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Conservative Party Conference: give Truss a chance
October 6, 2022 in history, surveys | Tags: 2022, Birmingham, Boris Johnson, Conservative Party, Dan Wootton, England, GB News, government, Grant Shapps, Guido Fawkes, history, Iain Duncan Smith, immigration, Jacob Rees-Mogg, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Kwasi Kwarteng, Liz Truss, Mel Stride, Michael Gove, Nadine Dorries, Simon Clarke, Sir Graham Brady, Suella Braverman, survey, tax cut, UK | 2 comments
After the gloomy opening of the Conservative Party Conference this year, dominated by U-turns, rebels and division, I promised good news.
Liz Truss's closing speech
Prime Minister Liz Truss gave an excellent closing speech and, despite the train strike that day, the conference hall in Birmingham appeared to be filled.
Her speech is 36 minutes long, but it went by very quickly indeed:
I watched a bit of GB News on Wednesday afternoon. One of their reporters interviewed Party members leaving conference. Nearly all said that they were 'pleasantly surprised' and reassured by what the new Prime Minister had to say.
Writing for The Telegraph, veteran journalist Patrick O'Flynn concluded, 'Liz Truss might just have rescued her premiership' (emphases in purple mine):
Strip away the depressing context surrounding Ms Truss's speech, of backbench rebellions and media pile-ons, and what we heard and saw was a well-crafted address that attempted to place her culturally on the side of "normal working people" – especially in the private sector. More notably, she has positioned herself firmly against an "anti-growth coalition" whose members she characterised as being driven from north London town houses to BBC studios to preach "more tax, more regulation, more meddling".
"They don't understand the British people. They don't understand aspiration," she said, adding: "The real heroes are the people who go out to work, take responsibility and aspire to a better life for themselves and their families and I am on their side."
This was an attempt to glue back together an old alliance between a female prime minister and her natural supporters: that which existed between Margaret Thatcher and "our people". So was a key message towards the end of the speech. Not the grandiose "the lady is not for turning" which had after all been made untenable by the U-turn on top rate tax, but the more sober phrase "we must stay the course".
Guido Fawkes has the transcript, excerpted below.
Truss began by thanking Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of Birmingham, which is the United Kingdom's second largest city. She praised Teesside's mayor, Ben Houchen, as he transforms the North East of England.
She acknowledged that we are in difficult days:
Together, we have mourned the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the rock on which modern Britain was built.
We are now in a new era under King Charles III.
We are dealing with the global economic crisis caused by Covid and by Putin's appalling war in Ukraine.
In these tough times, we need to step up.
I am determined to get Britain moving, to get us through the tempest and put us on a stronger footing as a nation.
I am driven in this mission by my firm belief in the British people.
She said she would not meddle in our personal affairs but resolve the concerns that unite us:
… I'm not going to tell you what to do, or what to think or how to live your life.
I'm not interested in how many two-for-one offers you buy at the supermarket, how you spend your spare time, or in virtue signalling.
I'm not interested in just talking about things, but actually in doing things.
What I'm interested in is your hopes and fears that you feel every day.
Can you get a good job locally?
Is it safe to walk down the high street late at night?
Can you get a doctor's appointment?
I know how you feel because I have the same hopes and fears.
I want what you want.
I have fought to get where I am today.
I have fought to get jobs, to get pay rises and get on the housing ladder.
I have juggled my career with raising two wonderful daughters.
I know how it feels to have your potential dismissed by those who think they know better.
She then related an anecdote from her childhood, which may over-40s will recognise:
I remember as a young girl being presented on a plane with a "Junior Air Hostess" badge.
Meanwhile, my brothers were given "Junior Pilot" badges.
It wasn't the only time in my life that I have been treated differently for being female or for not fitting in.
It made me angry and it made me determined.
Determined to change things so other people didn't feel the same way.
This I did not know:
I stand here today as the first Prime Minister of our country to have gone to a comprehensive school.
She gently reminded her audience that the Government has already addressed the fuel price crisis. The cap is £2,500:
Let's remember where we were when I entered Downing Street.
Average energy bills were predicted to soar above £6,000 a year.
We faced the highest tax burden that our country had had for 70 years.
And we were told that we could do nothing about it.
I did not accept that things had to be this way.
Around that point, two protesters waved a Greenpeace banner (Guido has the video):
WATCH: Eco Loons Crash Liz Truss's Conference Speech https://t.co/fbhbjGBK34 pic.twitter.com/oJ4rRRxgAd
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) October 5, 2022
They would have had to sign up to be Party members in order to get in, just as the protesters did who infiltrated the Party leadership hustings in July and August.
Conservative men quickly took the banner away. The women had a spare to unfurl. That too, was swifly removed.
Truss quipped:
Now later on in my speech my friends I am going to talk about the anti-growth coalition.
But I think they arrived in the hall a bit too early, they were meant to come later on.
We will get onto them in a few minutes.
She paused while security removed the women from the conference hall.
She concluded on the fuel price cap:
We made sure that the typical household energy bill shouldn't be more than around £2,500 a year this winter and next.
We followed up with immediate action to support businesses over the winter.
We are determined to shield people from astronomically high bills.
So much so, that we are doing more in this country to protect people from the energy crisis than any other country in Europe.
Our response to the energy crisis was the biggest part of the mini-Budget.
Later, she borrowed one of Michelle Obama's phrases from the 2008 presidential campaign:
We need to fund the furthest behind first.
And for too long, the political debate has been dominated by the argument about how we distribute a limited economic pie.
Instead, we need to grow the pie so that everyone gets a bigger slice.
That is why I am determined to take a new approach and break us out of this high-tax, low-growth cycle.
She also used John McCain's 'my friends' in addressing the audience, more than the transcript references. That, too, came from the 2008 presidential campaign:
When the government plays too big a role, people feel smaller.
High taxes mean you feel it's less worthwhile working that extra hour, going for a better job or setting up your own business.
That, my friends, is why we are cutting taxes.
We have already cut Stamp Duty, helping people on the housing ladder – especially first-time buyers.
We are reversing the increase in National Insurance from next month.
We are keeping corporation tax at 19%, the lowest in the G20.
We are helping 31 million working people by cutting the basic rate of income tax …
The fact is that the abolition of the 45p tax rate became a distraction from the major parts of our growth plan.
That is why we are no longer proceeding with it.
I get it and I have listened.
She reiterated pledges for post-Brexit and post-pandemic Britain.
She made a good point about Western complacency, something I have been saying for years:
One of the reasons we are facing this global crisis is because collectively the West did not do enough.
We became complacent.
We did not spend enough on defence.
We became too dependent on authoritarian regimes for cheap goods and energy.
And we did not stand up to Russia early enough.
We will make sure this never happens again.
She pledged continued support for Ukraine, which earned her a standing ovation.
Then it was time for her to talk about the anti-growth coalition — the metropolitan elite — which was lengthy. This was her opening:
I will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back.
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 and some of the people we had in the hall earlier.
The fact is they prefer protesting to doing.
They prefer talking on Twitter to taking tough decisions.
They taxi from North London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo.
From broadcast to podcast, they peddle the same old answers.
It's always more taxes, more regulation and more meddling.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Guido has the video:
WATCH: Liz Unleashes on Britain's "Anti-Growth Coalition" https://t.co/gZorvFHGi7 pic.twitter.com/Hwrgn5qbCm
She praised our unsung heroes:
My friends, does this anti-growth coalition have any idea who pays their wages?
It's the people who make things in factories across our country.
It's the people who get up at the crack of dawn to go to work.
It's the commuters who get trains into towns and cities across our country.
I'm thinking of the white van drivers, the hairdressers, the plumbers, the accountants, the IT workers and millions of others up and down the UK.
The anti-growth coalition just doesn't get it.
This is because they don't face the same challenges as normal working people.
She concluded:
We cannot give in to those who say Britain can't grow faster.
We cannot give in to those who say we can't do better.
We must stay the course.
We are the only party with a clear plan to get Britain moving.
We are the only party with the determination to deliver.
Together, we can unleash the full potential of our great country.
That is how we will build a new Britain for a new era.
A strong cross-party coalition, helped powerfully by the media, is clearly trying to do away with Truss's premiership.
These were her YouGov ratings before her speech:
Liz Has Approval Rating 1 Point Better Than Corbyn's Worst https://t.co/fpPdIvP4Bz pic.twitter.com/usfehj4yKg
Keep in mind that YouGov was founded by former Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, who was caretaker during the leadership contest over the summer.
Guido wrote:
If memory serves Guido correctly, [former Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn managed a minus 60 net approval rating at his worst. Liz has a net approval rating of minus 59. Guido is told it is the lowest rating ever recorded of a Conservative Party leader. Her speech today needs to be the beginning of a turnaround.
Borrowing from the 1960s protest tune: all we are say-ing, is give Truss a chance …
Truss, with the help of Party whips, has finally been able to complete the rest of her parliamentary appointments.
Guido said:
The Government's reshuffle is finally coming to a close, as appointments to a number of Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) positions gave been confirmed. Co-conspirators will recall the whips had been experiencing some difficulty in recruiting enough parliamentary bag-carriers, though they have now managed to fill each position. Even if the vast majority are eager 2019ers…
The Government also seems to have granted whips greater individual responsibility for departments, with specific roles also listed. If recent trends are anything to go by, the government could use all the help to party discipline it can muster.
Having mustard keen 2019 MPs in on the act can only be a good thing. Most of them are from Red Wall seats, so their minds will be focused on growth and other Truss objectives, many of which dovetail with their own.
Other high points — Foreign Secretary Cleverly and Home Secretary Braverman
Other well-received speeches came from Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and Home Secretary Suella Braverman, both of whom appeared on Tuesday, October 4.
Here is a short clip from James Cleverly's speech:
'As Prime Minister she is being bold. I backed her from the start and I know that I made the right choice.'
James Cleverly backs Liz Truss during his address at the Conservative Party Conference. pic.twitter.com/XlP0YReRwP
— GB News (@GBNEWS) October 4, 2022
Cleverly's speech is at the 2:05:00 mark in this video. Braverman's comes before, beginning at 1:35:00:
Suella Braverman said many of the same things that her predecessor Priti Patel did as Home Secretary. We can but wait and see what happens.
One of the big problems in processing migrants without papers, such as those who come across the Channel in dinghies, is that they are hard to trace to their true countries of origin.
Another issue is that many in the civil service who are assigned to the Home Office are pro-immigration. Patel tried her best to counter them, but they stood firm, citing EU laws under which we are still beholden. The Brexit process continues. There wasn't enough time to renegotiate everything we should have, e.g. the Dublin Agreement. As we are no longer in the EU, we are no longer subject to that agreement whereby migrants have to apply for asylum in the first safe country they are in — in our case, France. We have to draw up a new agreement along the same lines, which will require EU co-operation.
On top of that, during Theresa May's time as PM, a modern slavery law came into force in the UK. In short, anyone claiming to have been a modern slave is automatically allowed to stay here. No proof is required.
With that burden, we can also add human rights charities and their lawyers who effectively scuppered the first UK flight to Rwanda last summer. It never happened. Everyone's case was challenged before take-off, leaving an empty aircraft.
Euronews reported on that part of Braverman's speech:
In a Tuesday evening speech at the Conservative Party's autumn conference in Birmingham, immigration minister Suella Braverman said that people who arrive by unauthorised means should not be allowed to claim asylum in the UK and she doubled down on contentious plans to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda.
However, Braverman acknowledged that a legal challenge to the policy means it's unlikely anyone will be deported to the east African country this year.
"We need to find a way to make the Rwanda scheme work," said Braverman.
"We cannot allow a foreign court to undermine the sovereignty of our borders," she continued, to cheers and applause from the audience.
"A few months ago the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg did just that. By a closed process, with an unnamed judge, and without any representation by the UK. A European Court overruled our Supreme Court. And as a result our first flight to Rwanda was grounded. We need to take back control."
She didn't say how the government intends to 'take back control'. The European Court of Human Rights is not part of the EU, and membership is not affected by Brexit …
Braverman said many migrants were "leaving a safe country like France and abusing our asylum system," adding that she wanted to work more closely with French authorities "to get more out of our partnership."
"We've got to stop the boats crossing the Channel," she said, to more applause.
So far this year, 30,000 migrants have crossed the Channel:
'We've got to stop the boats crossing the Channel.'
Home Secretary Suella Braverman outlines her plans for combatting illegal immigration, saying 'we need to make the Rwanda scheme work'.
🖥 GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/g9myY2bkCm
The one advantage that Braverman has over Patel is that she is a lawyer, so she will be finely attuned to legal turns of phrase.
Suella Braverman says UK should leave European Convention on Human Rights, breaking with Government policyhttps://t.co/TFrAszdvwR
Those interested can read more of her views in this article from The Telegraph.
Quentin Letts, The Times's political sketchwriter, concluded:
the day belonged to Braverman. As bids for popularity go, it wasn't particularly subtle or cerebral. Effective, though.
Proper membership cards make comeback
In an eco-friendly move under Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party began issuing paper certificates instead of plastic membership cards.
Thankfully, those days are over, for lifetime Party members at least:
Jake Berry Confirms Triumphant Return of Plastic Tory Membership Cards https://t.co/KK9pmEYL1R pic.twitter.com/8tLZXSsOsk
Guido reports:
Tory party Chair Jake Berry has just confirmed the return of plastic membership cards for lifetime Tory members, replacing the much-maligned 'membership certificates' introduced by Amanda Milling back in 2020. At the time, Milling introduced the paper certificates to save the environment, or something like that. Even MPs were upset; Michael Fabricant complained the certificate wouldn't fit in his trinket box of membership cards and hair clips. Jane Stevenson pointed out they could just be made of card instead. Now the debate has been put to rest – Berry's bringing the real deal back, having just revealed the move at a fringe event this morning. Expect to see the cards' triumphant return from January.
That ends the positive conference news.
Kwarteng's U-turn U-turn U-turn
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng did a third U-turn on bringing forward his more detailed fiscal event plans.
It appears that he will be going ahead with presenting them to Parliament on November 23 after all:
Kwasi's Fiscal Plan Set for November 23rd… "Definitely" https://t.co/sc23mCHbTC pic.twitter.com/q9pJVCncf3
Or is it October 23?
Mel Stride, who supported Rishi Sunak in the leadership contest and heads the Treasury Select Committee, says that it will be October 23. So did the Financial Times, apparently. They, too, supported Sunak.
Hmm. I sense mischief making.
Except Kwasi later insisted on GB News that it definitely wasn't moving:
'Shortly' is the 23rd. People are reading the runes […] it's going to be the 23rd.
"People reading the runes" in this case including the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee. Liz herself later said it's coming in November, and Treasury Civil Servants were told in a team meeting this morning that anything to the contrary was just "press speculation". Guido understands, however, that the people reading the runes are onto something: the Treasury is still considering adjusting the date after all…
Kwasi must stick to his guns and stop the U-turns.
Rebel, rebel …
The rebels were active throughout the conference.
Michael Gove
On Wednesday's Dan Wootton Tonight show on GB News, panellists were split on whether Sunak-supporting Michael Gove should have the whip removed.
The Daily Express's Carole Malone said that Truss should have given Gove a Cabinet post so that he would have made less mischief. However, Wootton countered by saying that Gove always undermines the Prime Ministers he has worked for in Cabinet.
Someone who wasn't on the show and thinks Gove should have the whip removed is Nigel Farage. I fully agree with him. We saw the trouble that rebel Conservatives made for Theresa May and Boris Johnson in 2019 over Brexit. David Gauke was one of them. Boris had the whip removed and we did not see him again after the 2019 general election; his Conservative association deselected him:
Gove is now a totally destructive force. A high tax, big state social democrat. https://t.co/1MmdvGKXVs
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) October 5, 2022
Grant Shapps
Grant Shapps, another Sunak supporter, has been working in tandem with Michael Gove to thwart Truss's leadership.
He has made no secret of his threat to go to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, with a letter of no confidence — not only from himself but other MPs:
Shapps: MPs Won't Sit on Hands If Polls Continue https://t.co/4juof1vukR pic.twitter.com/AgxyIGzOgE
On Tuesday, October 4, he told Times Radio:
I want Liz to succeed. So I'm hoping that she can turn us around, I think there is a window of opportunity for her to do it. I'm cheering her on, if you like, to succeed. Y'know, in the end I don't think members of parliament, Conservatives, if they see the polls continue as they are, are going to sit on their hands. A way would be found to make that change. You know, it's important, not for members of parliament, but for the country, still two years to go to another election, that we have good, stable, sensible, smart government in place doing things that are required for the people in this country. So of course that could happen. In the meantime, I hope Liz can turn this around.
'A way would be found' means urging Brady to change the rules whereby a PM could be ousted sooner than 12 months of assuming the Party leadership.
Shapps had the gall to suggest Truss had ten days to turn around her leadership!
Nadine Dorries was the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport while Boris was PM.
When he stood down as party leader, she was gutted. She had at least one defender:
I find most of the commentary about Nadine Dorries has a nasty sexist edge. People may not agree with or like male politicians, but I don't see their intelligence criticised in the same way, and with the same regularity, as happens to women. A type of 'know your place' mentality.
— Charlotte Gill (@CharlotteCGill) July 6, 2022
She stayed loyal beyond the end of his premiership, perhaps embarrassingly so:
She had a lot to say when he stood down as Party leader:
'I definitely think, one day, Boris will be back'
Nadine Dorries tells Dan Wootton that, despite his resignation as the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson's political career is not over.
🖥 GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/swSgYfC4qL
'So many policies I could list them forever, all of those delivered by this Prime Minister'
In an exclusive GB News interview with Dan Wootton, Nadine Dorries says the outgoing PM was 'desperately sad' at resigning.
🖥 GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYYAod pic.twitter.com/UjwZ2Da5pt
Nadine Dorries is repeatedly shouting "you're boring" at Keir Starmer pic.twitter.com/4swinKgDv9
— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) July 18, 2022
In the end, she didn't run for Party leadership:
'A lot is going to happen in the next 24 hours'
Nadine Dorries tells Dan Wootton she is considering running for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
🖥 GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYYAod pic.twitter.com/lE9YrRvgHS
Dorries resigned from Cabinet on Tuesday, September 6. Boris was in his final hours as PM that day, when he and Truss flew separately to Balmoral to see the Queen.
Guido posted Dorries's letter to Boris, commenting:
She added that while Liz had offered her the chance to continue, she's stepping down anyway.
She is now unhappy that her Online Safety Bill might be kicked into the long grass. Millions of us certainly hope so. It is deeply embedded in censorship, principally the 'legal but harmful' clause.
On Monday, October 3, Dorries said that Truss should hold a general election. Utter madness, all because her censorship legislation is up for cancellation. Even madder is the fact that she was a Truss supporter.
The Spectator had the story:
To inspire one Nadine Dorries tweet may be regarded as a misfortune, to inspire two looks like carelessness. Less than 24 hours after the former Culture Secretary criticised Truss for appearing to blame her Chancellor for the 45p tax debacle, she's back at it again. Frustrated by Truss's decision to junk much of the Johnson agenda from 2019, the high priestess of online harms took to her favourite medium of Twitter to write:
Widespread dismay at the fact that 3 years of work has effectively been put on hold. No one asked for this. C4 sale, online safety, BBC licence fee review – all signed off by cabinet all ready to go, all stopped. If Liz wants a whole new mandate, she must take to the country.
The repeated criticisms are all the more interesting, given the importance of Dorries and other Johnson loyalists in ensuring that Truss made the final two earlier this summer. Dorries was something of an unruly attack dog, savaging Truss's opponent Rishi Sunak at ever opportunity …
Guido posted Dorries's tweet …
Nadine Dorries Calls for General Election https://t.co/tcN1d5HidH pic.twitter.com/aDIQn7Hzr3
and wrote:
We appear to be at the "everybody losing their mind" stage of Conservative Party conference a day early.
The next day, she seemed to walk back what she said by citing Boris's support of Truss. This is a clip of her interview with LBC radio's Iain Dale:
'He even said that to me this morning "Back Liz! Back Liz!"
Nadine Dorries shares words from Mr Johnson and says Liz Truss' predecessor is only 'concerned about the survival of the Conservative party'.@IainDale | @NadineDorries pic.twitter.com/Zy4nqZ4S9j
— LBC (@LBC) October 4, 2022
Embarrassing.
Benefits rebels
Truss-backer Sir Iain Duncan Smith is now opposing her in wanting benefits increased in line with inflation:
WATCH: Iain Duncan Smith Backs Raising Benefits With Inflation https://t.co/p38LdzkY87 pic.twitter.com/pT4R9WQGsh
Iain Duncan Smith has added his voice to the chorus of rebels piling on Liz to raise benefits with inflation. Speaking at a ConservativeHome fringe the former Work and Pensions Secretary argued giving to the poorest was a more efficient way of going for growth, as they would spend it quicker. He's had a quick change in tune since backing Liz for leader…
That sounds very cynical, indeed.
Kemi Badenoch
Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, the popular Party leadership candidate for British voters, openly opposed Truss's bid for even more migration.
It is hard to disagree with Badenoch. Even so, as a Cabinet minister, perhaps she should have held back from expressing them publicly.
She aired her views on Sunday evening:
At the IEA/TPA DrinkTanks reception last night, guest of honour Kemi Badenoch openly rebuked the PM's plans to let in more immigrants to boost growth. The Trade Secretary ignored any sense of collective responsibility as she told the assembled free marketeers:
Simply taking in numbers to boost GDP while GDP per capita falls is not the right way to do that. We need to look again at resolving our productivity issues and that means using capital better, not just getting cheaper and cheaper labour.
Kemi's brazen and deliberate speech last night all but confirmed The Times' article on Sunday reporting major Cabinet divisions over the plan, with Kemi and Suella Braverman at odds with the PM's preferred free market solution. Like Liz, Guido doesn't have a problem with skilled, legal immigration, it is the illegal immigration which is concerning. It seems Tory Cabinet ministers aren't even pretending to play happy families anymore…
45% tax rate rebels
Prominent Conservative Cabinet members disagree with Truss and Kwarteng over their Sunday night U-turn on abolishing the 45% upper tax rate.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman seemed to accuse Conservative MPs of forcing the change in plan, going so far as to claim it was 'a coup':
🔵 Suella Braverman has accused Tory rebels of staging a "coup" to force the Government to scrap its plan to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.
Follow our live blog for the latest ⤵https://t.co/TbzohVxX1Z pic.twitter.com/63HbK4TLe1
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) October 4, 2022
Guido has a photo of Braverman, along with Jacob Rees-Mogg and Simon Clarke, two other Cabinet members who want the upper rate abolished:
Cabinet Clash Over Top Rate Tax U-Turn https://t.co/C5DhMKJC0q pic.twitter.com/r789rRowPU
Simon Clarke agrees with Braverman's assessment of 'a coup':
Suella speaks a lot of good sense, as usual. https://t.co/EHEPhhZ0sX
— Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) October 4, 2022
Guido has more:
Jacob Rees-Mogg was also quick to voice his disappointment at the scrapped cut at a fringe event this afternoon, although he claimed to recognise the politics of the move. This all comes in the context of public cabinet battles over benefits, and Penny Mordaunt's attacks on government comms. Meanwhile backbench agitators continue briefing out plans to rebel, with some now even claiming they're holding "crisis" talks about Liz's leadership. Truss has been PM for 28 days. Not quite the honeymoon period she would've hoped for…
Wow. For Jacob Rees-Mogg to speak out about his disappointment is surprising. He is normally respectful of parliamentary boundaries and procedure.
There is a way to get rid of this tax rate. I will have more on that next week.
James Cleverly warns Cabinet rebels to 'shut up'
In much the same way that Welsh Secretary Robert Buckland did, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly warned Cabinet rebels to 'shut up':
Cleverly Warns Cabinet Colleagues to Shut Up https://t.co/SiEMV5JMbm pic.twitter.com/nFj8GNV6Fb
On Wednesday, October 5, Guido reported:
James Cleverly has diplomatically warned Cabinet colleagues to shut up after yesterday's day of chaos, in which collective responsibility broke down on everything including the 45p u-turn, immigration numbers and uprating benefits in line with inflation. Speaking on the BBC this morning ahead of Liz's big speech, the foreign secretary warned:
All Cabinet colleagues ultimately are going to have to abide by collective responsibility… I think it's always better and easier to feed ideas, particularly when you're in government and have access to the Chancellor and the PM, feed your ideas directly into the centre of the system…
On TimesRadio he also implied yesterday's comments from Braverman, Mordaunt and Clarke – among others – were inappropriate. Guido hears Cleverly's speechwriter had to edit a swear word out of the Foreign Secretary's speech earlier this week; we can only imagine how many expletives Cleverly wanted to use in response to yesterday's farce…
Here endeth the news about the Conservative Party Conference.
MPs must give Truss a chance. She has gone through the hardest beginning to her premiership of any PM in known history.
She deserves time to lead us. With everyone against her, she must be doing something right.
She is representing British voters' interests. That is only right and fair.
Conservative Party Conference: Welsh Secretary Robert Buckland tells rebel MPs to 'shut up'
October 5, 2022 in history | Tags: 2022, Amanda Platell, BBC, Birmingham, Boris Johnson, Chloe Smith, Conservative Party, Daily Telegraph, economy, England, Fraser Nelson, GB News, Guido Fawkes, history, Kwasi Kwarteng, Liz Truss, media, Michael Gove, Penny Mordaunt, Rachel Reeves, Robert Buckland, Stanley Johnson, The Spectator, Tom Harwood, UK | 1 comment
This has not been the best Conservative Party Conference, and here's why:
1/ Bombastic Boris is no longer Prime Minister;
2/ Liz Truss is still finding her feet as his successor;
3/ A train strike is taking place on the final day, so a lot of people left before Liz spoke on Wednesday.
On Wednesday morning, October 5, GB News's Darren McCaffrey, a veteran of many party conferences, said that the mood in Birmingham was very low this year, as if, after 12 years, the Conservatives think that their time in Government could be up.
It doesn't help that Labour's Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been spreading lies about Kwasi Kwarteng's fiscal event, either:
Racheal Reeves lying saying 65 billion when its Update on Bank of England gilt purchasing: Since the Bank began using their reserves to purchase long-dated UK Government bonds on 28 September, the Bank has purchased a total of less than £4bn, to restore orderly market conditions.
— patwewonuk (@patwewonuk) October 5, 2022
Meanwhile, the people in Boris Johnson's constituency of Uxbridge in west London miss him dearly:
Boris was hung out to dry
— Mark Dillon (@Mark28538836) October 5, 2022
Anyone who missed the controversies of the Conservative Party Conference can catch up here and here.
On Tuesday night, former Conservative adviser Amanda Platell, who writes for the Daily Mail, said she is praying that Liz Truss can actually govern without opposition from her own MPs. Platell described Michael Gove as 'a jackal'. Platell added that the Leader of the Commons, Penny Mordaunt, wasn't a very good employee when she worked for her several years ago:
'I'm praying that Liz Truss will come out of this!'
Amanda Platell, Stanley Johnson and Rebecca Reid join Dan Wootton to discuss whether Liz Truss can regain control of her party after her U-turn.
🖥GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/eopowoW6Ju
After Amanda Platell spoke in that clip, it was time for Stanley Johnson, Boris's father, to give his impressions of this year's conference.
He said that he must have been to a different one, because everyone he saw was upbeat and the conference hall was full for Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's speech. Stanley Johnson blames the negativity on an ongoing media narrative:
I didn't see this gloom and doom meeting at all.
When Dan Wootton asked Stanley about Michael Gove, the former Prime Minister's father replied:
I'm not going to talk about wildlife of any kind … I'm going to sing Michael Gove's praises because he has been a really good Secretary of State for the Environment.
Wootton countered:
He stabbed your son in the back.
Stanley said:
I'm not going to talk about it … I'm speaking as an environmentalist.
In another part of the show, Stanley said that he is '100% certain' that Boris will not be back as Conservative Party leader, i.e. Prime Minister.
Robert Buckland's advice to rebels: 'Shut up'
On Tuesday afternoon while listening to GB News, one of the presenters said that the Secretary of State for Wales, the mild mannered Robert Buckland, told Michael Gove to 'shut up'.
Hoping it was true, I searched Wednesday's headlines but saw only that Buckland had issued his advice indirectly, via Global Radio's News Agents podcast, featuring ex-BBC broadcasters Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall.
Buckland was mild mannered throughout:
The Secretary of State for Wales @RobertBuckland tells The News Agents that former Cabinet minister Michael Gove and fellow rebels should "shut up".
"Sometimes, it's better to be quiet."
Catch all episodes on @GlobalPlayer now 📲 pic.twitter.com/vO0EZklHxD
— The News Agents (@TheNewsAgents) October 4, 2022
The i paper confirms that no direct confrontation took place:
Welsh Secretary Robert Buckland appealed to recently sacked ministers to "shut up" but indicated he wants to see benefits rise in line with inflation, telling Times Radio he believes in supporting "those who genuinely cannot share … In growth and prosperity".
One can only hope that Gove and his Sunak-backing allies got the message.
On Tuesday night, The Telegraph urged MPs to rally behind their new Prime Minister: 'Tories owe Liz Truss their full support' (emphases in purple mine):
Ms Truss has an ambitious set of policies that she set out in the leadership campaign, yet there is now a danger that she will be thwarted at every turn by a fresh coalition of opponents in her own party.
MPs should remember that the Prime Minister won fairly and squarely under the rules after they removed a leader who had delivered an 80-seat majority just three years ago. She did not engineer a coup and, indeed, stayed loyal to Boris Johnson until the end.
Senior backbenchers and former ministers such as Michael Gove and Grant Shapps, who have been in the vanguard of recent criticism, should consider the damage they are doing to the party's re-election prospects. The only beneficiaries are their political opponents.
Conservative values championing a small state, low taxes and deregulation are being replaced by social democratic nostrums that brook no spending cuts and take the same attitude to wealth creators as the Left. The pandemic lockdowns did not help matters by fostering a widespread sense that the state will always step in to help in difficult times, as it has done again with energy bills.
As we have argued consistently, the UK needs a growth strategy, and Ms Truss is at least providing one. The alternative is to manage the nation's decline into a high-tax, low-productivity economy. She needs the full support of the parliamentary party in her endeavour, starting now.
Left-wing lies persist over economic measures
Last week, the Bank of England had to take action to counter what appeared to be an immediate effect of the Chancellor's fiscal event of Friday, September 23.
However, Guido Fawkes cited a report from the Financial Times which said that the economic hiccup originated with the pensions industry.
Note the exposed deception in this Twitter thread:
Its not even that, the pensions industry got itself over-exposed to a particular part of the yield curve that there were adavnce warnings about.https://t.co/Cp88mzzVGK
It's always someone else's fault, isn't it Manish?
— Detective John Kimble (@dejohnkimble) October 4, 2022
Yes, I can well imagine that it was Mark Carney's fault. He was Andrew Bailey's predecessor at the Bank of England. Both are worthless, yet the media deifies Carney as some sort of miracle worker.
The left-wing narrative, spun by Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the media, persists that the taxpayer is being hung out to dry.
Guido wants to correct that narrative, noting that the BBC's Nick Robinson has already apologised for getting it wrong:
Robbo we can excuse despite his PPE. Reeves as an ex-Bank of England economist should know better. The annual target of an £80 billion stock reduction in gilts held in the Asset Purchase Facility remains in place, so the BoE will be a net seller of gilts by the end of the year,
Guido's post from Tuesday, October 4, — which includes audio — says (emphases his):
Since the Bank of England announced market operations to purchase gilts last Wednesday, Westminster politicos have been struggling to get their heads round the intricacies of gilt markets. It therefore comes as no surprise to Guido that Nick Robinson was forced into a correction today, after incorrectly repeating the widely tweeted claim that the Bank of England has spent "£65 billion to prop up the markets" …
The claim is somewhat misleading. The Bank of England pledged to buy gilts to the tune of a maximum of £5 billion a day, over two weeks, to assure markets. This means the maximum possible spend was £65 billion, though the actual number will be far smaller. In reality the bank has purchased around £3.66 billion so far, with yesterday's purchases coming in at just £22 million. The smaller purchase signals the Bank is comfortable with the current state of gilt markets as its credible commitment appears to have paid off. Guido appreciates that the BBC this time took the effort to get the facts right…
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who should know better as an ex-Bank of England employee, repeated the same line: "The fact the Bank of England had to step in with a £65 billion bailout with taxpayers money is deeply shameful." It is not a fact.
Firstly, the market operation will be nowhere near £65 billion. Secondly, it is not money from taxpayers … with the purchases even having the potential to make a profit* on resale. So her "taxpayers' money" claim is also incorrect. Robbo we can excuse, he only has a PPE degree from Oxford. The Shadow Chancellor, a trained economist, is deliberately and wilfully misrepresenting the facts for political advantage…
*A market source says that marked-to-market the Treasury is currently in profit on the trade.
In the comments, one of Guido's readers clarified what happens with the Asset Purchase Facility — APF — in this case:
It's not from Treasury reserves. Treasury has no reserves. It's not money from taxpayers either. Neither the bank nor Treasury has any taxpayer money.
The Bank has extended a loan to the APF, and credited the APF's account in the Banking Department with an advance. That is then used to pay whoever is selling the Gilts to the APF, which result in a transfer from the APF's account in the Banking Department to a commercial bank's settlement account in the Banking department.
The end result is Gilt assets in the APF balanced by a liability to the Banking department of the Bank of England. The Bank of England has a loan asset to the APF balanced by a liability to the commercial bank.
It's just good old bank lending. As happens a bazillion times every day across the banking system.
Another reader called out the media for lazy journalism:
All MSM are as bad, Sky and ITV actively promote their left-wing Labour bias too, especially activists like Ed Conway and Peston, respectively, are rarely challenged, and the public generally don`t realise they are being lied to and manipulated. Creating hysteria and headlines are more important now than the truth and lazy groupthink "journalists" just follow the herd. Where is the giant good news headline that the £ is now trading higher than before the mini-budget and the euro is below parity with the dollar, no, they prefer reporting negative UK news to deliberately topple this government.
Kwarteng's U-Turn U-turn
Thankfully, Kwarteng has recovered from the shock of having to make an economic U-turn on the 45% rate of tax and, although that is still off the table for now, he is reneging on bringing forward a vote on a more detailed plan on November 23.
On Tuesday evening, The Telegraph reported that he has postponed this to next year:
Crunch votes to implement last week's mini-Budget will not take place until next spring, The Telegraph understands, putting off potential rebellions until 2023.
Many of the tax-cutting measures which Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor, announced last month will not need to be passed in the House of Commons until next March.
That includes bringing forward the 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax and scrapping a planned rise in corporation tax, two of the most costly moves in the package.
It means that Tory rebels hoping to attach amendments to the Finance Bill may have to wait almost six months, potentially buying Liz Truss some political breathing room …
There was confusion on Tuesday as Mr Kwarteng appeared to row back on Downing Street indications on Monday night that he would reveal his new fiscal plan earlier than planned.
Mr Kwarteng said that the so-called "medium-term fiscal plan", which will spell out his approach to bringing down debt and restraining spending, was coming on November 23.
But that appeared to contradict word from his allies 24 hours earlier suggesting the announcement and the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast would actually come sooner.
The OBR forecast is another part of the ongoing anti-Truss narrative. Since its inception by then-Chancellor George Osborne over a decade ago, its forecasts have rarely been accurate. Guido regularly posts on how the economy does much better in reality, putting the OBR to shame.
Yet, the OBR is considered as an oracle:
The failure to produce an OBR forecast alongside the mini-Budget was jumped on by economists and critics to partly explain the reaction from the markets.
It is, in fact, useless.
On Tuesday, Kwarteng gave his reasons for the rushed fiscal event. Contrary to what the lefty narrative says, he was not blaming the Queen, just reminding people of the timeline:
Mr Kwarteng on Tuesday also appeared to cast some blame on the "pressure" of the Queen's death for mistakes in his tax-cutting fiscal statement.
He said: "We had a nation in mourning and then, literally, four days after the funeral we had the mini-budget.
"It was a high speed, high-pressure environment and we could, as David Cameron used to say, have prepared the pitch a bit better."
Kwarteng was rightly disappointed that the Government was not given credit for helping out the nation with their winter fuel bills. This is another part of the false lefty narrative that needs exposure:
Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative conference on Tuesday night, Mr Kwarteng complained that his energy price freeze was getting too little attention because of the 45p tax row.
The Chancellor said: "If you look at the energy intervention, I mean, nobody's talking about the energy intervention.
"That was a huge use of the balance sheet to help people. People were facing bills of potentially £6,000 next year, and we've intervened.
"There's gonna be a limit of £2,500. That's a huge intervention."
Agreed. He did what people bayed for.
He criticised Rishi Sunak's handling of taxpayer's money, turning the former Chancellor's cries of morality back on him:
Mr Kwarteng has also said the Treasury he inherited from Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson was "unsustainable".
He said: "We were spending billions and billions and billions and raising the money in tax."
"How can that be sustainable, when we have a very, very high tax burden and very low growth? We had to come off that trajectory."
He called himself a "compassionate Conservative" inspired by his mother …
He added: "It's the people's money – we raise it through tax. And if we do that we have a moral obligation to look after it."
Benefits increases
In line with Kwarteng, Liz Truss wants to be careful about taxpayer's money.
Benefits will have to be raised, but the question is by how much.
One tranche of Conservative MPs says that it must be in line with inflation. Another group says it should be in line with salaries.
Early on Tuesday, The Sun reported:
She is under pressure to hike benefits for the poorest after repeatedly refusing to confirm they will go up in line with inflation.
Speaking at the party conference in Birmingham, the PM said: "We face massive challenges as a country and we need to get through this economic crisis and this energy crisis.
"And we need Britain to come out stronger on the other side, and I want to win over hearts and minds in the country, but also amongst my parliamentary colleagues, to make sure that we are able to deliver for the people of Britain" …
Emboldened rebel MPs are now pushing for further changes having forced her to ditch one flagship measure — with efforts now focusing against a real terms cut to Britain's benefits bill.
Even her own Cabinet Ministers are ratcheting up the pressure for Ms Truss to commit to raising benefits with inflation and not wages.
Penny Mordaunt told the Times it "makes sense" to uprate benefits with prices.
The Commons leader said: "I have always supported, whether it's pensions, whether it's our welfare system, keeping pace with inflation."
But Ms Truss insisted no decision had been made, yet reiterated her promise to keep the pensioners' triple lock.
She admitted the reaction to her Growth Plan had not been "absolutely perfect" but insisted it – and the energy – package will help struggling families braced for a gruelling winter.
It includes cutting stamp duty, income tax and capping the price of energy so the typical household will pay no more than £2,500.
Here's The Spectator's list of the benefits rebels hoping for an increase with inflation rather than wages.
Penny Mordaunt was one of Truss's rivals in the leadership contest and the other five — led by Michael Gove — were staunch Sunak supporters:
Penny Mordaunt
Damian Green
John Glen
Mel Stride
Who can forget the day MPs eliminated Mordaunt from the leadership contest, leaving Truss and Sunak as the last two standing?
Penny Mordaunt's Desperate Last Stand https://t.co/07RbafDbSR pic.twitter.com/9LCaoiN7vP
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) July 20, 2022
On July 20, Guido wrote about Mordaunt's last ditch appeal:
It turns out Penny Mordaunt's effort to run a "clean" campaign that puts an end to "toxic politics" lasted as long as she thought she had a chance of winning. Now that Liz Truss is the bookies' favourite, and Kemi Badenoch's voters are up for grabs, the Mordaunt camp has other ideas. This morning, Mordaunt tweeted an Allison Pearson Telegraph article headlined "Tory MPs – vote for Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss today and you'll murder the party you love", which went down like a bucket of cold sick with just about everybody. Don't bother trying to find the tweet – she's since deleted it…
Truss wisely made Mordaunt Leader of the House, probably the safest place for her.
The benefits row is likely to erupt after Parliament reconvenes next week. Gove is pictured with Truss:
Tory Rebels Threaten Yet Another Row Over Benefit Cap https://t.co/qj34ONyoXF pic.twitter.com/TzXOpY3VSo
On Tuesday morning, Guido posted an audio clip of Mordaunt speaking to Times Radio about increasing benefits in line with inflation:
… on Times Radio … Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt was busy once again going characteristically off-script, claiming "it makes sense" to commit to the uplift come rain or shine. Michael Gove is – predictably – saying the same. Even DWP Secretary Chloe Smith has been going around saying "protecting the most vulnerable is a big priority for me", which surely signals the way the wind is blowing…
However, as The Spectator's editor Fraser Nelson points out, Liz Truss is not being stingy in wanting to increase benefits with salaries rather than inflation:
Difficult decisions lie ahead for Liz Truss as she thinks of ways to constrain spending. One option is to increase benefits in line with average salaries (6.2 per cent), rather than CPI inflation (9.9 per cent): why, it might be argued, should someone on welfare see their income rise faster than someone in work? And with public sector wages rising at just 2 per cent, can government really give a near-10 per cent rise to those out of work? …
So she is considering, at very least, uprating benefits by earnings rather than inflation. But if she's ready for a fight, then so are her Tory opponents. Intriguingly, Penny Mordaunt now seems to be among them.
… Truss may struggle to get a lean settlement through the House of Commons. That's why it matters that Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons, has declared in favour of increasing welfare by inflation. Such open lobbying by a cabinet member is rare and indicates a collapse in discipline …
Uprating benefits to inflation would be hugely expensive due to the staggering number currently on out-of-work benefits: 5.3 million in total. This figure has yet to be acknowledged by the government (which prefers a more narrow definition of unemployment) and can only be produced by drilling into its website. There's a six-month lag, such is the lack of attention to this figure. But it amounts to 13 per cent of the UK working-age population, rising to 20 per cent in Manchester and Birmingham and 25 per cent in Blackpool. Here's the breakdown, which we keep updated on The Spectator data hub …
Nelson has included The Spectator's graph in the article. It's rather shocking.
He says it is time to get the nation back to work but realises that could be a hard sell for Truss to make:
As I've argued, the real scandal here is the waste of human potential, more than the waste of money. We have a near-record number of vacancies in the UK – about 1.1 million (hence a lot of the pressure to relax immigration rules), and to combine this with near-record levels on welfare is quite a feat. But it's also a very expensive situation and a problem that will not be helped by decreasing the factor by which people would be better-off in work.
This is a complex and difficult argument to make – and one distinguishing feature of Liz Truss's government is that it struggles to have such discussions even with the Tory party, let alone the country …
… this is a pre-rebellion from Mordaunt: she is describing a situation she'd like, not one that exists. By declaring the restoration of cabinet government, are cabinet members taking back control?
I have written this before Liz Truss gives her speech on Wednesday morning, closing the conference.
The question remains as to whether she can stamp her authority on the Cabinet and Conservative rebels. A tired Tom Harwood, who was also at Labour's conference last week, explains the situation on GB News:
'Ultimately, there is a question here about the authority of the Prime Minister.'
GB News' Tom Harwood reports from the Conservative Party conference, and says there is 'a lot riding on the speech' PM Liz Truss will be making later today. pic.twitter.com/HyjH6PVDmu
I will feature brighter aspects of the conference in tomorrow's post.
Rebel Conservative MPs reveal the cracks in Liz Truss's party
October 4, 2022 in history | Tags: 2022, Anne Widdecombe, Birmingham, Chloe Smith, Conservative Party, economy, England, GB News, Grant Shapps, Guido Fawkes, Harry Cole, history, Kwasi Kwarteng, Liz Truss, Michael Gove, Rishi Sunak, Sir Graham Brady, tax, tax cut, The Sun, UK | 4 comments
Poor Liz Truss.
My post yesterday about her and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's U-turn on the abolition of the 45% tax rate showed how much the media were running Truss's premiership.
Cracks are showing
Unfortunately, the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham has revealed the factions among Conservative MPs opposed to either Truss or her policies.
This indicates that the cracks in the parliamentary Conservative Party likely began during the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth II in the same way that anti-Boris Conservative MPs sent their no-confidence letters to Sir Graham Brady of the 1922 Committee during the monarch's Platinum Jubilee bank holiday weekend at the beginning of June.
No sooner had Parliament reconvened on the first Monday in June than Conservative MPs held a confidence vote on Boris Johnson's premiership.
One name has been brought up in the overall rebellion against Liz Truss: Michael Gove.
Gove 'a natural plotter'
On Monday evening, The Spectator's Isabel Hardman asked, 'What does Michael Gove want?'
As I wrote yesterday, Gove even turned against the Prime Ministers under whom he served in Cabinet, beginning with his first PM, David Cameron. That was over Brexit. The victory went to Gove.
He worked against Boris Johnson's leadership campaign in 2016, after Leave won the Brexit referendum on June 23. He told Boris he would lead his campaign then pulled out just before Boris was to have announced his candidacy.
It's no surprise that, when Boris became PM in July 2019, he gave Gove Cabinet positions in a 'Keep your enemies closer' move. Those lasted until this past summer.
After the 2022 leadership contest, Gove said he would take a back seat. But did he?
He currently seems to be involved in stirring the pot with regard to benefits — welfare — increases involving the new Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith, who said at conference earlier this week:
protecting the most vulnerable is a big priority for me.
Isabel Hardman points out (emphases mine):
It sounds quite anodyne, but given one of the big battles of the autumn is going to be over whether benefits are raised in line with inflation, it was a clear marker that Smith doesn't think that trying to get some savings this way is the right thing to do. She's not a noisy cabinet minister and is much more likely to make her arguments behind closed doors. But she does also have a very helpful backbench campaign led by someone who loves a public fight: Michael Gove.
Hardman says that Gove is busy at work, doing the rounds at the conference's fringe events:
What is Gove's endgame? He hasn't packed up his bags since Kwarteng U-turned on the 45p: instead, he was still touring the fringe this evening. He has made clear that the benefit rise must go ahead, and many of his colleagues have made the same point to Kwarteng themselves.
Gove could decide to use Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch in his manoeuvres. He backed her in the summer leadership contest until she lost, at which point he backed Rishi Sunak:
But even if it does, that's not going to be the former minister's last battle. Tory MPs are fascinated by where he wants this to end. Is he still hoping that Kemi Badenoch, who he initially backed for leader, could yet take over from Truss? Badenoch had a really good stint on the conference stage in the most lively session of the [Monday] afternoon programme. She had members eating out of her hand as she talked about taking pride in Britain, about immigration, and about culture wars. Perhaps Gove might want her star to rise further. Or perhaps he is still holding out for Rishi Sunak, who he later backed, and who is staying away from the conference to allow Liz Truss to 'own the moment'.
In any event:
there is a lot of bad feeling among MPs about the way some parts of his [Sunak's] campaign operated. Then again, there's just a lot of bad feeling and mistrust in the party now. The one thing Truss has managed to unite her party on is that MPs in every faction are now annoyed with her.
This year's conference meeting schedule, centred more around fringe events than the main speeches, is likely to deepen these rifts:
Tory conference has long been more stage-managed than other party meetings, but this year the official speeches from ministers have also been condensed into a very strange late afternoon slot lasting just two hours. The rest of the time is free for fringe meetings and plotting.
The main addresses are supposed to be content-light this year, which is unlikely to please Party members:
Ministers and their aides have been told they have to keep their addresses to the hall announcement-lite, which makes those two hours feel largely pointless.
Kwarteng not only had to do a U-turn on abolishing the 45% tax rate, he also was forced into bringing forward his medium-term fiscal plan. That's two U-turns by the second day of conference:
Kwasi Kwarteng didn't announce very much at all, even though his two U-turns have dominated the day's agenda. This morning, the Chancellor dropped the plan to abolish the 45p rate of tax, and this evening it has emerged that he is also bringing forward his medium-term fiscal plan from 23 November – something ministers had been asked to hold the line on.
Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith held up a script at a fringe event to show that what appears to be spontaneous is actually scripted in advance:
A clue to the next potential U-turn came not in one of the speeches but in one of the considerably more-scripted and stage-managed 'discussions'. These have been going on for years at Conservative conference: a minister or two is relegated from a formal speaking slot to a cosy and allegedly informal sit-down with someone who is often a very nice and slightly nervous small business owner, charity pioneer or environmental campaigner. The chit-chats involve a suspiciously large sheaf of notes: indeed, in this particular 'discussion', Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith largely abandoned the pretence that this was spontaneous and held her script up so she could read from it verbatim. But within that script, Smith had a line that she may well end up using against her ministerial colleagues such as Kwarteng in future. She told the hall that 'we know that people are struggling with some of the costs that are rising', adding: 'That's why protecting the most vulnerable is a big priority for me.'
Former Conservative MP Anne Widdecombe, who switched her allegiance to the Brexit Party and served as one of their MEPs in Brussels before the UK left the EU said that the Conservatives are in a dire state.
On Monday, she told GB News's Bev Turner that the removal of the 45% tax band would have cost £2 billion at most, in contrast to the £150 billion bail out in order to help Britons with their energy bills.
She said that Truss and Kwarteng should have held their nerve and not caved in over their fiscal event plans from Friday, September 23. She surmises that they were worried about how the conference would go if they had stuck to their guns. Widdecombe said that they were aware of divisions in the Party but the tax rate U-turn, she said, would not win them any votes.
Turner said that removing the cap on bankers bonuses, also announced on September 23, would seem to be a more controversial move. Widdecombe, however, disagreed, explaining that the EU put a cap on bankers bonuses in place so that London would not be able to compete as well against Frankfurt and Paris in the financial services market. Removing the cap, she added, was part of the Brexit plan and, although it doesn't seem so to ordinary people, will actually help the UK's finances in the long term.
Bev Turner then turned Widdecombe's thoughts to Michael Gove and Grant Shapps's manoeuvres behind the scenes at conference. These included the objection to removing the 45% tax rate.
Widdecombe said:
Michael Gove is extremely dangerous. He spends all his time conspiring and plotting … I've known him for years … What he is not is a good colleague. He gets bees in his bonnet and sets out to destroy everything in his path. He's done it with Boris … He is a plotter. He is a natural plotter. Can't help himself.
She said that Truss cannot have the whip removed from Gove, as Kwarteng has already U-turned on the 45% tax rate issue. For Truss to remove the whip after the fact, she said, would be useless. So, Truss can't do anything to or about him for now.
Here's the video, which is five-and-a-half minutes long:
How the U-turn came about
On Monday, October 3, The Sun's political editor Harry Cole got the scoop about how Truss and Kwarteng's U-turn came about late on Sunday:
EXC: 1922 boss Sir Graham Brady went to see PM at 7pm Sunday to warn her 45p tax could bring her down as she didn't have the votes in Parliament.
PM told CX at 10pm crisis talks that the time has come to "rip the plaster" in humiliating climb down: https://t.co/7yLL4duse2 pic.twitter.com/UNF8vAHKk5
— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) October 3, 2022
This is an incredible news story, revealing that Cabinet ministers did not know about the U-turn until they saw The Sun's website:
… our story, revealed at 12.20am, came as a shock to some of the most senior members of the government.
Four Cabinet ministers were enjoying a late-night drink when our story broke — leaving them speechless.
No one from No 10 had given them any warning.
After a brutal day of maulings from big beasts of the Tory party and dire warnings her mini-Budget would be voted down by MPs, the newbie PM was forced into a humiliating climbdown.
Gove and Shapps, along with other Rishi Sunak supporters, worked behind the scenes on Sunday:
Ex-Cabinet Ministers Grant Shapps, Julian Smith, Michael Gove, Mel Stride and Damian Green — all of whom backed Rishi Sunak — had spent the day stirring up rebellion and were confident that more than 40 MPs backed their concerns.
Was that why Sunak did not show up? He did say he wanted Truss 'to own the moment'.
Graham Brady contacted Truss early on Sunday evening:
Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, had been to see a worried Ms Truss at 7pm to warn her she did not have the numbers to ram her tax cut plans through Parliament — despite a majority of 71.
Meanwhile, Kwarteng was in Birmingham's lively city centre, planning on tucking into a curry dinner. My commiserations go to him. Birmingham is home to some of the nation's finest Indian restaurants:
… her screeching about-turn would come as a shock to the Chancellor, who had been about to tuck into a beef curry at an upmarket restaurant across town.
He left his dinner before his main course turned up, rushing back for crisis talks with Truss, who told him: "It's time to rip off the plaster."
Kwarteng agreed to the U-turn, sensing trouble ahead:
Once on board, Mr Kwarteng was told he would have to be the face of the surrender the next day.
But it was a painful blow as he had already trailed his big speech to the conference into the next day's papers, insisting there would be no U-turns and saying: "We must stay the course."
Taking to the stage on Monday afternoon for that speech, an exasperated Chancellor said: "What a day."
The divisions are many and deep:
The mood among some Cabinet ministers is one of despair at the state of the Tory party, which is at risk of becoming unmanageable.
And that, in turn, will leave the Government unable to actually govern, leaving the country adrift at the worst possible time.
There are potential mutineers everywhere Truss turns.
After 12 years of Tory rule, there are more than 50 sacked and embittered ex-ministers who do not have much to lose.
This is a group that includes MPs who served under Theresa May and continue to be enraged by her Brexit downfall.
Then there are supporters of Rishi Sunak, who are enjoying the "I told you so" moment.
Some still think it's possible to kill Truss now and have Rishi anointed in a coronation.
Throw in the still-ongoing Brexit wars — Truss, having converted from Remain, is firmly in the Remainiac crosshairs — and it's a poisonous, chaotic mix.
One Cabinet minister said: "They've taken the bat off Boris, broken it into pieces and given chunks to the different warring sides to beat each other with. It's like Lord of the Flies."
However, a week is a long time in politics:
"All's not lost yet", one minister said.
"A week is a long time. We have two years to turn this around. We might not win the next election — but we can at least make ourselves competitive".
City AM's Andy Silvester doesn't hold out much hope, though:
At the risk of being cynical, if you can't get a cut to the top rate of tax through the Tory backbenches, good luck getting planning reform past them
— Andy Silvester (@silvesterldn) October 3, 2022
What the public think
It's difficult for those of us who are not economists to know what to believe about the upper tax rate U-turn.
And we trust journalists even less than ourselves. We are doing better researching the matter online through independent sites rather than the mainstream media.
The media told us that abolishing the upper rate of tax would affect Sterling. Hmm. On Tuesday morning, it was holding steady after the Bank of England's intervention at the end of last week:
£/$ trades 1.14
— Euro Guido (@EuroGuido) October 4, 2022
Did the U-turn have anything to do with exchange rates, though?
One Guido Fawkes reader said that it did not:
Good job Kwasi dropped the 45p tax cut, which, according to the MSM, affected the pound. Anyone knows it did not but he can use it to his advantage: if I borrow more for benefits, giving away money, it will damage the pound and interest rates causing more financial hardship to working tax payers.
So I would love to help but need to get inflation down.
Again being run by all the MSM at the same time to affect the government its disgusting.
He blames Michael Gove and, possibly, Boris's former adviser Dominic Cummings:
Gove and likely helped by Cummings … maybe Truss could ask Boris come out against him that he is damaging the party first him now Truss. Truss did stay loyal to Boris. Gove destroying his own party does not make him a formidable politician …
Another commenter cannot understand what the rebels hope to achieve:
What on earth are the rebels trying to achieve? Collapse the government and shoo-in Labour? If not- what's the end-game? Parachute in Sunak against the expressed wishes of the grassroots party membership? That'll end well. Ultimately- Truss was chosen by the members on the basis of pursuing a pro-business, pro-growth agenda. She is now trying to do exactly that and is being undermined by people who offer no viable alternative.
Someone else said the anti-Truss movement is reminiscent of the anti-Brexit rebellion Theresa May had to endure in 2019:
It's looking very much like this is going to be a repeat of the debacle over Brexit.
Mr Gove should have the good grace to accept the wishes of all Conservative Party members, who voted for Liz Truss, and not the legislative agenda of a few disaffected Blairite "Conservative" MPs, who bizarrrely seem to think that more of the same is going to free us from the social and financial quagmire such policy has led us to in the last 25 years.
I give the current government about 6 months.
Another said that Gove is firmly to blame:
One Cabinet Secretary telling the Daily Express they weren't surprised by Mr Gove's actions because he is a "disloyal ****". When told about Mr Gove's remarks another senior Cabinet Minister used the same four-letter expletive.
The next battle will be over how much to increase benefits: average salary rates or the inflation rate:
Chief whip needs to get a grip and threaten deselection to all those publicly declaring their duplicity and treachery. Removing the whip from Gove would be a good start. No rise in benefits when there are mass vacancies to be filled and when there is no pay rise for the private sector. Too many different factions in the Tories so no chance of collective responsibility.
More on that tomorrow.
Sadly, Conservative Party conference opens with economic U-turn
October 3, 2022 in history | Tags: 2022, BBC, Birmingham, Conservative Party, David Cameron, economy, England, Gordon Brown, government, Guido Fawkes, history, Kemi Badenoch, Kwasi Kwarteng, Laura Kuenssberg, Liz Truss, Margaret Thatcher, media, Michael Gove, Nick Ferrari, Nigel Farage, Penny Mordaunt, UK | 4 comments
On Friday, September 23, 2022, just four days after the Queen's funeral, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng delivered a 'fiscal event' designed to kick start the British economy.
In the days leading up to the fiscal event, so-called because it wasn't a full budget, the media and Labour were clamouring for it. However, the nation was in mourning for the late monarch and, accordingly, Parliament was in recess.
Conservative critics — i.e. Brexit critics — asked, 'Where's Liz? Where's the Chancellor? Something must be done!'
Parliament reconvened on that Friday to hear Kwarteng deliver a big, bold and beautiful economic plan, which included the abolition of the 45% upper tax rate.
Even Nigel Farage approved, going back in history to Margaret Thatcher's time as PM:
Today was the best Conservative budget since 1986.
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 23, 2022
What happened? The same critics blasted Kwarteng and Prime Minister Liz Truss for their rather Thatcherite plan, designed to reverse the nation's economic course since the Labour days of the early Millennium under Gordon Brown to the present Conservative government:
Gordon's Tax Time Bomb Finally Exploding Will Have Him Laughing https://t.co/tip9bVi8TN pic.twitter.com/uHPE1QaWif
Small-c conservatives hoped that Boris Johnson would have done this, but it was too big to take on. With the flak Truss and Kwarteng caught, it now appears that Johnson probably feared it would dent his popularity. That's only my guess, but it makes sense.
Mortgage rate fears
I went to a small local event on Saturday, September 24. Before it began, one woman of pensionable age asked, 'Has anybody seen the news today? I didn't have time to look. Has the economy crashed yet?' It was clear she was angry. Other people in attendance responded with jokes about supply-side economics.
Throughout the week, it was nothing but doom and gloom, even on GB News, which offered few correctives. The Labour Party conference took place last week, which did not help.
I went to the shops on Wednesday, September 28. On my walk, I overheard an estate agent talking to an older couple about their mortgage rate fears as a result of the fiscal event. The media had sent out ominous messages about rising interest rates. The estate agent told the couple that the turbulence would be short term and that it was taking place all over Europe — which is true.
On Thursday, September 29, the BBC's Question Time aired. One young woman stoked fears about a hike in interest rates on mortgages, claiming — claiming — that hers was going up to over 10%:
But was this claim true?
Apparently, the claim is false:
Skipton Building Society said they had not offered a 10%+ mortgage rate for many years:
Once again, the Left — including the media — took charge of the Conservative narrative. They're still at it.
Conservative Party conference opens
On Sunday, October 2, the Conservative Party conference began in the UK's Second City, Birmingham, once our industrial capital:
Actual useful data from the @GB_Takeaway campaign #CPC22 pic.twitter.com/FLnVOTszIF
Penny Mordaunt MP, Leader of the House of Commons, paid an excellent tribute to our late Queen, which was followed by a minute's silence and the singing of the National Anthem.
Having seen the first few speeches on GB News, the mood from the MPs speaking was upbeat. However, the mood in the conference hall was sombre.
Rishi Sunak and several of his supporters, prominent MPs, did not attend. Sunak said he wanted to be absent so that Truss 'could own the moment'. Ouch.
Boris Johnson also sent in his regrets.
Earlier that day, Truss appeared on Laura Kuenssberg's Sunday show on BBC1.
Kuenssberg asked her about the abolition of the 45% tax rate. Truss said that was Kwarteng's decision. Oh, dear. Guido Fawkes has the video:
Liz Commits to 45p Tax Cut but Admits it Was Kwasi's Decision https://t.co/r3DoWZVgwE pic.twitter.com/OxSwnuS80i
Because the fiscal event had to be done quickly, Truss and Kwarteng did not consult other Cabinet members.
Also, because it was such a departure from the norm, it appeared shocking to Britons expecting more of the same. Truss told Kuenssberg that she and the Chancellor could have communicated it better (see video):
Liz: We Should Have Laid the Ground Better, I Accept That https://t.co/lh4JCiRqpI pic.twitter.com/CSoGHLf3M3
Truss rightly pointed out that 'optics' — rather than reality — dominated the fiscal event:
Liz: We Need to Focus Less on Optics to Make Our Country Successful https://t.co/Ty0tuhFLfL pic.twitter.com/raK0xmCx5F
In the video, Kuenssberg ended by saying that optics were terribly important, implying that they make just as much of an honest representation as does reality. Oh, my days!
Returning to the Conservative Party conference opening day, Michael Gove stuck his oar in, saying that tax cuts are not conservative.
Whaaat?
Former Conservative MP Michael Portillo explained on his GB News show that Gove became an MP during David Cameron's time as Prime Minister and, therefore, has a different take on economics.
The economy wasn't the only issue on MPs' minds. Other of Truss's leadership rivals in this summer's contest for PM were not happy.
As is common with party conferences, smaller events took place outside of the main venue.
Last week, Truss said she would like to see more immigration, something that won't please folks who voted Conservative for the first time in 2019.
On Sunday evening, Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch — the MP whom conservatives deeply admire — attacked Truss's immigration plans:
Kemi Openly Leads Opposition to Liz's Immigration Plans https://t.co/SkOg2Jw2R9 pic.twitter.com/sbroSVFamu
Kemi would have made an excellent PM!
— |Sam loves UK/Aus/NZ Hard House 🇬🇧 (@Smith1987Sam) October 3, 2022
Guido has the story, which reveals rifts in the Party (emphases his):
If Liz Truss thought the furore over the 45p rate would distract attention from MPs rebelling on other policy areas, Guido's sorry to disappoint her. At the IEA/TPA DrinkTanks reception last night, guest of honour Kemi Badenoch openly rebuked the PM's plans to let in more immigrants to boost growth. The Trade Secretary ignored any sense of collective responsibility as she told the assembled free marketeers:
Also that evening, Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt spoke at a small gathering to complain — rightly — about poor Conservative communication over policy making:
Better comms in no 10 could have squashed partygate at the start. Better comms in no 10 could have dealt with pincher and stopped the fall of Johnson . You would have thought truss had learnt the lesson
— Rickey🛃 (@rickeyst) October 3, 2022
She made her views known at an event called 'Conservatives in Communication'.
Sadly, Guido points out:
… host Adam Honeysett-Watts had to tell the crowd to shut up and listen. Unfortunately, most of the attendees were far more interested in guzzling free booze and chatting to each other.
Meanwhile, Truss addressed a group of Conservatives, explaining the need for growth — now. She, too, said that Party communications are lacking:
Truss: Frankly We Haven't Made Enough Conservative Arguments pic.twitter.com/qfYGQew4nb
She is not wrong, and she has to make up for the past two years, consumed by dealing with the pandemic.
The second day of conference brings U-turn on 45% tax rate
Did Michael Gove, the Scot who wants to become PM, exercise his influence once again?
Nothing against Scots, but their politicians do seem to think that people need to be micro-managed, which Gove does, and that we should continue a globalist agenda in, well, nearly everything.
For the first time in years, Gove is not in Cabinet.
That said, he has never supported PMs he has served, going all the way back to David Cameron. This comment comes from one of Guido's readers (purple emphases mine):
Cameron, don't forget Cameron. Gove mortally wounded him too with Brexit. I don't disagree with Gove supporting Brexit obviously but the way he went about it was like a serpent to someone who called him his friend. His whole front line career has been poisonous towards the sitting leader.
At 7:17 a.m., Guido tweeted that Truss and Kwarteng were backing down on abolishing the 45% tax rate:
Weak!
— ollieMaqsDad (@MaqsDad) October 3, 2022
Kwarteng said he would still be going ahead with the rest of the fiscal event policy.
That U-turn will empower Gove and the Left — again, media included — to control the narrative even more.
Baroness Thatcher would have been so disappointed:
pic.twitter.com/RNzffIkqck
— Boy. Likes basil bruschetta. 🇺🇦 🔯 (@Bruschetta_Boy) October 3, 2022
And I know what Thatcher would have done with Gove: withdrawn the Party whip.
Guido says that the reversal came about on Sunday evening and that The Sun had the exclusive:
After The Sun broke the exclusive of conference late last night, the Lobby's just been informed that the government will now not be going ahead with the 45p rate abolition, with a u-turn expected to be announced within the next hour. Just yesterday the press were briefed that Kwasi was to tell conference "We must stay the course. I am confident our plan is the right one."
This morning the course has not been stayed – it has been re-directed in another direction altogether. Kwasi's statement:
From supporting British business to lowering the tax burden for the lowest paid, our Growth Plan sets out a new approach to build a more prosperous economy. However, it is clear that the abolition of the 45p tax rate has become a distraction from our overriding mission to tackle the challenges facing our country. As a result, I'm announcing we are not proceeding with the abolition of the 45p tax rate. We get it, and we have listened. This will allow us to focus on delivering the major parts of our growth package. First, our Energy Price Guarantee, which will support households and businesses with their energy bills. Second, cutting taxes to put money back in the pockets of 30 million hard-working people and grow our economy. Third, driving supply side reforms – including accelerating major infrastructure projects – to get Britain moving.
The move came after crisis talks yesterday between the PM and Chancellor; their hands forced by Tory MPs continuing to state on the record they couldn't vote for the plans, despite an open warning from [new Party chairman, MP] Jake Berry that they'd lose the whip. Gove was at the forefront of the rebellion…
Guido's cartoonist came up with this:
RIch's Monday Morning View https://t.co/yGtS9KUggN pic.twitter.com/TSvvLOtcAO
It is unclear how much of this has to come up for a vote in Parliament in order to proceed.
However, it is becoming apparent that a significant number of MPs have not united behind Liz Truss:
Kwarteng U-Turns on 45p Rate: "We Get It, and We Have Listened" https://t.co/tWQ9FeZFLG pic.twitter.com/Riu1sKb6xN
If enough Conservative MPs rebel in a vote, the Government could collapse. A collapse could trigger an imminent general election (GE). With the way things are, Labour could win and form a coalition with the other Opposition parties. That would be a disaster, particularly in voting reform if they push through a vote for 16-year-olds and immigrants to vote in a GE. Furthermore, they would probably also want some type of proportional representation to replace the centuries-old first-past-the-post.
Of course, the alternative is that Conservative MPs have another leadership contest, but that would look as if they were incompetent. One MP suggested that Conservative Party members be locked out of that vote altogether, which would anger them deeply.
An hour after Kwarteng announced the U-turn, he was on BBC Radio 4 with Conservative-loathing Nick Robinson. This is so sad:
actual lol pic.twitter.com/ubP0TmmHyq
— Meghan ate my Corgi (@LibrtarianLeft) October 3, 2022
Then Kwarteng went on Nick Ferrari's LBC breakfast show. Ferrari pressed him to say 'no more U-turns' but the Chancellor repeated, 'I've said what I've said'. Guido has the video:
Ferrari Asks Kwarteng Four Times to Promise No More U-Turns https://t.co/VRmhjfEDrP pic.twitter.com/ogyhXs91Bb
As a result of the U-turn, the markets were no longer predicting a 6% rise in interest rates, but something slightly lower — 5.5% and 5.75%. Guido is right in saying this is an emotional response:
Isn't really an entirely rational response to this measure given the relatively small fiscal effect. Markets are emotional and overshoot – in both directions. https://t.co/ongcTgQWJB
Sterling was also slightly up, but not hugely:
FX traders seem pleased they will pay 5% more tax and a fiscal change with negligible impact has been made. £ is up 0.64% currently.
Well I agree with that!
— Rupert Stiglitz (@RupertStiglitz) October 3, 2022
In closing, let's return to Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair as PM — without an election, I might add.
Conservative MP Gillian Keegan put the blame squarely on Brown in an interview with Times Radio on Monday morning.
Guido has the story:
Foreign Office Minister Gillian Keegan was spot on when she told Times Radio this morning that the top rate of tax was a political time bomb left behind by Gordon Brown:
I always knew that it was going to be a political problem. I mean, let's be honest, this was a political trap that was set by Gordon Brown in the dying days of his role as PM, right. And I paid the 50% tax. I was in business then. And I remember how devastating it was because actually, it meant you were paying about 65% tax. And there's something in your mind, which is like, really, you know, only 35% for me? And I'm doing all these hours. I was a business person, then it was set as a political trap…. In theory it [the top rate of tax] should never have been there.
There is something immoral about the government taking the majority of your income in tax. It is also a disheartening disincentive; reversing this spiteful tax is the correct policy, though this might perhaps be the wrong time. Getting rid of a political tax that was only set up by Gordon Brown when he knew he was likely to be ousted –to hurt the Tories rather than raise revenue – was the right thing to do. Even the IFS' Paul Johnson thinks in revenue terms "It might plausibly cost nothing at all". The tax was not about raising revenue – it was about political positioning.
Back in Fife, Brown will be rocking in his chair laughing that his tax booby trap, announced only weeks before he left office, and which was expected to cause problems for his successor David Cameron, has finally exploded in the face of a Tory Chancellor. The fuse wire on Brown's time bomb turned out to be 12 years long…
Truss and Kwarteng have learned a lot in the past month.
I do hope that they have learned something from their baptism by fire, especially Truss, for whom I have the greatest empathy. The Queen's death delayed her getting off the ground running. Then when she was finally able to do something, the media attacked her even more for it. Now the Party's MPs are angry with her. Some have already submitted no confidence letters to Sir Graham Brady of the 1922 Committee. The polls have been tanking. Two show voters giving Labour a 30% lead in the polls, something not seen for decades.
No one has even given Truss or the Chancellor a chance.
I will continue to pray for hers and Kwarteng's success against all odds.
They are doing the right thing …
… which is why they are being attacked mercilessly.
August 31: Conservative Party leadership contest ends in London
September 5, 2022 in history | Tags: 2022, Alastair Stewart, Andy Burnham, Belfast, Birmingham, Conservative Party, England, GB News, Guido Fawkes, history, immigration, Julia Hartley-Brewer, LBC, Liz Truss, London, Nick Ferrari, Northern Ireland, Norwich, Perth, politics, Rishi Sunak, Scotland, Stefan Rousseau, talkRADIO, TalkTV, tax, tax cut, UK | 4 comments
The Conservative Party leadership contest hustings ended in London's Wembley Arena on Wednesday, August 31.
Did it last too long? We think so only because we are having a cost of living crisis with more Project Fear pumped into our brains every day. Critics should remember that Parliament is in summer recess anyway. If things were normal with the economy, crime levels and the NHS, we wouldn't have minded so much.
Remember, if this had been a Labour leadership contest, no one would have moaned. The media would have bent over backwards justifying it.
What I do mind, however, is that Parliament will be meeting only for a short time in September then adjourning so that the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems can scuttle off to their respective Party conferences. Surely, parliamentary business can continue in the Chamber during September. Not every MP needs to be at a conference every day. Most of them are held on weekends, and Parliament does not meet on Fridays, so there is no reason why the Commons cannot meet during September.
Back to the hustings.
I'll start with the last one in London, which was excellent:
Nick Ferrari, the host of the morning show on LBC (radio), was the moderator.
The sound quality was good as was the music. It was highly professional and everyone looked as if they enjoyed being there.
The Conservative audience was diverse: all ethnic groups and all age groups. There were even a few hipsters present.
The first hour was not filmed. Author, national wit, Celebrity Gogglebox star and former Conservative MP Gyles Brandreth, 74, opened proceedings. I wish I could have seen him. Amazingly, he broke his elbow the day before in Fife, Scotland, but still showed up at Wembley Arena the next day.
In the video, Nick Ferrari comes on at 4:13 to introduce the format, which is consistent with the other Conservative Party hustings.
At this point in the contest, Liz Truss was seen by pollsters and bookmakers to be way ahead of Rishi Sunak, so the introductory theme was one of unity, meaning: no hard feelings, folks, our next job is to defeat Keir Starmer's Labour.
That is the message Iain Duncan Smith MP gave in his endorsement for Liz Truss (6:09), reminding the audience that:
she cut her political teeth in London.
Greenwich, to be precise.
Liz Truss's campaign video followed (13:41), then she appeared on stage, coming out like a winner and invoking the England Lionesses' ladies football win at the Euros, talking about an 'aspiration nation' and pronouncing London:
the greatest city on earth.
After Liz finished her speech, Michael Gove was next (26:08). He endorsed Rishi.
Gove also spoke about unity and had kind — penitential? — words for Boris, which met with a resounding wall of applause. He thanked Boris for 'the biggest vaccine rollout in Europe' and for being the first to support Ukraine at the end of February:
Boris, thank you for your service.
Rishi rushed on to the stage after his cringeworthy Underdog campaign video played (34:44).
The crowd went wild with cries of 'Rishi, Rishi' (36:00). His parents were in the audience and the cameras got several shots of them when their son was on stage. They sat between Rishi's wife and Michael Gove.
We value who you are not what you are.
He paid Liz credit for being:
a proud and passionate Conservative.
In his speech, he mentioned tackling the decades-old problem of grooming gangs and said he would get to grips with public safety and illegal migration.
Then it was time for Liz to answer Nick Ferrari's and the audience's questions (51:33).
Afterwards came Rishi's turn (1:25:00).
Andrew Stephenson, the co-chairman of the Conservative Party closed proceedings (1:58:26) and asked the two candidates back on stage for a final momentary appearance.
With that, the 12th and final hustings came to a close.
The Telegraph has a good recap. Emphases mine below.
Liz has had a good campaign:
… the past seven weeks have seen momentum firmly swing towards Liz Truss, and it would be a major political shock if Mr Sunak were be unveiled as the next prime minister on Monday.
Polling suggests the Foreign Secretary has a lead of around 30 points among Tory members, who have been drawn to her promises to immediately cut taxes and instigate radical economic reform.
By and large, she has also been better received at the hustings events that have taken place around the country, routinely winning applause for her positions on National Insurance, fracking and transgender issues.
Around 6,000 Conservative Party members attended the London hustings and heard Gyles Brandreth's introduction:
Gyles Brandreth, the broadcaster and former Tory MP whose arm is in a sling, has just given a speech to the Wembley Arena crowd.
"How exciting it is that two people who are intelligent, committed, capable, passionate about their country are actually ready to give service," he said.
"So whatever the result is it's going to be a great result for the United Kingdom. And whatever the result is at the end of this election, we are going to come together and support whoever the victor is to the hilt! No question of that."
He closed with a poem:
From quiet homes and first beginning
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning
But laughter and the love of friends.
Peter Booth, the chairman of the National Convention, appeared next, giving the audience guidelines on asking their questions.
The video misses out a lone protester, angry about energy charges:
A protester has just run in front of the stage – a man in a dark suit holding a sign that said dontpay.uk, writes Tony Diver, our Whitehall Correspondent, from Wembley Arena.
He was escorted out immediately by two security guards as he ran in front of cameras.
Liz put a lot of blame for London's woes on Mayor Sadiq Khan's shoulders:
Liz Truss tells the hustings it is impossible for Britain to succeed with London but it has been "let down by Sadiq Khan".
"Sadiq Khan is anti-everything – he's anti-car, he's anti-business, he's anti-opportunity and he is holding London back. And I don't believe those people who say London is a Labour city. No, it is not. London is a city where people opportunities and they want to get on in life.
"And that's what we can deliver, and we can make London Conservative again."
Nationally:
Ms Truss warns we all face dark times, vowing to reverse National Insurance and impose a moratorium on the green levy, while keeping corporation tax low.
These are her pledges:
I would be honoured to be your prime minister, first of all to deliver for the United Kingdom, to deliver an election victory for the Conservatives in 2024, and to make London a Conservative city again.
The applause for Rishi was greater than it was for Liz:
The cheers in the room are significantly louder and longer for Rishi than Liz. Audience members are on their feet and chanting his name, writes Tony Diver, our Whitehall Correspondent.
"Thank you! Thank you, Wembley!" Mr Sunak responds, after entering to The Weeknd's Blinding Lights.
He pledged an ethical approach, if elected:
He promises to lead an administration "with integrity and decency at the heart of everything we do".
Nick Ferrari tried to box Liz into a corner over domestic issues. She ably answered:
I'm the Foreign Secretary and my job is to focus on key foreign affairs issues.
She pledged that there would be no new taxes in her Government.
She also ruled out energy rationing.
She said that she would not refurbish the Downing Street flat:
Liz Truss responds that as a Yorkshirewoman, she believes in "value for money and not buying new things if you've got things that are perfectly good to use".
"I don't think I'm going to have time to think about the wallpaper or the flooring."
The papers largely picked up on her possible moratorium for 'smart motorways', those without a hard shoulder for emergencies:
Asked if she will restore hard shoulders to motorways and change speed limits from mandatory to advisory, Ms Truss replies: "I absolutely think that we need to review them and stop them if they are not working as soon as possible.
"And all the evidence I have suggests they're not working. We need to be prepared to look at that. I do believe that the smart motorways experiment hasn't worked."
Rishi defended his windfall tax, which the big companies can avoid if they prove they will invest more in the UK:
We've got it in place, but as I said in the situation that we're in it was the right thing to do, and I'm glad I did it, to be honest.
He also said that his plan to tackle inflation was the correct one:
I can guarantee that it will fall far faster with my plan than it will with anyone else's.
He, too, criticised Sadiq Khan:
Crime has become "intolerable" in London, adds Rishi Sunak, and "the first thing we need to do is hold to account Sadiq Khan for his failings".
"If you are prepared as a Mayor to do the right things… For example, stop and search. It's an effective policing tactic".
Unlike Liz, who was relieved not to have to stand up for audience questions, Rishi stood up and worked the stage.
He brought up ethics again:
In a sentence, does he think Boris Johnson was hard done by? "When it comes to those ethical issues, we can't be on the wrong side of them. We need to set a clear direction from the top, I would reappoint an ethics adviser because it sends a strong signal from the top."
The Telegraph's article ends with:
Liz Truss seems like a dead cert to become prime minister on Tuesday, and elements of Rishi Sunak's comments tonight shied away from the personal attacks that have characterised this bitter blue-on-blue campaign to lavish praise on his rival.
The cheers and chants at Wembley Arena tonight – far louder for Mr Sunak than the Foreign Secretary – told a different story from the grassroots polling, which suggests she has a lead of around 30 percentage points …
Boris Johnson's successor is likely to find themselves facing even greater challenges, and must also unite a party fractured by weeks of public division and disagreement.
Veteran political sketch writer Quentin Letts had this to say in The Times:
Surveying a throbbing crowd of 7,000 Tory activists, Sunak gasped "thank you!" nine times, the stage lights bouncing blindingly off his grinning ivories. He strode the large stage like an American presidential candidate and, for a man who must have seen predictions that he will be slaughtered when the result is announced on Monday, maintained an amazing level of pitch and thrust.
He even had an emotive card up his sleeve when he announced that his "two people who inspired me to go into public service are actually here tonight — my mum and dad". Jolly proud they looked, too. Rishi thanked his "loving, kind wife — you know what you mean to me, you chose to give up your high heels and take a chance on the short kid with a backpack". The crowd, audibly more pro-Sunak than some of the regional hustings, shouted: "Reeshi! Reeshi!"
Truss entered to strains of Taylor Swift's Change but her tactics for the evening were more cautious, playing down the clock. She was less sprightly in the opening spiels but came to life more in the questions that followed. In her opening remarks she pushed her voice hard, making it sound more strident and bunged-up. A reply to a question on Israel flew off the bat and had a Sunak supporter clapping hard. She also dealt firmly with some fluff about what sort of limousine she wanted and how she might decorate the No 10 flat. Where her campaign has succeeded with Tory activists has been in its simplicity: the basic message, whacked time and again, of lower taxes and a smaller state.
And so the campaign ends. What a festival for SW1 wonks it has been, allowing for oodles of analysis and fake crossness. The rest of the country, enjoying (lucky devils) their August, has possibly taken less notice of the contest. Sunak, smoother, more fluent, more the establishment's idea of a PM, started it as favourite. He ended last night by replaying that dreadful tough-Cockney video film about him being the underdog …
The Wembley crowd's questions were about smart motorways and advisory speed limits …, trans rights, gas prices for companies, corporate tax dodging, Ukraine, childcare costs, property prices and, commendably, the future of West End theatre.
Like Quentin Letts, I haven't gone into too many policy proposals because whoever gets in will be hit hard with reality.
There is an illusion that Party members of any stripe are being let into an honest discussion about what they want to see in a new Government. I do not believe this is what actually happens:
Ideas will be discussed only within the Politburo, not in front of the taxpaying plebs.
— Ethan Harrington (@Ethan_H1988) July 18, 2022
As evidence, let's cast our minds back to July 2019 and Boris Johnson's campaign.
He was going to ask the Queen if she wanted a new yacht to replace Britannia, which is now moored as a museum:
" I have not established that. I don't think we should embarrass her – put it that way – by imposing it on her… We need to work out if it is something that would actually be welcome." 🛳
— Christopher Hope📝 (@christopherhope) July 11, 2019
He also said that Sadiq Khan needed to go. Khan was re-elected in 2021. The Conservatives, for whatever reason, gave no support to their candidate Shaun Bailey. I cannot fathom why not, since Boris was Khan's predecessor. Shaun Bailey is a level-headed Conservative.
This is from the July 18, 2019 edition of The Express. Note the mention of housing and accompanying infrastructure, too. None of this happened, perhaps because of the pandemic. Even so, it shows how empty campaign promises are:
The Tory frontrunner savaged Mr Khan out of nowhere, branding him "useless" and "invertebrate" and "not a patch on the old guy." The onslaught was woven into Mr Johnson's wider solution to a question that had been posed on monocultural housing policies. A member of the audience asked the former London Mayor: "How will you ensure the Government's housing policies don't lend themselves into creating ethnic categories inadvertently?"
Without hesitation, Mr Johnson blasted: "You build fantastic housing in the right place.
"And you put in superb transport infrastructure so you can create mixed communities where there are high quality jobs.
"And if you look at the disasters of planning in the '60s and '70s where monocultural estates were built, it's because there simply wasn't the transport infrastructure.
"Look around London and look at the estates outside London – you can see exactly what went wrong."
That said, in the end, Boris did deliver on these pledges:
4 nations, 8000 miles, 16 regional hustings and hundreds of members' events! Thank you everyone for your support throughout this contest!
With less than 100 hours until polls close, please vote for me to deliver Brexit by 31st October, unite our country and defeat Corbyn pic.twitter.com/YYkczINjBv
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) July 18, 2019
Other hustings
I purposely didn't cover half the hustings in separate posts, leaving off with the August 11 one in Cheltenham.
A summary of the others follows.
The next one took place in Perth, Scotland, on August 16. It was unfortunate that pro-independence supporters ruined it with verbally violent posters, throwing eggs and by spitting on older Scottish Conservative members. The SNP denied any involvement.
The Mail had a summary of what the candidates said:
Liz Truss tonight vowed to 'never, ever let our family be split up' as the Tory leadership frontrunner insisted she would not allow another Scottish independence referendum if she becomes prime minister.
Speaking at the latest Conservative hustings event in Perth, the Foreign Secretary promised to battle Nicola Sturgeon's 'agenda of separatism' as she condemned the First Minister and her SNP government for having 'let down' Scottish voters.
Ms Truss accused the SNP of ignoring issues such as schools, hospitals and public transport as they chase another Scottish independence referendum.
Her rival for the Tory leadership, Rishi Sunak, also used tonight's hustings to take a swipe at Ms Sturgeon, as he vowed to 'call out' the Scottish Government's record on drug and alcohol abuse.
He claimed it was 'completely barmy' for the SNP to be agitating for a 'divisive and unecessary constitutional referendum' amid the cost-of-living crisis.
Ms Truss and Mr Sunak addressed Tory members inside Perth Concert Hall after reports of ugly scenes outside the hustings venue earlier in the evening.
Conservative Party co-chair Andrew Stephenson demanded Ms Sturgeon 'unequivocally condemn' the 'vile behaviour' of Scottish independence campaigners.
The candidates converged on Belfast the next day, Wednesday, August 17:
I felt very sorry for the Northern Ireland Conservatives gathered there. The party only has 300 members, and they have no voice in Westminster.
A clear disconnect emerged between the candidates and the Party members. Everyone looked uncomfortable.
For that reason, this hustings is well worth watching.
It became apparent that neither Liz nor Rishi understands the Conservative Northern Ireland mindset. I'm no expert, but even I could have dealt with some of those issues better than they did.
The moment that sticks in my mind was when someone asked why Westminster is foisting abortion clinics on Northern Ireland. Liz matter-of-factly — and rather coldly — responded that the rest of the UK has them, so Northern Ireland has to have them, too.
Abortion is far from being the norm there, and, as Northern Ireland has a devolved government, it should have been their decision, not Parliament's.
Madeline Grant summarised the disconnect in The Telegraph:
Some English Conservatives might be surprised to learn of the existence of their fellow party members across the Irish Sea, let alone that they had a vote in the leadership contest. Yet seatless and marooned from CCHQ – and perhaps because of this – Ulster Tories are the ultimate Tories. This wasn't your average Home Counties cakewalk, there were questions on more intractable subjects than you'd get elsewhere – abortion, China, the perils of a cashless society. Some of the questioners began with a little intro about how long they'd been party members, reminiscent of Alcoholics Anonymous.
A flamboyant chap in a maroon vest had made a journey almost as ponderous as Truss's own political leap from Lib Dem republican to Tory monarchist – he'd moved to South Antrim after heading up 'Conservatives Abroad' in South Korea. Making a similarly unexplained leap, he proceeded to compare the fight against abortion in Northern Ireland to Britain's fight against the slave trade in the 19th century. Would Liz "be a modern day William Wilberforce, and end abortion and infanticide in Northern Ireland?" he asked. Truss politely declined to take up the mantle.
Unlike Madeline Grant, I did not find the Belfast hustings amusing in the slightest. It was the saddest one of the lot.
Verdict: Must do better.
On Friday, August 19, our candidates were back on the mainland for the hustings in Manchester, which Alastair Stewart from GB News moderated (start at 6:30):
Alastair Stewart is a television veteran and knows what questions to ask:
Truss: Unlike the BBC, GB News usually get their facts right
— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) August 19, 2022
He won high praise from Liz:
🚨ICYMI…
'It's not the BBC, you know, you actually get your facts right!'
Watch last night's hustings again on the GB News YouTube channel https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/MhhpZ6fS58
Rishi's campaign team launched his second campaign film, The Underdog, at this hustings. It was so awful, I wanted to slip through the floor in embarrassment for him.
He told his family story and said that Conservative values were 'patriotism, family, service, hard work':
He turned defensive (again) when he told Stewart that he was winning the war on inflation and being responsible with borrowing:
He told an audience member, 'We're standing up to Russian aggression':
Liz said that the police must fight crime, not patrol tweets:
She also said that left-wing politics dominates today's socio-political debates:
Rishi, too, was tired of leftist dominance — and Manchester's mayor, former Labour MP Andy Burnham. GB News reported:
Rishi Sunak has vowed to take on the "lefty woke culture that seems to want to cancel our history, our values and our women."
… Speaking to the audience, Mr Sunak pledged to "restore trust by delivering on the things that matter to people".
He continued: "That's why I've set out a plan to finally start reforming the NHS so that we can talk less about how much money we can put into it and more in the healthcare that we want to get out of it.
"It's why I want to take on this lefty woke culture that seems to want to cancel our history, our values and our women.
"And it's why we need to restore trust of communities right here by calling out the failures of the Labour mayor Andy Burnham because it simply isn't good enough.
"Just look at the record, a police force that was put into special measures, the highest rates of knife crimes almost across the UK."
He also talked about illegal migration, details of which are available on his website:
"… I've set out a radical plan to finally get to grips with illegal migration.
"Because for too long we've turned on our TV screens and seen the scenes of people coming here on boats illegally and it is wrong."
His comments come days after the number of migrants to have crossed the Channel so far this year passed 21,000.
Another GB News article about the hustings has more:
He said: "I want to move away from the European definition of what an asylum seeker is, because it is too broad and it gets exploited by lefty lawyers.
"When people shouldn't be here we must be able to send them back, it's as simple as that.
Was the next bit a dig at Liz, our Foreign Secretary and former Secretary of State for International Trade?
"We've got to toughen up our foreign policy. At the moment we have a situation, I found it bonkers, we will go to a country, we'll talk to them about a trade deal we want to do with them, but also potentially be giving them actual foreign aid.
"But at the same time we don't say to them 'hang on, you need to take back your failed asylum seekers', that's clearly wrong."
Liz also had something to say about illegal immigration:
Promoting the much maligned Rwanda policy, which saw its first planned flight grounded on the tarmac, Ms Truss vowed to expand the scheme to other countries if she was elected as Prime Minister.
She said: "What we need to find is a permanent home for those people.
"The way to solve this issue is to find a way of making sure there is a long term home for people who are involved in illegal immigration.
"The real issue is at present people are able to get on the phone to their lawyers when they get on a plane and evade being sent to Rwanda and that is the issue we have to fix, that is about the ECHR."
The candidates are not miles apart.
Liz also discussed her vision for the North:
What I want to see is a successful north of England where everyone has opportunities and we link up the great cities of the north.
From Liverpool to Manchester to Leeds and beyond and also of course Bradford.
And that's why I want to build Northern Powerhouse rail and I want those opportunities to be powered by enterprise and business unleashing investment right across the country.
I want us to make the M62 the superhighway to success.
Unfortunately for Rishi, his attempts at being a man of the people failed, as the Mail reported:
Asked at the hustings event how, as a Southampton football club fan, he could get back to 'winning ways' in the battle to become Boris Johnson's replacement, Mr Sunak attempted to make light of his woes.
But his effort at friendly banter with the Manchester audience saw him blunder in his football knowledge.
'I'm going to be unpopular for saying it here – starting by beating United this weekend!,' Mr Sunak told the event.
It was quickly noted how Southampton are not due to play Manchester United until 27th August and would, in fact, be playing Leicester City this weekend.
Mr Sunak's own goal came just two days after he was mocked for claiming to always enjoy a McDonald's breakfast wrap when out with his daughters – despite the item having not been on sale since March 2020.
Yet, the former chancellor's campaign was handed a boost tonight when Michael Gove backed him to be the next Conservative leader.
Mr Gove, the former Levelling Up secretary who was sacked by Mr Johnson last month, accused Ms Truss of taking a 'holiday from reality' with her vow to tackle the cost-of-living crisis by prioritising tax cuts.
On August 23, Times Radio's John Pienaar, formerly of the BBC, moderated the hustings in Birmingham, the UK's second largest city:
Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi went on stage to endorse Liz.
Liz then went on stage (5:36) and embraced him to big applause and cheers from the audience.
Andrew Mitchell followed her by announcing his support for Rishi (16:34). Rishi's newer campaign film, The Underdog, was played.
Rishi then pledged to continue levelling up the Midlands, as he has been doing (21:47).
Of his speech, Pienaar said (33:01):
That was punchy!
Someone in the audience booed when Liz took to the stage for her Q&A (33:49).
Pienaar gave her a hard time in the beginning, but she got a huge round of applause from the audience.
Recall that The Times came out for Rishi almost immediately in July.
However, Rishi also had his beefs with Pienaar. He looked irritated (yet again) and said (1:06:00):
John, you're acting as if this is already over.
He went on to explain how well his furlough programme worked during the pandemic (1:18:00).
On the subject of Scottish independence, he said that nationalism (1:34:00):
is a romantic ideal.
Then he complained:
There's not been a single question about tax!
He then expanded on corporation tax and the largest companies. He became really agitated in an oddly friendly way.
This tells us tax is his main consideration, nothing else, no matter what he says.
The man is a technocrat.
Guido Fawkes had an excellent round up of sound bites, starting with Liz (emphases his):
If you want a flavour of the current state of Tory hustings, last night in Birmingham Liz Truss came out with the following two statements within 60 seconds of each other: "I'm not a massive fan of mice", and asked how she'd feel in the event of having to launch a nuclear weapons strike, "I think it's an important duty of the PM and I'm ready to do that." A casually blasé statement committing the UK to potential nuclear armageddon…
Suggesting she won't replace the government ethics adviser, saying: "The PM needs to take responsibility – you cannot outsource ethics to an adviser"
Suggesting she would redirect this year's £12 billion extra funding for the NHS into social care
Asked why she cut funds to the Environment agency as DEFRA secretary she said "I think there's a way with the way utilities are regulated. We were one of the first countries to regulate and privatise utilities but the world has moved on since then… some of those regulators get mission creep, they don't necessarily keep the market as properly as they should. I certainly think it's the case that water companies need to be better are stopping leaks, I think they should be better at dealing with pollution and we need to sort that out." Sounds a lot like Guido's story last Friday that she believes in a single utilities regulator…
As for Rishi:
Rishi's answers last night were less alarming albeit equally newsworthy. Primarily, he refused to commit to voting for Liz's proposed emergency budget should he lose, saying it is a hypothetical question. He reiterated his belief that her tax cut plans will result in "millions of people facing destitution." …
Rishi suggested UK aid programmes should be cut in countries that refuse to accept deportations of "failed asylum seekers" from Britain.
Rishi spoke movingly of yesterday's horrific shooting of a nine-year-old in Liverpool, saying he reacted by calling his wife, and daughter who is the same age as the victim. Rishi says the government needs to finish the Tories' 2019 policy of recruiting 20,000 policemen.
Let's go to the Rishi-supporting Times for their journalists' verdicts.
Daniel Finkelstein said:
Liz Truss is far better speaking without notes and, having delivered the same remarks over and over, she no longer needs them. Both her opening remarks and her answers to what will have been familiar questions were much better than in the early stages of the campaign. There were even flashes of the humour she shows in private …
But, however good Truss may now be, she still trails Sunak, who is just a better performer. Particularly in his answers, he was fluent, tough and compelling. His opening comments about the flaws in the Truss plan — suggesting it would leave many people destitute — were particularly arresting.
… Whoever wins, their policies have to appeal to those who are not Conservatives and need to actually work.
Winner: Rishi Sunak
Katy Balls said:
The state of the Tory leadership contest can be summed up in the video that welcomed Rishi Sunak to the stage. Last week, his team changed it from the montage played in the earlier hustings. It now has a Ray Winstone-style gangster voice boom that the former chancellor is the underdog — and the country loves an underdog. It points to Sunak's dilemma: if the polls are correct, only something drastic can change the state of play.
Although he was well received in the hall, with some of the loudest cheers, it's hard to pinpoint a "change moment" from the display. He again depicted himself as the only candidate willing to tell people hard truths about the economy. He tried again to invoke the spirit of Thatcher by pointing out that many of those who had worked with the late prime minister were backing his plan …
It helped Truss that she focused on her own plans. She came across as confident and assured. This also played well to a party growing tired of blue-on-blue. As the frontrunner, she needs only to hold the line — and she did that.
Winner: Liz Truss
Patrick Maguire said that both won but in different ways:
So how did Truss fare? As a rubber-chicken circuit speaker, just fine. They loved the answers on grammar schools, wokery and nukes. But as a prospective PM? On the biggest question — what to do about rampant inflation and crippling energy costs — Truss was revealingly unrevealing. Cagey, even. Asked how pensioners and the poor would be shielded from the coming storm, she said only that she would "look at" helping them. How to fund social care once Sunak's £13 billion national insurance hike is scrapped? "General taxation." Her cure for the mouse infestation in the Commons — "more cats" — was more detailed and offered with a good deal more enthusiasm.
Sunak attacked her economics with the kamikaze self-confidence that is likelier than not to lose him this race. It's telling. He is as sure as Ted Heath was that he will, in time, be vindicated by his rival's demise. Sunak is embracing the inevitable. Has Truss? She sounded as if she could not admit to herself — let alone the country — that compromise is coming.
Winner: on the clapometer, Truss. But Sunak won the argument.
On Thursday, August 25, talkRADIO's Julia Hartley-Brewer moderated the TalkTV hustings in Norwich in East Anglia.
Hartley-Brewer had a great set of questions for the candidates. One wonders if some came from her and TalkTV's listeners:
Julia is hosting tonight's Tory leadership hustings.
What do you want Julia to ask Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak?@JuliaHB1 pic.twitter.com/j9u4aUnCdb
— TalkTV (@TalkTV) August 25, 2022
While she was preparing her questions, Guido says that some Conservative MPs were annoyed with Rishi:
Allies of Liz's have slammed Rishi over his "scorched earth" policy, saying it risks destroying chances of bringing the party back together again when the contest is over. They accuse him of "behaving like a wounded stoat" and "framing us as Tory scum" over the course of the campaign. Given he said the likely next PM's plans would lead to mass homelessness, they're arguably correct…
Guido also included a photo of Rishi at his mother's former pharmacy in Southampton. Stefan Rousseau is an incomparable photographer:
His mother was a chemist you know…
Photo du Jour LATE EXTRA: Tory leadership candidate @RishiSunak visits his family's old business, Bassett Pharmacy, in Southampton, Hampshire, as part of his campaign to be leader of the Conservative Party and the next prime minister. By Stefan Rousseau/PA pic.twitter.com/3E57dTbG9Y
— Stefan Rousseau (@StefanRousseau) August 24, 2022
I just checked Rousseau's Twitter feed, and here's the exterior of the pharmacy:
My Picture of (last) Week: Striking dockers, training Ukrainian soldiers, signing a Ukrainian transport deal and a family chemist. By Stefan Rousseau/PA@RishiSunak @Keir_Starmer @grantshapps pic.twitter.com/whS04hCJ9z
The Telegraph had a running commentary on the candidates' day and the hustings.
This was the day after Rishi's criticism of coronavirus policy appeared in The Spectator:
Rishi Sunak's interview with The Spectator magazine – in which he revealed that he was told not to talk about the "trade offs" of lockdown – has prompted a row with former Downing Street employees.
He had more difficulties when he went on BBC Radio 4's The World at One:
On whether he will quit if he loses the leadership vote, Mr Sunak told BBC Radio 4's World at One earlier today: "Absolutely not. Of course not.
"And I would dispute the characterisation. I'm working incredibly hard going around the country talking about my ideas for the future, and actually having a very positive reception where I'm going, and I think there's everything left to play for.
"There's still weeks to run in this campaign, and that's why I'm continuing to give it everything I've got."
Meanwhile, Liz visited a food manufacturing plant:
Liz Truss has been out and about in Norwich today, visiting Condimentum Ltd at the Food Enterprise Park in Norwich.
Ms Truss told reporters at the factory near the Norfolk city that tax cuts and boosting energy supply were the key to addressing the cost-of-living crunch.
I think they make Colman's Mustard there.
Now on to the hustings.
The co-chairman of the Conservative Party defended the length of the leadership campaign:
Andrew Stephenson, chairman of the Conservative Party, addresses the Norwich audience. He defends the leadership contest amid criticism that it has dragged on for too long.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay came out in support of Rishi.
Rishi said that levelling up is for all corners of the UK:
Levelling up is not just about big cities and the north – it is for everyone, including right here in east Anglia, he says and receives a round of applause.
Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey declared her support for Liz:
She ends her introduction by saying: "Back Liz for leader, you can trust her to deliver."
As Liz, the MP for South West Norfolk, was on home turf, she got a standing ovation:
Huge applause and a standing ovation for Liz Truss as she takes the stage, who is the MP for South West Norfolk so this is very much home turf for her.
"We have travelled around the entire United Kingdon but there is nothing better than being back in my adopted county of Norfolk," she says, and the audience break out into applause once again.
Rishi had to answer a question about lockdown:
Rishi Sunak defends his interview in the Spectator, saying one of the most "tragic" aspects of lockdown was the damage to children of school closures.
He said it is always important to have an honest discussion about "trade-offs", adding: "If something sounds too good to be true it probably is".
Hartley-Brewer presented each candidate with the same series of quick-fire questions.
These were Rishi's answers:
Can you name a single public service that works well? The furlough scheme.
Macron, friend or foe? Friend
Mask mandates or no mask mandates? No mask mandates
Is a trans woman a woman? No
Who would you rather be stuck in a lift with, Keir Starmer or Nicola Sturgeon? Take the stairs
If not you, who would be a better PM, Boris Johnson or Liz Truss? Liz Truss
Hartley-Brewer had to get tough with a heckler:
Rishi Sunak is heckled by an audience member and Julia Hartley-Brewer intervenes telling him to "Sit down, Sir!"
Meanwhile another audience member asks about housing supply. Rishi Sunak says we need to overcome our aversion to "flat pack" housing.
He says he wants to help young people get on the housing ladder much faster by "turbo-charging" a scheme that allows first time buyers to purchase a home with a small deposit.
I can't believe he still peddles his daughters' concern for the environment when he's just had a full-size swimming pool installed at his home. Egregious:
Rishi Sunak tells the audience that the only thing his daughters ask him about is: "Daddy, what are you going to do for the environment?"
Then it was Liz's turn.
Hartley-Brewer asked her about lockdown:
I did question lockdown, Liz Truss says.
"Clearly in retrospect, we did do too much. It was too draconian. I don't think we should have closed schools," she said. "A lot of children have ended up suffering."
She adds: "I can assure you that I would never impose a lockdown if I am selected as PM."
These were Liz's answers to the quick-fire questions:
Name me a single public service that works well: Our education system has got a hell of a lot better in the last ten years.
Macron, friend or foe? The jury's out. If I become PM I will judge him on deeds not words
Who would you rather be stuck in a lift with, Keir Starmer or Nicola Sturgeon? I think Nicola Sturgeon. I'd hope to persuade her to stop being a separatist by the time we got to the ground floor.
If not you, who would be a better PM, Boris Johnson or Liz Truss? Boris Johnson
Hartley-Brewer asked her about unisex changing rooms at Marks & Spencer:
"M&S is a shop, they can decide their policies as they see fit," Ms Truss said. "I have been to the bra fitting service in M&S and it is behind a curtain. No one has ever tried to open the curtain while I am in there."
Liz explained why she does not want asylum seekers to work:
The Foreign Secretary says we also have huge numbers of people who are "economically inactive" and it should be our "first port of call" to get those people into work.
The reason why we don't allow asylum seekers to work is because the UK will become "even more of a magnate" for people to travel here illegally, she adds.
Good answer.
Liz reiterated her support for Net Zero.
Media outlets picked up on the candidates' responses to the 'stuck in a lift' question:
Their divergent answers on Emmanuel Macron also made the news.
Liz got both barrels, from Labour and Conservatives alike. The BBC reported:
… she was asked if Mr Macron was a "friend or foe" of the UK at a Tory leadership hustings.
She added that if elected PM she would judge him on "deeds not words".
But Labour's David Lammy accused Ms Truss of "a woeful lack of judgement", saying she had insulted one of "Britain's closest allies".
Ms Truss, widely seen as the clear front-runner to be the next Conservative leader and prime minister, made the remark at the penultimate leadership hustings in Norwich, to loud applause.
Her comment came at the end of the hustings during a series of "quickfire questions" posed by the host, TalkTV's Julia Hartley-Brewer.
When asked the same question Mr Sunak said Mr Macron was a "friend".
One Conservative minister said Ms Truss's comments had "completely undermined our relationship with France", calling her a "faux Thatcher", a reference to the infamously Eurosceptic former Tory prime minister.
In a tweet, former foreign minister Alistair Burt said Ms Truss has made a "serious error" and should have struck a more diplomatic tone.
Former Conservative minister Gavin Barwell also questioned Ms Truss's comment saying: "You would have thought the foreign secretary was aware we are in a military alliance with France."
Guido reported Macron's reaction:
Macron replies to Liz's comments on the French President at last night's husting:
"The United Kingdom is a friendly nation, regardless of its leaders, sometimes in spite of its leaders"
As for the 'better Prime Minister' question, Guido says:
When asked whether Rishi or Boris would be a better PM, Liz emphatically shot back "Boris". Not unsurprising, though rather awkward given Rishi was asked the same question of Liz and graciously chose his opponent…
So, here we are, at long last.
At 12:30 p.m, on Monday, September 5, Sir Graham Brady of the 1922 Committee announced that Liz Truss will be our new Prime Minister. She will meet the Queen at Balmoral on Tuesday, at which point she will form a new Government. More on that later this week.
Liz Truss is our third Party leader in six years.
Conservative MPs must stop the regicide and support her premiership.
Red Wall MPs: Marco Longhi — part 3
July 29, 2022 in history | Tags: Archbishop of Canterbury, Birmingham, Conservative Party, Dudley North, England, history, immigration, Jacob Rees-Mogg, King Kong, Lee Anderson, Marco Longhi, Parliament, police, Red Wall, Rwanda, tax, UK, West Midlands | Comments closed
After a few weeks' hiatus to cover the Conservative Party leadership contest, I am now able to conclude my series on Red Wall MP Marco Longhi, who represents Dudley North in the West Midlands.
Those who missed them might find Parts 1 and 2 of interest.
Boris tribute
Marco Longhi paid Boris Johnson a brief but heartfelt tribute during the Prime Minister's final PMQs on July 20, 2022:
A long time ago, when I trained as a pilot, I had the luxury of being able to fly around turbulent storms. I also had the ability to rely on a team who kept my aircraft airworthy. As the Prime Minister prepares his new flight plans, may I suggest that he resets his compass to true north and stops off in Dudley, where he will always be welcomed with open arms and sincere affection, and where he will be able to see his legacy?
Boris replied:
I thank my hon. Friend for that renewed invitation. I have spent many happy days with him in Dudley; let us hope that there are more to come.
The Archbishop of Canterbury on Rwanda
After the first scheduled deportation to Rwanda on June 14, 2022 proved to be a non-starter, the Archbishop of Canterbury made his views known yet again.
On June 15, The Express reported (emphases mine):
In a Tweet he wrote: "To reduce dangerous journeys to the UK we need safe routes: the church will continue to advocate for them.
"But deportations — and the potential forced return of asylum seekers to their home countries — are immoral and shame us as a nation."
This, rightly, elicited reaction from some Red Wall MPs:
Red Wall Conservative MPs were furious at the attack on Home Secretary Priti Patel and suggested that Welby give up his two palaces, which come with his Archbishopric, to house illegal migrants and use his personal wealth to pay for their needs.
Ashfield MP Lee Anderson said: "If the Archbishop of Canterbury truly believes that we should do more to keep illegal immigrants in this country and love thy neighbour as thyself then perhaps he should give up his two palaces and pay for all the accommodation costs.
"He can then instruct every Church in the UK that their vicarages should also be given up to illegal immigrants to stay in. These are practical measures he could take to assure the great British public that the Church is doing all it can during these difficult times."
The Archbishop's main residence is Lambeth Palace – south of the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament.
As well as numerous bedrooms the 800-year-old palace boasts extensive gardens, a large library, an atrium, "the pink drawing room" and a state dining room.
Meanwhile, his residence in Canterbury is the Old Palace or Archbishop's Palace, another grade I-listed 800-year-old building where one of the bedrooms was used by the Queen.
Marco Longhi echoed those sentiments:
In a personal message directed at the Archbishop, Dudley North MP Marco Longhi added: "Archbishop, as you appear to feel so strongly about this, will you give up two of your palaces for illegal migrants and pay for their accommodation?
"I note how it is the liberal privileged elite, unaffected by the impact of illegal immigration, whose moral outrage is loudest."
When Boris won the December 2019 general election, increasing the numbers of police around England was a manifesto pledge.
On December 14, 2021, Longhi recognised the efforts the Government had made thus far in the West Midlands:
This Government value all our police officers. That is why, with our 11,053 extra police officers, we are not on target, but ahead of target to deliver our manifesto pledge of 20,000 new officers; there are 867 new officers already working in the West Midlands.
The financial settlement gave West Midlands police an inflation-busting 5.8% increase to its budget—a staggering £36 million. In addition, the rises in local tax that residents pay, together with council tax, put West Midlands police at the top of league tables across the country for precept increases; since 2012, a staggering increase of 79% has been imposed on people in Dudley North and across the West Midlands by the Labour police and crime commissioner.
Dudley people—and those across the West Midlands, I am certain—can see that effective policing is about more than just money. It is about local decision making and how that filters down from the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner.
Longhi was having a go at Labour for taxing West Midlands residents excessively but delivering little value for money with regards to policing. A Labour MP asked him to give way for an intervention, but he refused:
I would rather not, just now. The facts sadly speak for themselves. We need the right strategy for deploying all the new police officers we recruit, making the right decisions locally, and having the will and competence to deliver on them. The Labour police and crime commissioner has closed dozens of police stations, while spending more than £30 million on refurbishing plush offices at his headquarters in Lloyd House in Birmingham.
Another Labour MP asked to intervene, but Longhi refused to do so.
A commotion arose.
This took place in Westminster Hall, where niche debates take place rather than in the House of Commons. This one focused on West Midlands policing.
Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative) was the chair:
Order. Calm down. The hon. Gentleman does not have to give way if he does not want to.
Longhi continued, pointing out Labour's ability to rake in tax money then do nothing for local people:
Meanwhile, Dudley and Sedgley police stations have closed. Some hope was given to Dudley people when a new police station was promised in Dudley. It was hailed by my predecessor—the noble Lord Austin—as a new multimillion-pound station to replace the one in Brierley Hill. Several years later, we are still waiting for it. In 2019, it was announced that it would open in 2021, yet no detailed plans have been submitted by the police and crime commissioner to the council planning department.
Dudley is a major metropolitan town—I believe it is the largest town in the country that is not a city—and it has been without a central police station since late 2017. We are paying the price for no presence as a result of inaction and incompetence. Perhaps the Minister might inquire of the police and crime commissioner when Dudley people might see shovels in the ground and the promised new station.
I have great respect for a local police inspector in Dudley by the name of Pete Sandhu and his team. They are trying their utmost to make do with offices borrowed from Dudley Council that are, quite frankly, not fit for purpose. Inspector Pete Sandhu, the local police teams and PCSOs in Dudley town, the surrounding villages and those across the West Midlands not only deserve but need a station that is fit for purpose. Unfortunately, time and again, Labour police and crime commissioners have failed their constituents—including mine.
At the end of the debate, Kit Malthouse, the then-Minister of State for Crime and Policing, responded on behalf of the Government:
I have never shied away from those difficult financial decisions that have to be taken. Nevertheless, generations will pass, and maybe in 50 years the Labour party will stop talking about that period of austerity and talk about what is happening today. Today, I thought I was coming to a debate about the value of neighbourhood policing. However, it has become obvious that this is a pretty naked political manoeuvre in advance of some difficult financial decisions that the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands will have to make as he moves towards setting his council tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) has highlighted how significantly council tax has increased over the past few years …
… I find these debates a bit disheartening because of the lack of curiosity exhibited by Members about the performance in the West Midlands. For example, they never ask themselves why other police forces are doing better. Why is Liverpool doing better than the West Midlands? Why is Humberside doing better than the West Midlands? …
I will give way in a moment. Those Members are unwilling to acknowledge the reason, which is that decisions were made by the previous Labour police and crime commissioner that set the West Midlands back. They have to take responsibility for those decisions; they cannot, I am afraid, just come to this Chamber and keep saying that everything that goes wrong in the West Midlands is the Government's fault, and that everything that goes right is the Labour party's achievement. Nobody is buying that in Edgbaston, Selly Oak, or anywhere else in the West Midlands. They recognise that difficult decisions had to be made, and I urge the Labour party to acknowledge those difficult decisions.
David Jamieson was not all good, and he was not all bad. He had difficult things to do, and he made a set of choices that produced a particular outcome and a particular baseline in the West Midlands. I have no doubt that that was what he said in the elections that he won, and that the people of the West Midlands took him at his word and believed him. They have re-elected a Labour police and crime commissioner, so presumably they are happy with that performance, but complaining that everything that goes wrong is down to the Government seems a little naive to me.
Malthouse concluded:
… The West Midlands made a certain matrix of decisions that resulted in the outcome today. A number of forces around the country made different decisions. As a result, they will have more police officers than they had in 2010. That is something with which hon. Members will have to wrestle; I am afraid that is the plain truth.
On neighbourhood policing, I am pleased to hear that there is a thrust in the West Midlands to invest in neighbourhood policing, not least because the neighbouring Staffordshire force has been doing that for some years, to great effect. The police and crime commissioner and the former chief constable there took the decision to invest in neighbourhood policing and, interestingly, traffic policing, as the basic building blocks of an excellent delivery of service to their people. As a result, they saw significant reductions in neighbourhood crime. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North referred to the uplift number, which is 800-odd. I encourage exactly that kind of intervention. It is what lies behind our desire to expand the number of police officers in the country.
I strongly disagree with Marco Longhi's desire to see ordinary people banned from using fireworks.
It has only been in recent years that virtue signallers have made complaints about a splendid celebratory tradition that has been going on for centuries.
In England, at least, fireworks may be used only a few months during the year and, even then, only on certain days:
15 October to 10 November;
26 to 31 December;
3 days before Diwali and Chinese New Year.
However, not everyone obeys the rules. Furthermore, the rules are not enforced in equal measure.
So, Longhi took a survey of his constituents on the matter.
On November 8, 2021, a debate on fireworks took place in Westminster Hall. Although this debate has taken place often in recent years, this particular one was triggered by an online e-petition. The number of signatures required a parliamentary debate.
Longhi said:
There is no denying that access to fireworks in the UK is easy and that enforcement of existing legislation is poor. Although many of us have enjoyed firework displays over the last week to celebrate Diwali or to remember the foiled plot to blow up this House, many, if not more, are traumatised by fireworks. Last year, following scores of pieces of correspondence from constituents, I decided to open a public survey so that all my constituents could share their thoughts on fireworks and the impact they have. I received both positive and negative feedback, but I was truly shocked by the sheer volume of responses I received, many of which were overwhelmingly negative. Given the nature of the internet, the survey spread widely—some might say it went viral—and I found myself with well over 1 million hits on Facebook and well over a 100,000 survey returns.
We have heard about the trauma to pets and livestock. As we approach Remembrance Day, let us also spare a thought for our veterans and those suffering from PTSD, for whom loud and unexpected bangs and flashing lights can have a devastating effect on quality of life.
We have had many Australian influences on legislation over the years, and perhaps it is time for some more. At present in the UK, there is no legal requirement to have any form of licence or training in order to let off consumer fireworks. Fireworks can be sold at any time of the year and can be bought online. In Australia, it is illegal for someone to buy, possess or discharge fireworks unless they hold a pyrotechnician's licence or single-use licence. Authorities must be notified of all firework displays, and authorised events can be found using the authorities' fireworks display search.
One question that I would ask all Members in this room and those unable to join us today is this: should local authorities take the location of public displays into consideration when granting them a licence and should they require displays to be well publicised in the surrounding area? Furthermore, is it right to place greater restrictions on the sale, purchase and use of fireworks? If we agree, surely we can then find an agreeable compromise that protects those who are traumatised by fireworks.
I have already had discussions with my hon. Friend the Minister about this issue and I greatly appreciate his time, but it is time we had a wider debate and an honest discussion. This debate is had every year, but there are no real legislative changes. Surely the time is right for that to happen now.
Paul Scully, who was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy at the time, responded for the Government.
I agree with what he said:
… I am grateful to the members of the public who took the time to sign the e-petition that has brought us here to Westminster Hall to discuss this important matter, because it has received more than 300,000 signatures and calls on the Government to limit the sale of fireworks.
Therefore, I will take the time to outline and explain the Government's position on this matter, and to say, first of all, why we believe—although I understand that it is not the subject of this debate, as has been outlined—an outright ban on fireworks or an outright ban on their sale to the public is not the appropriate course of action.
We have concerns that banning fireworks in that way could have significant adverse and unintended consequences for public safety, particularly in leading to the emergence of a black market in illicit fireworks. There was a reason why there was not a 2019 debate on this issue. Yes, it was the year of a general election, but more importantly in 2019 the Petitions Committee conducted an inquiry on this issue, which I was a part of as a Member of the Committee, and the evidence given by interested parties aligned with the Government's current view. Those interested parties included both the National Police Chiefs' Council and the National Fire Chiefs Council.
The petition being debated today also highlights the concerns that some people have—understandably—about the impact of fireworks on vulnerable groups and animals. These are issues that I was only too pleased to discuss with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) when we met back in July to discuss the fireworks survey that he had carried out in his constituency; as he said, it went somewhat viral. I really sympathise with those views, and I am always sorry to hear the stories of how some individuals and animals have been affected by fireworks. That is why the Government are committed to promoting the safe and considerate use of fireworks, and why we have been carrying out a programme of action on fireworks to ensure that those who use them do so safely and appropriately.
It is important to say that this is a highly regulated area, with a comprehensive regulatory framework already in place to control the sale, availability and use of fireworks. We believe that this framework strikes the right balance for people to enjoy fireworks while aiming to reduce risks and disturbances to people and animals. For example, current legislation sets an 11 pm curfew on the use of fireworks, with later exceptions only for the traditional firework periods of 5 November, Diwali, New Year's Eve and Chinese New Year.
A load of concerned Opposition MPs from Labour and the Scottish National Party piled on with interventions.
Scully replied on noise and trading standards questions:
There is a 120 dB noise limit on fireworks available to consumers. Retailers are restricted to only selling consumer fireworks during a limited period around each of the seasonal celebrations that I just referred to, and retailers may only supply fireworks to the public outside those periods if they obtain a licence from their local licensing authority. However, I fully appreciate that it is just as important to ensure that legislation is enforced effectively. We have heard of some issues where that has fallen short, but I will describe what powers and mechanisms are in place against the illegal sale and use of fireworks.
Local authority trading standards work with retailers to ensure that the fireworks that are sold are safe, and have powers to enforce against those who place non-compliant fireworks on the market. Trading standards and local fire and rescue authorities in metropolitan counties can also enforce against those selling fireworks without an appropriate licence—for example, outside of the normal selling period.
He also said, in response to Opposition MPs:
In our polling, the Government found that 11% of the population want a total ban on fireworks, 36% want a ban on the private sale of fireworks, and, from memory, 64% enjoy the use of fireworks and want to be able to enjoy them both privately and publicly. We came to similar conclusions from our evidence as were reached by the Petitions Committee in its 2019 inquiry. In the extensive report setting out its findings, the Committee concluded that introducing further restrictions on fireworks was not the appropriate course of action, due to the potential unintended consequences. That was just two years ago. We agree with that position.
We acknowledge the experience of people who believe that banning fireworks would push the market underground and make it more difficult to regulate and monitor. We also agree with the Committee's conclusion that such a ban would have a substantial economic effect on those who have built their livelihood in the fireworks industry. Restricting fireworks would probably also have dire consequences for community displays, which raise funds for good causes.
Due to those significant concerns, the Government believe that the most balanced course of action is to continue to pursue non-legislative measures on fireworks to complement existing legislation. That is the position we set out and committed to in our response to the Petition Committee's inquiry.
Leave our fireworks alone!
I've only ever bought sparklers, but I have no idea where my neighbours purchase their fireworks.
For years, our local superette used to have a large, locked counter filled with fireworks at the appropriate time of the year. They got rid of that over a decade ago.
Our neighbourhood's home displays of fireworks, which I used to be able to watch from the comfort of my living room and kitchen, have also decreased over the past few years.
I disagree with Longhi on this subject. However, it is good that he respected his constituents' wishes, conducted a survey and presented the results to the Government.
Business of the House questions
Marco Longhi and Lee Anderson seem to have struck up a friendship. I often see them sitting together in the Commons.
Perhaps Lee's Ashfield food bank brought them together.
This is from the Business Debate of November 25, 2021, when Jacob Rees-Mogg was still Leader of the House.
Anderson said:
Last Friday I was joined by my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) and for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) in a "Ready Steady Cook" event in Ashfield. With the help of the local food bank, the college and local top chef Dave Marshall, we were able to produce 175 meals for just 50 quid. This is our fight against food poverty. Does the Leader of the House agree that we need a debate in this place on food poverty, so we can help people to cook on a budget and feed the nation?
Rees-Mogg replied:
I commend my hon. Friend for his amazing achievement and his hard work. I have a friend who teaches people to cook on a budget and runs something called Bags of Taste, which is a very successful way of encouraging people to cook on a budget. My hon. Friend is leading by example.
In the same debate, Longhi raised a complaint about a group of Travellers who refused to move on when they should have:
Yesterday, I received a three-page letter from the leader of Dudley Council. A designated Traveller site in Dudley has been occupied by Travellers who have overstayed the terms of their licence. After due process was followed in the courts in co-operation with the police, the police commander refused to support the council to give cover to bailiffs, citing the European Convention on Human Rights, as Travellers may have rights.
Will the Leader of the House agree to look into the matter and arrange a statement from the relevant Minister? This sets a terrible precedent for councils across the country, which may find that they have wasted taxpayers' money by following legislation set out by this place to invest in designated sites. It can provide indefinite leave to stay illegally, with no protection for landowners. It implies that the police can "woke interpret" and choose to follow laws other than this country's and its courts' instructions. Does that not give further credence to the need to repeal the Human Rights Act, as I have been calling for for many months?
Rees-Mogg gave a theoretically correct reply on policing by consent, which, as we saw during the pandemic, no longer works as such.
He also seemed reluctant to condemn the European Convention on Human Rights, of which the UK is still a signatory:
My hon. Friend asks an excellent question. It is really important that we are all equal under the law, and it is fundamental that the law is carried out by the police. We police by consent; the police are us, and we are the police. For that to work, people have to have confidence that the law will be enforced. Having said that, I do not know the specific details of the case or the reasons for the police decision, but the Government are taking more action to deal specifically with the issues around illegal campsites and associated criminality. I will pass on my hon. Friend's comments to the Lord Chancellor, and I note with great interest what he has to say about the Human Rights Act.
A new Human Rights Act is making its way through the Commons, with the intention that it frees us from EU conventions. However, why we cannot use and enforce the original one, the 1688 Bill of Rights, puzzles me.
To end on a lighter note, on January 28, 2022, the Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill debate took place.
Suzanne Webb, the Conservative MP for Stourbridge, discussed little-known artefacts and the importance of taking good care of them.
This includes a replica of King Kong:
I now want to tell the tale of an artefact of great distinction and notoriety that resided in the Midlands: an 8 foot tall, 890 kg fibreglass statue commissioned for display in Birmingham in 1972, as part of the sculpture for public places scheme in partnership with the Arts Council of Great Britain. It was commissioned to make something city-oriented, and the sculptor chose King Kong—I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) remembers the King Kong that resided in Birmingham. I do not want hon. Members to do a quick Google now, as I will be told off by Mr Speaker, but when they leave the Chamber, they can see the incredible artefact that was in Birmingham and supposed to represent it. It was down to the sculptor's association with New York City, and he created it for their own petty reasons. It was displayed in the heart of the city for many years—imagine if it was actually seized! It was something of a notoriety, and I loved it as a child growing up. We used to drive round to look at it. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that King Kong lives on, and is now retired in Penrith.
Longhi made no reference to King Kong in his speech, but commended the Bill as an important contribution to preserving our culture and history, good and bad:
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies) and to speak about this straightforward and reasonable Bill, which has been designed in a specific and targeted way, and will only help to support a sector that, like so many others, has been affected during the pandemic.
Our museums and cultural institutions in the United Kingdom do an incredible job. They have the power to transcend barriers, to preserve and to educate. Our museums, galleries and cultural institutions teach us about the past—the good, the bad and the ugly. By learning about the past, we can be inspired for the future to do better or learn from past mistakes. They stimulate our brains and make us smarter.
My Dudley North constituents are lucky that we have many rich cultural institutions on our doorstep: the Black Country Living Museum, Dudley Zoo and Castle, the Wren's Nest site of special scientific interest, the Dudley Canal Tunnel Trust, nature reserves, our microbreweries and pubs, and our bowling greens and parks. The list really does go on.
I am pleased to say that Longhi supported Kemi Badenoch in the Conservative Party leadership contest.
All the best to him for a long and satisfying parliamentary career.