UK Politics

Liz Truss’s pledge to immediately reverse tax increases that were implemented by Boris Johnson’s government could result in interest rates as high as 7 per cent, according to her own economic adviser.The Tory leadership hopeful’s plans to undo hikes to national insurance (NI) and corporation tax would increase interest rates, Professor Patrick Minford said – who insisted that this would be “a good thing”.Foreign secretary Ms Truss is going head to head with former chancellor Rishi Sunak in the race to become the next prime minister after Mr Johnson was forced to resign following a mass exodus of his government. More

Supporters of defeated Tory leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt are reportedly plotting to stop Liz Truss from becoming prime minister.Earlier this week, the trade minister was the latest contender to drop out of the race for leading the Conservative Party after she did not receive as many MPs’ votes as Ms Truss and Rishi Sunak.Now her supporters are putting together a “stop Liz Truss” campaign to ensure that the foreign secretary does not succeed Boris Johnson as PM, according to the i newspaper. More

Rishi Sunak has accused “the forces that be” of trying to secure a coronation for his Tory leadership rival Liz Truss, in a clear sign that he believes Boris Johnson is plotting to block his bid to reach 10 Downing Street.The former chancellor refused to name those he suspects of conspiring against him, but the prime minister has made no secret of his determination not to be succeeded by Sunak, whose resignation triggered the process leading to Mr Johnson’s demise as prime minister.In his first speech since joining Liz Truss on the ballot paper for the final vote by around 160,000 Tory members to choose the next prime minister, Mr Sunak admitted he was “the underdog” in the race for No 10.But he denounced his leadership rival’s plans for £30bn of tax cuts were “immoral” and would cost people their jobs and homes. And he sought to draw a line between himself and both Mr Johnson and Ms Truss by saying that he would offer “moral courage” as leader of the nation.Truss supporter Simon Clarke, who was Sunak’s deputy at the Treasury as chief secretary, blasted his former boss’s warnings of the danger of immediate tax cuts as “project fear”.Recommended“Let us explode once and for all the myth that the only responsible thing to do is to keep spending and that cutting taxes is somehow anti-Conservative,” said Mr Clarke, who is tipped for the chancellor’s job if Ms Truss wins.In what amounted to a scathing denunciation of Johnson’s legacy, Mr Sunak said he would put the UK on “crisis footing” from day one as prime minister to deal with what he described as a national emergency over the economy, NHS backlogs and unauthorised migration.He effectively accused Ms Truss of dishonesty over the risk that immediate tax cuts would drive up inflation and mortgage interest rates.And he implied the NHS was not safe in her hands because of her plan to reverse his 1.25 per cent hike in National Insurance contributions to pay for health and social care.In a signal to grassroots Tories, he chose party icon Margaret Thatcher’s hometown of Grantham to deliver his speech, and described his economic approach as “common-sense Thatcherism”.Recognising that he is trailing behind Ms Truss in the polls, he said: “The forces that be want this to be a coronation for the other candidate,” said Sunak. “But I think members want a choice and they are prepared to listen.“In the coming days they will see that I don’t just offer change, I don’t just offer grip, I’m offering hope. We can be better.”Mr Sunak defended his NI hike, saying: “I have taken a lot of political pain to make sure the NHS has what it needs and I’m the candidate who can say `The NHS is safe in my hands’.”And he poured scorn on Ms Truss’s promise to raise spending on defence to 3 per cent of GDP by the end of the decade, saying that “arbitrary” figures were no substitute for “providing the military with the resources it needs”.After hardline Brexiteers lined up behind Truss in the MPs’ round of voting, Mr Sunak hit out at her record of campaigning and voting for Remain in the 2016 referendum.He won cheers from supporters by saying: “If we are to deliver on the promise of Brexit, then we’re going to need someone who actually understands Brexit, believes in Brexit, voted for Brexit.”But the centre of his assault on the foreign secretary – who led him by 62 per cent to 38 in a recent poll of party members – was focused on her plans to scrap the NI rise, suspend green levies on energy bills and ditch his planned increase in corporation tax from 19 to 25 per cent.“We have to tell the truth about the cost of living,” he said.“Rising inflation is the enemy that makes everyone poorer and puts at risk your homes and your savings. And we have to tell the truth about tax.“I will not put money back in your pocket knowing that rising inflation will only whip it straight back out.”Seeking to elevate his row with Truss over tax above the level of a simple policy disagreement, he said: “There is a core to this campaign that stands us apart, that represents the best of us in the most testing of times.“And that is moral courage. “It may seem trite to say it, but that’s only because it is so rare in our politics – The moral courage to tell the truth, even if it hurts me, the moral courage to raise issues even if they are uncomfortable and the moral courage to rise above the smears and the hatred no matter how baseless or unfair.”A spokesperson for Ms Truss responded: “Liz‘s plans for tax cuts will reward people for their hard work and effort, allowing them to keep more of their hard-earned money. “You cannot tax your way to growth. We have the highest tax burden since the 1940s and as prime minister Liz will take immediate action to prioritise growth and cut taxes. “We can’t continue with a business-as-usual approach on the economy that is failing to deliver for the British people.”Mr Clarke said: “The idea that there isn’t scope for reducing the burden of tax through both a new spending review and by putting our Covid debt on a longer-term footing as it rolls over is transparently false.“The reality is that the true risk to our economy is stagnation (and indeed, stagflation). We cannot tax our way to prosperity and without greater willingness to support lower taxes and supply-side reform we won’t achieve the growth rates we need to increase the size of the cake.Recommended“We run the risk of descending into a 2020s version of Butskellism, with it never quite being the time to focus on the things we know the economy needs to grow and raise living standards. This is the sclerosis Liz Truss wants us to break free from.” More

A new poll has suggested Tories would have a better chance of winning the next election under Liz Truss than Rishi Sunak.Some 32 per cent of voters – and 58 per cent of those backing the Conservatives in the 2019 general election – said they could see themselves supporting the Tories under the current foreign secretary’s leadership, compared to 28 per cent under the former chancellor, including 52 per cent of 2019 Tories.A quarter (25 per cent) of those who voted Conservative under Boris Johnson’s leadership in the last general election said they could not see themselves doing so with Sunak at the helm, while 19 per cent of 2019 Tories would not support a Truss-led party.The finding will come as a blow to the Sunak campaign, who have presented their candidate’s electability as a key asset in the battle with Ms Truss for the keys to 10 Downing Street.In a speech in Grantham today, as supporters waved placards reading “Beat Starmer’s Labour”, Mr Sunak declared: “I am the only person who can beat Labour.”RecommendedResponding to the new survey from Redfield and Wilton Strategies, a Truss campaign spokesperson said: “This polling shows Liz has the widest appeal among voters nationwide, but is also the best candidate to hold the 2019 Conservative coalition together and beat Sir Keir Starmer.“She’ll do this by governing in a Conservative way, cutting taxes and allowing people to keep more of their hard-earned money.”The poll of 1,500 people across Britain on 20-21 July also appeared to indicate that Ms Truss’s characterisation of Mr Sunak as the “business as usual” candidate was breaking through with voters.Some 42 per cent of those questioned said they expected a Sunak administration to pursue a policy approach mostly similar to Mr Johnson’s, compared to 34 per cent who said the same about Ms Truss.More than one-third (36 per cent) said Ms Truss’s premiership would be “mostly different” from Mr Johnson’s in policy terms, against 30 per cent who said this would be the case under Sunak. More

A little-noticed rule change allowing Tory members to vote twice in this summer’s leadership election will be key to Rishi Sunak’s hopes of salvaging his floundering bid to become prime minister, experts have told The Independent.With online voting opening on 1 August, the former chancellor has only a matter of days to overturn rival Liz Truss’s polling advantage before tens of thousands of Conservative members cast their ballots and go on holiday, making Monday’s televised head-to-head debate on the BBC possibly his last chance to win over many of those with a vote.But an unprecedented “second thoughts” option allows the estimated 160,000 party faithful to revise their vote if they change their minds during the six-week campaign – something which supporters believe favours the former chancellor, who they think will shine as his opponent’s tax-cutting plans are put under scrutiny.Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner today dismissed the election as a “warped pantomime to win over the unrepresentative Tory selectorate… entirely divorced from the priorities of the British people”.She called on whoever wins to call an immediate general election to “re-seek a mandate” from voters.RecommendedAnd prominent Truss backer Iain Duncan Smith said the new-style voting system – which allows one online vote and one postal, with only the latest of the two counting – will “create nightmares” by introducing a “complication too far” to a campaign lasting longer than a general election.Senior Tories fear that the summer-long contest, featuring 12 hustings across the UK, will damage the party’s image further as the two contenders kick lumps out of one another in a bitter struggle to succeed Boris Johnson.But polling guru Prof Sir John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, told The Independent that the real battle may be over long before voting closes on 2 September. He judged as “credible” a recent YouGov poll which gave the foreign secretary a 24-point lead over the former chancellor, on 62 per cent to Sunak’s 38.“Sunak is probably behind Truss at the moment among members and he needs to try to narrow that significantly during the course of the next two weeks, which is when it really matters,” said Prof Curtice.“Sunak is the better performer of the two by far, but the question is whether he can demonstrate that and use it to get across an effective message in the time available to him. It’s the second part of that equation that I think is in doubt.”Much will depend on whether Tory members make use of the “second thoughts” option, he said: “Sunak needs as much time as possible and people changing their mind could potentially give him an advantage.”Conservative peer and leading poll-watcher Robert Hayward agreed that a “front-loaded” campaign was likely because of the tendency of voters to cast their ballots as soon as packs land on their doormats.But he said that the new voting system was appropriate to an election where there was an unusual level of “fluidity”, with activists likely to judge the contenders not on a traditional left v right split, but on who has the best chance of delivering electoral success.“There will be events which come to dominate the debate after a lot of people have voted,” he told The Independent. “Whether that’s a sudden increase in the cost of borrowing or a crisis in the NHS or a breakthrough in Ukraine. It’s good that they are allowing people to change their minds.”Sources close to the Truss team acknowledged that they would not be dissuading people from voting early, but insisted that the issue was not foremost in their candidate’s mind.And Sunak backers questioned the extent of the foreign secretary’s lead, pointing out that similar surveys at the same stage in the 2019 leadership election overstated Mr Johnson’s lead by nearly 10 points, and that many members responded “don’t know” to pollsters.The former chancellor is known to be planning a blitz of TV and radio appearances to maximise his exposure over the crucial coming week.And his team are still seeking the endorsement of supporters of defeated contenders, hailing the backing of George Freeman – a prominent backer of Penny Mordaunt – as an indication to activists that Sunak will be able to command the confidence of a wide swathe of the parliamentary party as leader.But former chief whip Mark Harper, a senior Sunak supporter, was clear that “second thoughts” votes could have a decisive impact.“It creates a level playing field,” he said. “It means members get a better chance to see both of the candidates in action and make their minds up.“Based on my own judgement, having worked with both candidates, as well as on solid polling of the public watching the TV debates so far, I am comfortable that the more exposure there is and the more grilling of arguments, the better it is for Rishi.”Another Sunak supporter, former Welsh secretary Simon Hart, told The Independent that the clash over tax cuts which has dominated recent debate would not be the only question on members’ minds when they vote.Both candidates agreed taxes should come down, but their difference was over “timing not content”, with the former chancellor insistent they should wait until the danger of an inflationary spike has passed, said Mr Hart.He questioned Ms Truss’s claim to have opposed the upcoming National Insurance hike in cabinet, saying: “Every tax decision over the last couple of years has been a collective one which the cabinet in its entirety signed off on.”Mr Hart said: “This isn’t just about electing a party leader, it’s choosing a prime minister at a very, very challenging time. The party will want someone who is tried and tested and trusted on the economy.“There is a very simple judgement that a lot of members will be making, which is ‘Which is the candidate with the best chance of holding onto or winning our seat at the election?’“They will ask themselves who has the best policies for the nation as a whole, rather than who is saying things that are attractive to Tory members. There’s a range of opinions in the party but the one thing that joins everybody together is that we want to win.“That has to work in a Lib Dem-facing seat in the southwest, or a multicultural London seat or a Red Wall seat in the north or a Plaid Cymru-facing seat in Wales. That is where I think Rishi is going to be a lot more interesting to members. He is somebody who is capable of working in all those different dynamics.”Mr Duncan Smith poured cold water on efforts to read the intentions of party members, pointing out that in his own leadership election in 2001, he was regarded as the outsider first to Michael Portillo and then to Kenneth Clarke before scooping victory.“The next two weeks are certainly going to matter disproportionately because that is when people will probably mostly send their ballot papers off,” the former Tory leader said.“I think they are both in with a shout. I don’t buy the idea that Rishi gains from longer exposure. I don’t think he’s performed particularly well in hustings so far.”Ms Rayner told The Independent: “While we need a government looking outwards to the challenges our country faces, the Conservatives are talking to themselves about themselves.”The public is watching on in horror as they perform a warped pantomime to win over the unrepresentative Tory selectorate. The candidates are both entirely divorced from the priorities of the British people.“They’re letting Britain down, wallowing in their own mess and failing to show any plan for the deepening cost of living crisis, worsening energy bills, or taking climate action.Recommended“This Tory government has lost the trust and confidence of voters and has failed spectacularly. Whoever becomes Tory leader will need to re-seek a mandate. It’s increasingly clear the British people are not prepared to be taken for fools. Only Labour can offer the fresh start our country needs.” More

This weekend’s traffic chaos in Dover is a “predictable” consequence of Brexit as France “takes back control” of its border, an immigration union chief has said.A major incident has been declared at the Kent port as long queues are expected following queues of up to six hours on Friday and thousands of families attempt to get away at the start of the summer holiday season.The gridlock has been blamed on a shortage of border control staff on the French side of the Channel.But Immigration Services Union general secretary Lucy Moreton said that disruption of this kind was only to be expected following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Brexit meant French checks on UK travellers had been stepped up from the “minimal” controls familiar from the EU period.Recommended“It’s certainly the case that the checks are more rigorous than they used to be prior to Brexit,” she said. “We’re now of course outside the EU, and they’re entitled to treat us as they treat any other non-European traveller. So they do the same level of checks on us as we do – and have always done in fact – on them.”Ms Moreton added: “This isn’t our border that we’ve taken back control of. In fact, France has taken back control of its border in this respect.“This is democracy. There was a vote. Some people voted for it. Some people voted against it. This is one of the outcomes that was reasonably predictable. And this is the time that it’s chosen to bite.”The head of the Port of Dover, Doug Bannister, said that travellers may again have to endure delays of five or six hours trying to get onto ferries today, as more vehicles were expected on Saturday than Friday, and a large backlog remains to be cleared.Asked if waits of that duration can be expected, he told Today: “It could be.“We were expecting that today was going to be a busier day than yesterday. Yesterday, we processed about 8,500 cars going out. Today we were predicted to be around 10,000. So it is going to be a very busy day down here.”Kent County Council leader Roger Gough said that by Saturday morning there were around 3,000 HGVs parked on the M20 and being “fed through slowly” to boarding areas. He said there was also some disruption at the Eurotunnel terminal at nearby Folkestone, as well as spillover effects on local traffic.He said the incident was part of a “much wider problem” with movements across the Channel, which might require a “big programme” of change to maximise capacity at the port.“This is a severe disruption we have at the moment,” said Mr Gough. “It’s not the first and it won’t be, I fear, the last.”Mr Bannister confirmed that Brexit had increased the bureaucratic controls at the border, slowing the movement of vehicles, but said that plans were in place to ensure the port should be able to cope “for the most part” during the busy summer season.“We are operating in a post-Brexit environment, which does mean that passports need to be checked, they need to be stamped,” he said.“One of the challenges we find is that if we don’t have a sufficient amount of resource capacity through all the steps in the process the very first thing in the morning, then we can lose the queue very, very quickly and create the impact that we felt yesterday right around the county.“In a post-Brexit environment there will be increased transaction times at the border. What we have done in response to that is created more border capacity so that overall throughput could be maintained.Recommended“In our modelling, whilst we do know that we have got some very peak busy days during the summer season, for the most part we should be able to cope with the traffic.” More

Rishi Sunak is set to warn that the NHS will “break” without a “war footing” plan to tackle the backlog of patients, as he attempts to move away from the debate about tax that has dominated the Tory leadership race.The former chancellor will insist on Saturday that the public “shouldn’t have to make a choice with a gun to their head”, saying people are turning to private care and using money “they can’t really afford” as a result of NHS delays.In his first major speech since reaching the final stage of the leadership contest, Mr Sunak will also describe the backlog facing the NHS as the “biggest public service emergency” the country faces.Figures from May showed that 6.6 million patients were waiting for planned care. Sajid Javid, the former health secretary, warned earlier this year that NHS waiting lists would continue to rise until at least 2024.Under existing plans, the government and NHS England are aiming to eliminate all waits exceeding a year by March 2025.Setting out his proposals, Mr Sunak will pledge to eliminate one-year waits six months earlier than planned, by September 2024, and to ensure that overall numbers are falling by 2023. He will also aim to ensure that everyone waiting for more than 18 weeks is contacted by an NHS trust within 100 days.RecommendedThe former chancellor will also pledge to establish a vaccines-style taskforce on “day one” if he wins the race to succeed Boris Johnson in No 10 against his rival, foreign secretary Liz Truss.Mr Sunak will say on Saturday that creating a “backlogs taskforce” with independent leadership will cut bureaucracy and waste and “take the best of our experience from Covid”.But his pledges come just days after experts told The Independent that a £2bn cut to NHS budgets, caused by the government’s unfunded pay deal for staff, will hit cancer backlogs and patient care.The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, asked: “If Rishi Sunak thinks NHS waiting lists are an emergency, why didn’t he do anything about it as chancellor?“He says he wants to put the NHS onto a ‘war footing’, but the Conservatives have spent years disarming it.”Danny Mortimer, the deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation, welcomed Mr Sunak’s focus on the backlog, but told The Independent that the plan “cannot honestly be described as putting the NHS on a war footing”.He stressed that the ability to tackle the waiting list is being undermined by a growing shortage of staff, along with “crumbling infrastructure and estates, and the knock-on impact of a crisis in social care”.Mr Mortimer added: “These risks are heightened by the government’s refusal to fund in full the new pay deal. Despite these challenges, the NHS in England is facing its first real-terms cut in funding this year since 1997, due to unexpected cost pressures and soaring inflation. This reality is not addressed in Mr Sunak’s plan.“If either of the Tory leadership candidates truly intend to improve the care patients have every right to expect, they must commit to giving the NHS the capital investment it desperately needs.“Both candidates must commit to a fully funded plan for expanding the number of health and care staff. How can any prime minister claim the NHS is on a war footing without giving it the troops that it needs on the front line?”Addressing the matter of the backlogs, Mr Sunak will say on Saturday: “Millions of people are waiting for life-saving cancer screening, major surgeries and consultations.Recommended“Already people are using money they can’t really afford to go private. That is privatisation by the back door, and it’s wrong. People shouldn’t have to make a choice with a gun to their head.“If we do not immediately set in train a radically different approach, the NHS will come under unsustainable pressure and break… and so from day one I will make tackling the NHS backlog my No 1 public service priority.”Mr Sunak will also say that the NHS App and NHS 111 will be expanded to be the first port of call for patients, allowing them to “input their symptoms and then be directed to who is best placed to help”.And he will back a plan to expand the number of community diagnostic hubs by repurposing 58,000 vacant high-street shops, with the aim of boosting the number of these hubs to 200 by March 2024. More

The final two contenders vying to be the next prime minister have come to blows over their proposals – but that’s not the only place where they differ.Details of Liz Truss’s musical taste have emerged, and it seems she and rival Tory leadership candidate Rishi Sunak are dancing to a very different beat.The foreign secretary revealed she was a fan of 1980s music, with I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston her go-to karaoke song.The 46-year-old told GB News: “I think maybe the one thing people don’t know about me is I do love 1980s music and I do love karaoke.“I like to enjoy music as well. My favourite song is ‘I Wanna Dance (With Somebody)’ by Whitney Houston.”RecommendedHer tastes appear to have evolved in the last 20 years, as one eagle-eyed Twitter user pointed out her favourite song used to be I Try by Macy Gray.The foreign secretary was mocked online after a snippet from a 2001 NME interview when she was aged 25 resurfaced.Asked what the last record she bought was, Ms Truss listed Onka’s Big Moka, the debut album by ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ singers Toploader.The excerpt was shared on Twitter, with one caption simply reading: “We’re doomed.”Another commenter wrote: “OF COURSE she bought a Toploader album.” More