Markus Andrews

Nearly half a billion pounds was spent implementing the coronavirus traffic light system for international travel but the government “does not know” whether it worked, according to MPs.The testing and quarantine requirements for people arriving in the UK were changed 10 times between February 2021 and January 2022, a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) stated.In May 2021 the traffic light system was introduced, which set the rules for arrivals from every country depending on whether it was on the red, amber or green list.Arrivals from red list countries had to stay in a quarantine hotel for at least 10 days.Airlines and holiday companies blamed ministers for the limited recovery of foreign travel due to the rules, with many European countries imposing fewer restrictions.The PAC claimed the government does not know the health impact of its policies.RecommendedTaxpayers subsidised £329 million of the total £757 million cost of quarantine hotels, the report said.That is despite the bill for individuals rising to more than £2,200 for a single adult.Only 2 per cent of guests in hotel quarantine tested positive.The report stated: “Managing cross-border travel was an essential part of health measures introduced by government during the pandemic.“Despite spending at least £486 million on implementing its traffic light system to manage travel during the pandemic, government did not track its spending on managing cross-border travel or set clear objectives, so does not know whether the system worked or whether the cost was worth the disruption caused.”Dame Meg Hillier, who chairs the PAC, said: “The approach to border controls and quarantine caused huge confusion and disruption with 10 changes in a year. And now we can see that it is not clear what this achieved.“We can be clear on one thing – the cost to the taxpayer in subsidising expensive quarantine hotels, and more millions of taxpayers’ money blown on measures with no apparent plan or reasoning and precious few checks or proof that it was working to protect public health.“We don’t have time and it is not enough for government to feed these failures into its delayed public inquiry.“It is not learning lessons fast enough from the pandemic and is missing opportunities to react quickly to future emergencies or even current events like new variants of Covid or the spread of monkeypox.”Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, said: “Government departments should be ashamed of the suck-it-and-see approach they took regarding travel measures during Covid.Recommended“The constantly changing policies not only caused enormous damage to the travel sector in terms of financial harm, but also hurt UK plc’s image around the world.“Urgent steps need to be taken to ensure the country’s borders are kept open should another variant emerge, and that government has a more positive policy in place to enable airlines, airports and other travel businesses to keep functioning so as to protect jobs and livelihoods.” More

The gap in public spending between London and the North has doubled since Boris Johnson came to power, despite his pledge to “level up” the country, new figures reveal.The capital has surged ahead of England’s poorest region in terms of cash handed out by the government – proving that “the money simply didn’t follow the rhetoric”, according to the think tank behind the analysis.The data also shows that, three years after the prime minister stood outside No 10 and vowed to level up the nation, public spending in the North has now fallen behind the average for England.Labour said the findings were “scandalous”, but the UK’s regional inequalities have barely featured in the Conservative leadership contest, which has instead been dominated by discussion of tax cuts and hardline policies on immigration.IPPR North, which carried out the study, warned Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak that “votes lent to their party” at the 2019 election cannot be taken for granted if the levelling up promise is allowed to fail.Recommended“If candidates hope to serve for longer than their recent predecessors, they should listen to the North and make unlocking the region’s significant potential their personal priority,” said Ryan Swift, a researcher for the think tank.A spokesperson for the Northern Research Group (NRG) of Conservative MPs said the analysis highlighted “the biggest issue facing our new prime minister”.“We were elected with a mandate to level up the entire UK, and this is what we must deliver,” the influential group said. “The NRG are pleased that both candidates have signed up to our pledges, meaning both are fully committed to a levelling-up fund, a minister for the North, and greater devolution.”Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, said: “These figures are scandalous. For all the Tory promises to people in the North, regional inequality has got worse since Boris Johnson became prime minister. And now the two continuity candidates scrapping to replace him are vying for the mantle of Margaret Thatcher.”And Clive Betts, the chair of the Commons levelling up committee, said: “I’m very disappointed but not surprised by these figures. The problem is that there is no real commitment to spending the money that is needed in the areas that need levelling up.”In 2019, the North received £13,884 per person, above the England average of £13,648, according to IPPR North’s analysis of data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).But by 2021, its spending per head of £16,223 had slipped below the England average of £16,309 – despite Mr Johnson’s high-profile pledge to rescue left-behind areas.Meanwhile, London’s share of the pot leapt from £15,397 to £19,231, widening the spending gap from £1,513 per person to £3,008, the figures show.“On public spending, the money simply didn’t follow the levelling-up rhetoric,” said Marcus Johns, another researcher at IPPR North, a branch of the Institute for Public Policy Research.The criticism will fuel fears that levelling up is floundering even before its champion leaves No 10 in September, forced out by Partygate and the Chris Pincher groping scandal.It was undermined by the Treasury’s refusal to commit to any extra spending despite the number of ‘red wall’ Tories in vulnerable marginal seats in the North and Midlands.Meanwhile, as The Independent revealed, at least £2bn has been slashed from development funding in poorer areas as a result of the government breaking its pledge to match EU spending lost because of Brexit.Starved of extra funding, the then levelling up secretary Michael Gove unveiled 12 “missions”, which were criticised for being vague, unambitious, or impossible to measure, although the bill to “enshrine” them in law was hailed as proof that the targets – to improve pay, jobs, transport connectivity and other indicators in less prosperous areas – had real teeth.It then emerged that Mr Gove was quietly affording his department the power to abandon the key tests of whether the strategy was working if he was able to argue that they were “no longer appropriate”.Now IPPR North has analysed the ONS data, covering expenditure on both services and investment, to uncover the true spending picture since Mr Johnson made his pledge.The “North” covers three regions – the North East, the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber – which are seen as the focus of the pledge to level up. Over the two-year period from 2019 to 2021, per-person public spending in the North went from being £246 higher than the England average to £86 below it.The lowest percentage increase was in the North East (16 per cent), while the lowest per-person public spending in 2021 was in Yorkshire and the Humber (£15,540).IPPR North also stripped out the huge amounts spent on tackling the Covid pandemic from its analysis, but discovered that the picture remained largely the same.On that measure, the gap between the North and London grew by almost 80 per cent, from £1,081 per person to £1,937.Mr Johns added: “Although an increase in public spending on 2019 was welcome and absolutely essential, spending is lower and grew slower in the North than in other parts of the country. At the same time, the country became more centralised and inequalities widened. This is because power is not distributed fairly in this country.”RecommendedMr Swift added: “Our analysis suggests that levelling up was, in many ways, business as usual. But that has to change.”A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “We do not recognise these figures and are pressing full steam ahead with levelling up the North.” More

Liz Truss has been accused of inflaming divisions and attempting to erode workers’ rights with proposals to raise ballot threshold for industrial action and minimum service levels during strikes.The Tory leadership contender said she will introduce legislation targeting “militant action” from trade unions in the first 30 days of taking office if she wins the race to succeed Boris Johnson in No 10.The committment comes as members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) at Network Rail and 14 train operators prepare to walk out on Wednesday in an ongoing dispute over jobs, pay and working conditions.The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has urged the government and transport secretary, Grant Shapps, to “stop blocking an agreement that will end the dispute” and get around the negotiating table.RecommendedBut Ms Truss’s campaign team said she will “introduce a number of measures to hinder unions’ ability to cripple the economy” and guarantee a minimum level of service on “critical national infrastructure”.“Tailored minimum thresholds, including staffing levels, will be determine with each industry,” they added.The proposal was included in the Conservatives’ 2019 election manifesto to target transport strikes. Unions, however, described the measures as an attack on the right to strike which were “unfair and unworkable”.Among her plans, Ms Truss also intends to raise the minimum threshold for voting in favour of strike action from 40 to 50 per cent and expand the rule across all sectors of the economy while increasing the minimum notice period for strike action from two to four weeks.A cooling-off period would be implemented so that unions can no longer strike as many times as they like in the six-month period after a ballot and members would no longer be able to receive tax-free payments from unions on the days they are on strike.Ms Truss said: “We need tough and decisive action to limit trade unions’ ability to paralyse our economy. I will do everything in my power to make sure that militant action from trade unions can no longer cripple the vital services that hard-woking people rely on”.RecommendedResponding to her plans, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady called on the leadership candidates to stop “taking pot-shots at working people and their unions” and instead draw up plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.She added: “The right to strike is an important British freedom. Threatening the right to strike means working people lose the power to bargain for better pay and conditions”.Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “As we saw with the government’s plans to break strikes with agency workers, these plans are unworkable, will only erode working people’s rights further and inflame industrial relations at a critical time”.She added: “The candidates for the Tory leadership are in a full-scale arms race to exacerbate tensions and escalate divisions rather than get around the table and resolve disputes.“They’re denying their own records and fixated on performing to an unrepresentative Tory selectorate instead of offering answers to the public to get wages rising and tackling the cost-of-living crisis”. More

Rishi Sunak has warned Liz Truss risks tipping millions into “economic misery” and fuelling inflation with her economic proposals, as the pair trashed each other’s policy platforms in an acrimonious debate.Hitting out the foreign secretary’s £30bn-plus tax cut plans, the former chancellor claimed there was “nothing Conservative” about her approach, with the party having “absolutely no chance” of winning the next election.In their first head-to-head debate in the final stage of the Tory leadership contest, Ms Truss hit back, accusing Mr Sunak of “scaremongering” and “Project Fear” — a term Brexiteers used to dismiss the economic warnings of the Remain camp in 2016.While both suggested more help for the British public on rocketing energy bills if they replace Boris Johnson in No 10, Ms Truss also went on to claim Mr Sunak’s current proposals would tip the country into recession.Recommended“This chancellor has raised taxes to the highest rate in 70 years and we’re now predicted a recession,” she said. “The truth is in the figures”.Despite calls from some Tories to tone down the blue-on-blue attacks, the pair also clashed over the UK’s policy towards China while Ms Truss sidestepped the opportunity to distance herself from comments by the culture secretary, who earlier mocked Mr Sunak’s expensive clothing.Appearing in front of 2019 Conservative voters in a debate hosted by the BBC, both Ms Truss and Mr Sunak agreed to publish their tax affairs if they win the contest and were also challenged on their assessment of the outgoing prime minister. More

Does it matter, anymore, which one of them wins? Will anyone even know? The next election is only two years away, by which point anyone who watched the BBC leaderships debate will still be so haunted by the program’s first 15 seconds that they will be incapable of any meaningful interaction with the world around them.I’ve watched it over twenty times now and I still don’t get quite how they did it. The camera moves. Someone in the audience can be seen moving their hand on their lap. So it’s definitely real life. But the two people, one of whom really will be prime minister in six weeks’ time, had been frozen in aspic. Liz Truss stared ahead, face fixed in a grin every bit as rictus as her arms, which stopped motionless, as if her puppet master had just seen a ghost.Sunak’s eyes seemed to widen and then narrow again. On the 10th viewing they actually seem to start speaking to you. Why are we doing this? They say. Are we absolutely sure this isn’t going to look very, very odd indeed?Mercifully, his chin moves a fraction at this point, bringing a vague ending to the longest, weirdest 15 seconds quite possibly in all television history.After that, sadly, it went very far downhill. It wasn’t just that it was puerile, rude, juvenile, irrelevant and ridiculous. It was all those things, and usually all of them at once, as well as entirely delusional.RecommendedRishi Sunak’s going to cause a recession, apparently. Liz Truss is going to pursue policies that will require interest rates to go up to seven per cent, which might not cause a recession but will result in very large numbers of people losing their house. That’s what both of them said about the other, anyway. And neither of them can possibly have a clue who’s right, because that’s economics. That’s the whole of the debate. It’s all unfalsifiable and so it can rattle on for six more weeks, with a lot more heat and precisely no more light.Liz Truss actually called Sunak’s assessment of her plans “project fear.” That one’s not going to get past a smart alec of Sunak’s calibre. Actually, he pointed out, “she was part of project fear, I wasn’t.”Truss squirmed. As you would do when you can feel yourself passing fully through the looking glass. There they both were, arguing about who was the biggest Brexiteer, about what a load of rubbish “Project Fear” turned out to be, at the very moment there’s a 4-hour queue at the port of Dover, precisely because “Project Fear” had always been project reality, but both the people who are going to be the next actual prime minister cannot possibly do any more than just pretend none of it is happening.(At the very end, Sophie Raworth asked both of them whether the queues at Dover had anything to do with Brexit, but this was the “quickfire” bit in which both were only allowed to answer with one word. They both said “no” and that was the end of it, even though the answer, absolutely unequivocally is “yes.” Yes yes yes yes yes. Yes, undoubtedly. As a matter of complete and utter certainty. But there wasn’t time for that.)Still, there wasn’t much time left for that kind of thing. The fact that it has become nigh on impossible for families to go abroad at the start of the school holidays, and it is absolutely definitely because of Brexit? No time for that. Far too boring. Instead we had six minutes on whether either of them would have Boris Johnson in their cabinet, to which the entire world knows the answer, on both counts, is no.And then there was the six-minute long segment on Liz Truss’s £4.50 earrings, and their contrast to a £3,500 suit Rishi Sunak once wore.Still, Rishi Sunak wants everyone to have the opportunity to buy a £3,500 suit. He wants everyone to be able to afford to go to Winchester College and, after that, ideally marry the daughter of a billionaire, because that’s what happens if you’re just prepared to work hard and make sacrifices.Rishi is a Conservative, after all. And that’s what being a Conservative is all about.Well, not quite. Actually the most “Conservative of Conservative values is sound money.” He said that. He didn’t quite extrapolate on whether spending £3,500 on a suit is the best example of sound money but that’s mere details.Sound money isn’t about buying the odd luxury. It’s about being responsible with money. Managing it carefully. Keeping a general eye on where it is. In a previous hustings, Sunak really did claim that his biggest weakness was “obsessing over small details.” And yet, somehow, he of sound money, apparently didn’t know where his own family fortune was domiciled. And nor did he realise, for almost six whole years, that he should have surrendered his US green card a very long time ago, and was paying large amounts of tax he didn’t actually owe. Yes, the “sound money” guy really was paying tens of thousands of pounds to US tax authorities, mainly for the privilege of not having to queue up at passport control with the foreigners when he lands in California.He had mastered one detail though. He had learned how to pronounce Faisal Islam’s name, which Liz Truss had not managed. Faisal Islam has been a correspondent on mainstream UK television news for very nearly twenty years. And, as is the custom, at the end of every single report he has ever produced, he says his own name. Which is Faisal Islam. And it’s pronounced Fye-sal. It rhymes with Bye-sal. So it was somewhat odd that Liz Truss called him Fayezel every time she addressed him, which was at least four times, entirely unbowed and unbothered by being very obviously the only person who was doing so.She must have heard Sunak, Raworth and Chris Mason him called Faisal – not Fayezel – twenty times or more. By this point, she must have decided she was committed. She was auditioning for the job of prime minister. To start calling the bloke by his actual name would have been a sign of weakness.Still, it was a prime time slot and there was plenty there for the casual punter to enjoy. Mainly, the denuded fact that the two of them visibly hate each other. Lots of people have absolutely no interest in politics whatsoever. But everyone loves to hear a middle-aged married couple having a blazing row and on that front they certainly didn’t disappoint.RecommendedNot quite the entire country has has the chance, this week, to spend several days in a hot car with a hated spouse while queuing up to go on an unbearable family holiday, and in that regard Sunak vs Truss did an excellent job of bringing their own personal band of mean-spirited and vitriolic loathing to the small screen. Long may it continue, though where it goes next, no one quite knows. In these kinds of low rent reality TV formats, producers have been known to stage an intervention long before it gets this toxic. The Tory party must know it has left it far too late. More

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have battled it out in the first head-to-head debate of the Tory leadership contest – continuing the bruising rivalry which saw both pull out of a similar contest just days earlier.Facing each other in front of television cameras for the first time since voting by Conservative MPs whittled the field of contenders down to a final two, the foreign secretary and ex-chancellor clashed on a range of subjects, including Brexit, China and the economy.With the deciding vote on who should replace Boris Johnson lying in the hands of tens of thousands of Tory members, the pair are increasingly forced to pander to the tastes of their selectorate, with the party faithful generally believed to sit considerably to the right of its MPs.This effect was on display during the “Our Next Prime Minister” leadership debate hosted by BBC One in Stoke-and-Trent on Monday night – just hours after their colleague Johnny Mercer criticised the “puerile” nature of the contest and warned that, on their current trajectory, the Tories will be “out of power in two years”.With many of the estimated 160,000 or so members expected to make their choice before departing for overseas holidays – weeks before the winner is announced on 5 September – the pressure on the two candidates to rapidly shore up their support was evident in Monday’s debate, even despite an unprecedented rule change which could see members alter their votes.RecommendedHere are some of the key moments from the debate:Sunak hints at further help with energy bills – as Truss vows ‘immediate’ actionIn the first audience question, the two candidates were asked whether they would provide more help with soaring bills if they become prime minister.Mr Sunak pointed to his record as chancellor, saying: “When we get in we will have to see what happens to energy bills, as the situation changes on the ground, I am always going to support people through it.”He added that as the situation changes on the ground, he is “always” going to support people through it.Ms Truss opted for more emphatic language, vowing to put an economic growth plan in place “immediately” if she becomes prime minister, reverse the planned National Insurance hike, and impose a temporary moratorium on the green energy levy “which would help cut money from fuel bills”.Truss accused of planning £40bn of ‘unfunded’ tax cutsLiz Truss claimed that, under her plans, the UK would start paying back the national debt built up during the Covid pandemic “in three years’ time”, adding: “So I’m not putting it on the never never.”But Mr Sunak interrupted saying “that’s simply not right”, adding: “You promised almost £40bn of unfunded tax cuts … that is the country’s credit card.”Sunak accuses Truss of putting national debt on ‘credit card’ for future generations to payWhile the foreign secretary insisted that this was “not true”, Mr Sunak went on to take aim at the fact that her own economic adviser had admitted that her tax cuts could see interest rates rise by 7 per cent.Mr Sunak urged viewers to “think what that means for all of your mortgages”, before claiming that Ms Truss had “no chance of winning the next general election”.Rivals row over ‘Project Fear’As the debate on the economy grew even more heated, the pair clashed over the Brexit campaign slur “Project Fear”. Retorting to the former chancellor’s warnings about the impact of her economic plans on mortgage rates, the foreign secretary said: “I’m sorry, this is scaremongering. This is Project Fear.”Truss accuses Sunak of being ‘Project Fear’But Mr Sunak replied: “I remember the referendum campaign and there were only one of us that was on the side of Remain and Project Fear, and it was you, not me.”As Ms Truss remarked that “maybe I’ve learned from that”, he added: “Your proposals would mean that we get this short-term sugar rush of unfunded borrowed tax cuts, but that would be followed by the crash of higher prices and higher mortgage rates.”Truss distances herself from Raab’s ‘worst idlers in the world’ commentsPressed by the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason that she and her fellow authors of the 2012 book Britannia Unchained had described the British people as “amongst the worst idlers in the world”, Ms Truss responded: “Every author wrote a different chapter and I wrote the chapter on education.“That particular chapter was written by Dominic Raab, who’s actually supporting Rishi’s campaign, just to be absolutely clear.”The BBC reported that Mr Raab, the justice secretary, “sighed loudly” in the spin room as the book was brandished.Rivals clash over China …Pressed on the subject of the UK’s relationship with China, which has been a flashpoint of the contest in recent days, Mr Sunak and Ms Truss both sought to paint each other as having previously been too cosy with Beijing.Mr Sunak said: “Liz has been on a journey – there was a time when Liz was talking about having a golden era of relationships with China and the mission there was talking about having deeper collaboration with things like food security and technology.”The ex-chancellor then labelled China a threat to the UK’s national and economic security, as he boasted that the government’s National Security Investment Bill “gives us the powers as a country to protect ourselves against countries like China who are trying to infiltrate our companies and steal our technology”.However, Ms Truss interrupted, saying: “As recently as a month ago you were pushing for closer trade relationships with China … I’m delighted that you’ve come round to my way of thinking, but it’s been driven by the Foreign Office.“We have led on that, and frankly, what we’ve heard from the Treasury is a desire for closer economic relations with China,” she said, adding: “My view is we should not repeat the mistake we made with Russia, of becoming strategically dependent on Russia and we’re now facing the cost of that on energy.”… as Truss talks tough over TikTokAsked about the influence of Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, Ms Truss said the UK must take a “tougher stance” on technology companies based in authoritarian countries.“We absolutely should be cracking down on those types of countries and we should be limiting the amount of technology exports we do to authoritarian regimes,” the foreign secretary said, adding that she has “been talking to our G7 allies about this”. In notably strong language for a foreign secretary to use with regards to Beijing, she added: “I don’t think it’s inevitable that China will be the biggest economy in the world … we’ve been enabling that to happen, but I’m very clear after the appalling abuses in Xinjiang, after the terrible actions in Hong Kong, and after the most recent outrage which is China working with Russia and essentially backing them in the appalling war in Ukraine, we have to take a tougher stance.“We have to learn the mistakes we made of Europe becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas, we cannot allow that to happen with China.”Truss insists she was a ‘teenage eco-warrior’When the candidates were asked about their positions on the environment, Ms Truss – a former Liberal Democrat activist – said: “I was an environmentalist before it was fashionable. “I was a teenage eco-warrior campaigning against damage to the ozone layer, and I’ve always taken the view that we should save our resources. I’m naturally a thrifty person, I like saving money and it also helps the environment. “So it’s about using less, particularly wasting less – which I think is a massive problem in this country – but also the innovation that we need to get the new technology that can help us do things better”, citing electric vehicles and better home insulation.”The foreign secretary said, however, that she would look for “better ways to deliver on that net zero”.‘I wasn’t born this way,’ Sunak says in response to Dorries earring rowThe contenders were also pressed on a Tory row sparked earlier on Monday by culture secretary Nadine Dorries – a Truss supporter – as she pointed out the difference in cost between Mr Sunak’s Prada shoes and Ms Truss’s “circa £4.50 Claire’s Accessories” earrings.Ms Truss drew a laugh from the audience – comprised of 2019 Tory voters – as she joked that she wasn’t sure whether the BBC’s political editor had ever been to Claire’s Accessories before. But she later failed to explicitly disown personal attacks such as the one made by Ms Dorries, adding that she is a “great admirer” of Mr Sunak’s dress sense.Liz Truss refuses to disown Nadine Dorries’ comments on Rishi Sunak’s expensive clothingAsked whether it mattered, Mr Sunak said: “In the Conservative Party we judge people by their character and their actions … I wasn’t born this way. My family emigrated here 60 years ago. “I talked about my mum. She ran the local chemist in Southampton. That’s why I grew up working in the shop, delivering medicines. I worked as a waiter at the Indian restaurant, down the road.“And I’m standing here because of the hard work, the sacrifice and love of my parents and the opportunities they provided to me, and that’s why I want to be prime minister because I want to ensure that everyone, your children and grandchildren have the very same opportunities that I had.”Truss rules out deploying British troops to UkraineAsked whether as prime minister they would deploy troops to Ukraine, Ms Truss said: “I am not prepared for the United Kingdom to become directly involved in the conflict.“We have done as much as we can – we were the first European country to send weapons to Ukraine, we’ve put the toughest possible sanctions on Russia, we’re actually helping with areas about maritime insurance, in helping getting that grain out of Odesa, and an agreement has been reached.“But Ukraine is not a Nato country, and I think it would be wrong to directly deploy our troops and our resources.”Mr Sunak did not directly answer the question, referring to having “put together one of the strongest set of economic sanctions that the world has ever seen” and supported Kyiv with arms.Truss says Johnson’s mistakes were not ‘sufficient’ for him to be removedOn the subject of the outgoing prime minister, Mr Sunak said that his resignation as chancellor – which partially sparked the implosion of Mr Johnson’s Cabinet – came after he decided that “enough was enough”, adding that he would not employ the “remarkable” Mr Johnson in his own Cabinet.’Enough was enough’: Rishi Sunak defends decision to resign from Johnson governmentMs Truss, however remained loyal to Mr Johnson, insisting that the mistakes which he made – including attending lockdown-breaking parties in No 10 and promoting Chris Pincher to a role in charge of MPs’ welfare despite misconduct allegations – were not “sufficient” for the Tory Party to “reject” him.Asked whether she would give Mr Johnson a role in her Cabinet, Ms Truss said that “I just don’t think it’s going to happen” as he “needs a well-earned break from what has been a very difficult few years”.In a quick-fire round, they were asked which marks out of 10 they would give Mr Johnson – to which Ms Truss said “seven”, and Mr Sunak initially refused to respond, before saying that on the subjects of winning an election and delivering a Brexit solution he would give the prime minister a 10.Truss wins snap poll of Conservative votersRecommendedAs the debate came to an end, a snap poll of Conservative voters by Opinium found that 47 per cent thought Ms Truss had performed better than Mr Sunak, as opposed to 38 per cent who favoured the former chancellor.In the eyes of the general electorate, the candidates were far closer, with Mr Sunak on 39 per cent – just one point ahead of Ms Truss, while Labour voters were split 41-30 in favour of Mr Sunak. More

Sir Keir Starmer was confronted by an angry voter in Liverpool over writing an article for The Sun newspaper in October 2021.The Labour Party leader had previously promised not to give interviews to the paper during his leadership campaign at a hustings in the city in January 2020.The publication is widely boycotted in Liverpool due to its coverage of the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.As a result, Sir Keir was met with a furious woman after giving a speech in the city on Monday, where he laid out the priorities for the next Labour government.“I don’t know how you’ve got the guts to come to this city, after you’ve been interviewed and doing columns for The Sun newspaper, after the way we as a city were abused and the Hillsborough victims were abused by that paper,” said Audrey White.Recommended“Secondly, you lied to us about uniting the party. I’m still a Labour Party member and you’ve expelled and witch hunted in the most vicious way I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. And I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for a long, long time.“You have absolutely said you had ten pledges, you were going to carry on the Corbyn legacy, and ever since you’ve done nothing but distance yourself from the ideas which tens of thousands of people joined the Labour Party to support.“All you’ve done is feed into the Tory idealogy of not supporting strikes, of carrying on with the privatisation of our health service.”The incident comes after the Labour leader delivered his speech laying out the priorities for the next Labour government, where he said his focus as a new prime minister would be on “growth, growth, growth”.His plans for the party seemed to take a step back from the pledge he made while running for leadership to support “common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water”.However, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the policy would not be compatible with new “fiscal rules” the Party would adopt to restrain public spending. In response, Sir Keir told reporters in Liverpool: “I take a pragmatic approach rather than an ideological one, I agree with what Rachel Reeves said this morning.Recommended“Having come through the pandemic, it’s very important we have very, very clear priorities and that’s why we’ve set out fiscal rules already as an opposition.”He added: “My mission is growth and underpinning that mission is a partnership arrangement with business, where the mission is set by an incoming Labour government and we empower business to work with us in delivering on that mission.” More

Sunak accuses Truss of putting national debt on ‘credit card’ for future generations to payRishi Sunak and Liz Truss are taking part in their first head-to-head televised debate tonight after a senior MP made cutting remarks about the “puerile” Conservative Party leadership race.The pair are in Stoke-on-Trent to take part in the BBC One debate. The broadcaster’s journalists said that “stakes are high” as Ms Truss is far ahead in opinion polls.It comes after Cabinet Office minister Johnny Mercer warned that the Tories will be out of power in two years’ time if they continue on the “current trajectory” of “embarrassing” episodes during the contest.His call for his fellow MPs to “raise the standards” came after MP Angela Richardson said that she had muted culture secretary Nadine Dorries’ on Twitter over her criticism of Mr Sunak’s expensive clothes.Ms Dorries tweeted: “Liz Truss will be travelling the country wearing her earrings which cost circa £4.50 from Claire Accessories. Meanwhile…“Rishi visits Teeside in Prada shoes worth £450 and sported £3,500 bespoke suit as he prepared for crunch leadership vote.”Next week, 160,00 Tory members will vote on whether Mr Sunak or Ms Truss will succeed Boris Johnson.RecommendedShow latest update

1658789292Thanks for following today’s live updatesAisha Rimi25 July 2022 23:481658789115Snap debate poll shows which candidate viewers think performed best in elections debateThe poll, conducted by Opinium – a strategic insight agency, indicates a close ties between the two candidates. Aisha Rimi25 July 2022 23:451658788515Voices: One thing became clear, that Sunak and Truss visibly hate each otherRishi Sunak and Liz Truss really do hate each other. It’s the reality TV hit of the summer.Does it matter, anymore, which one of them wins? Will anyone even know? The next election is only two years away, by which point anyone who watched the BBC leaderships debate will still be so haunted by the program’s first fifteen seconds that they will be incapable of any meaningful interaction with the world around them.Read the full opinion piece: More