “edged higher” this morning, rising 0.3% against the dollar to just under $1.12 in trading in Europe, the paper reported.

News of the U-turn came hours before Kwarteng addresses the Conservative conference in Birmingham. Overnight briefings of his speech showed that the chancellor had been planning to hold firm on the 45p tax measure, saying: “We must stay the course. I am confident our plan is the right one.”

But now, Truss’ “first budget is in tatters with its central policy about to be ditched, her first party conference as prime minister is descending into chaos, and her position is considerably weaker”, said Politico’s London Playbook.

What is it about French tycoons and British phone companies? While Patrick Drahi lays siege to BT, another “French rebel”, Xavier Niel, has begun storming the ramparts of Vodafone, said Jamie Nimmo in The Sunday Times. Niel has built a 2.5% stake worth £750m in the UK mobile phone giant via his Atlas Investissement vehicle.

The founder of the Iliad telecoms empire is something of a celebrity entrepreneur in France, his profile raised by his long-term relationship with the heiress to the LVMH fortune, Delphine Arnault. Niel’s exact plan for Vodafone is anyone’s guess. He has left the market, and the company’s top brass, guessing.

“Brexit was supposed to awaken a latent buccaneering spirit,” said Tom Braithwaite in the Financial Times. “And so it has. For the French.” The Iliad/Vodafone tilt is just one of “a flurry of cross-Channel deals” struck on a single day last week, involving tech, satellite and recycling companies. Is this some kind of “dastardly” French plot? Bankers point instead to the relative decline in valuations and currency. Prepare for a rash of American companies to join the French “at the UK’s bargain bin”.

“Even before sterling got this low, foreign corporate and buyout bidders were taking advantage of relative dollar strength to pounce on London-listed companies,” said Chris Hughes on Bloomberg. Thanks to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, this “UK is cheap” narrative has “gotten another leg”.

Analysts at Canaccord Genuity recently drew up a list of 100 companies it considers to be targets – including ITV, Next, Greggs, BAE Systems, Flutter and The Week’s publisher, Future, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. The most “vulnerable” are the “cheap and cash rich”. The “rock bottom pound” has turned some of our best companies into “sitting ducks”.

Prime Minister Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng are refusing calls for a U-turn after their radical tax-cutting “mini-budget” plunged the markets into turmoil this week.

The government’s controversial fiscal strategy, which included plans to implement some £45bn worth of tax cuts, prompted the pound to fall to an all-time low against the dollar and raised the prospect of further interest rate hikes from the Bank of England (BoE) to deal with spiralling inflation.

In a highly unusual move, the BoE was forced to announce a £65bn emergency intervention to avert an economic crisis in the wake of the mini-budget, buying billions of pounds’ worth of government bonds to prevent people’s pensions being put at risk.

Truss defended the plans in a round of broadcast interviews on BBC local radio yesterday, describing the mini-budget as “decisive action” that had to be taken in order to “get the economy moving”.

But both Truss and Kwarteng today met the government’s independent economic forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, which has demanded a “rethink” of the government’s fiscal strategy, according to The Times.

Meanwhile, Labour is enjoying its largest poll lead since the Tony Blair years, after a YouGov survey found that 54% of voters would back Labour in a snap general election with only 21% supporting the Tories. The 33-point lead is the party’s highest in almost three decades.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Two gas pipelines between Russia and Germany, Nord Stream 1 and 2, have been damaged in explosions, with several European leaders quick to claim that sabotage was a likely cause.
• An investigation into the death of Marc Bennett, a British travel industry boss, in Qatar has reportedly uncovered fresh evidence that he was detained and tortured by the country’s secret police in the final weeks of his life.
• Vladimir Putin’s plan to send 300,000 new conscripts to support his war in Ukraine is facing increasing resistance in Russia as anti-mobilisation protests spread across the country.

Liz Truss is in Prague for the inaugural summit of the European Political Community (EPC), a new forum proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron to bring together EU nations and those outside the bloc.

The meeting is a 44 nation-strong “smorgasbord of speeches, one-to-one meetings and roundtables in the Czech capital”, said Politico’s London Playbook, “with the Russian war in Ukraine and the resulting fuel crisis dominating the agenda”.

The prime minister will make her second speech in as many days, seeking this time “to convince the gathering that the UK has continued to play a leading role in Europe despite Brexit”, said Sky News.

Truss will tell her fellow European premiers: “Europe is facing its biggest crisis since the Second World War and we have faced it together with unity and resolve. We must continue to stand firm - to ensure that Ukraine wins this war, but also to deal with the strategic challenges that it has exposed.”

Described by The Guardian’s Jennifer Rankin as an “ardent convert to Brexit”, Truss has remained sceptical about the EPC and she set out some of these reservations in an op-ed for The Times.

“I welcome the opportunity to work with leaders from across the continent in this new forum,” she wrote. “But this must not cut across the G7 and Nato, and it must not be a talking shop. I want to see concrete action.”

Part of the reason Truss is attending is because “British diplomats have been reassured that the EU is not going to dominate the body”, said The Guardian’s Rankin. But while her attendance will be viewed as a “mark of unity”, there is nobody who “expects the gathering to resolve deep and lingering post-Brexit conflicts”, she added.

What is the EPC?

The summit is the brainchild of Macron, who hopes it can bring together European nations from within and outside the EU.

The French president announced it in May, in a speech to mark Europe Day. He said that leaders had a “historic obligation” to form a “new European organisation” that “would allow democratic European nations to find a new space for political cooperation, security, cooperation in energy, transport, investment, infrastructure [and] the movement of people”.

The EPC includes the leaders of the EU, as well as candidate countries such as Ukraine, the western Balkans and Turkey, and neighbours that explicitly do not want to be in the union, such as Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

Why is Truss attending?

Truss’s new-found enthusiasm for the group will “raise eyebrows”, said The Independent, given she was explicitly critical of the project just a few months ago when she was foreign secretary.

In June, she said she did not “buy into” a Europe-wide political community. But in a significant volte-face, the prime minister has now even expressed willingness to host the next summit of the EPC in London.

Truss is said to believe that the new group offers an opportunity to rebuild the UK’s relationship with the EU in the wake of Brexit. “It’s good that the EU is thinking about their relationship with us after Brexit and vice-versa,” said one Truss supporter.

The UK’s participation in the summit could also help to ease tensions over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of Britain’s Brexit deal with the EU that has proven most controversial.

Is Truss’s attendance a risk?

For Truss, rejoining a European political project is a “high-risk” move, which comes at a “sensitive time”, Politico said. This is especially so considering the broadly eurosceptic complexion of her Conservative Party post-Brexit, not to mention the fact that “she is already battling to save her skin”, the news site added, after a “disastrous” first few weeks in office.

The move has certainly proven popular with Tories who did not want Britain to leave the UK. Former cabinet minister David Lidington, who backed Remain in the Brexit referendum, said yesterday that Truss’s attendance would be a “very welcome development”.

What does the EU think of the project?

“Critics, within the EU, are wary of what they see as a ‘vague’ French-led project,” the BBC reported.

Some have expressed concern that France, “a known sceptic of EU expansion”, will use the EPC as a way to create a “parking lot” for countries who want to join the EU. However, Brussels officials have stressed that the new community will not “replace” its own enlargement policy.

Many within the EU have welcomed the UK’s participation in the group. They see Truss’s decision to attend as a “positive signal” after the UK’s relationship with Europe turned “sour” under Boris Johnson, particularly over the Northern Ireland Protocol, said the FT.

“[Truss’s] participation sends a positive signal about broader neighbourhood engagement,” a senior EU diplomat told the newspaper. “It would have equally been worrying if she had decided not to attend.”