Good morning. After a brief hiatus from our usual chaotic programming at the end of Conservative party conference, normal service has resumed.
MPs are back in Westminster, and today Liz Truss will make her first appearance at PMQs since the non-budget that blew up her premiership on the runway. Kwasi Kwarteng says there will be no decision on whether welfare payments will be subject to a real-terms cut until his fiscal statement at the end of October. The IMF has criticised the Chancellor’s tax cuts and energy support package again.
Meanwhile, Jamie Oliver is for some reason having to deny that wanting more free school meals for kids makes him part of the anti-growth coalition. And this morning the pound has fallen against the dollar as the Bank of England says it will not extend its bond-buying scheme beyond Friday – but the FT reports that bankers have privately been told the scheme could be extended.
Despite all that, No 10 says there was no discussion of market turmoil at cabinet yesterday. For a sense of the general devil-may-care mood, take a look at the Times’ coverage of Thérèse Coffey’s refusal to back the tobacco reduction plan for England, which is illustrated with a picture of the health secretary breezily smoking a cigar.
As the toxic fug of Westminster politics fills the air again, I spoke to Katy Balls, Guardian contributor and the Spectator’s deputy political editor, about how Conservative MPs are feeling – and what a return to Westminster will mean for Liz Truss’ hold on power. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Economy | The pound has fallen sharply against the dollar after Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey warned the Bank would not extend its emergency intervention to buy UK government bonds beyond this week. Sterling skidded by more than a cent to below $1.10 after Bailey told pension funds looking to sell: “You’ve got to get this done”.
Energy | Renewable power firms will have revenues capped in England and Wales, after the government bowed to pressure to clamp down on runaway profits. The move provoked claims of another U-turn after Downing Street previously rejected calls to impose a windfall tax on power giants.
Health | Millions of women across the UK should be invited for an NHS health check at the age of 45 to discuss the menopause and HRT prescriptions should be free, MPs have said. After a year-long inquiry, the all-party parliamentary group on menopause will today demand “widespread action” to help women.
Oil | Joe Biden said there “will be consequences” for Saudi Arabia after its decision last week to side with Vladimir Putin and cut oil production. The remarks signalled a dramatic abandonment of Biden’s recent attempts to seek a rapprochement with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
TV | The actor Angela Lansbury, best known as Jessica Fletcher in the TV series Murder, She Wrote and for numerous film and theatre roles, has died aged 96. Read Mark Lawson’s tribute.
In depth: ‘Conference poured petrol on a crisis’
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The (relative) tranquillity since Conservative conference is deceptive
A party conference is a bit like Christmas, and not only because everyone is drunk a lot of the time: it’s great when everyone’s getting along, but also the most conducive possible environment for tensions to burst into the open when they’re not. So if things have seemed quiet since the Tories left Birmingham, it’s all relative.
“Coming when it did, conference really just poured petrol on a crisis,” Katy Balls said. “Having a very dysfunctional party not all be in the same room means things look calmer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the problems went away. It just meant the pressure cooker was off for a few days.”
Now, with MPs back at Westminster, we’re finally into the first sustained “normal” run of Truss’s premiership, after her first couple of weeks were written off by the death of the Queen. (An unkind Economist leader yesterday suggested that her grip on power has already gone, and calculates that seven days of real control constitutes “the shelf-life of a lettuce”.)
Be that as it may, a return to normal is a double-edged sword for the prime minister, for whom the practicalities of ordinary Westminster politics may help temper the mood of untethered chaos – but whose enemies are now in the same place, at the same time, with plenty of opportunities to cause trouble.
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There’s not an immediate threat to her position …
Despite some breathless talk of no-confidence letters, Katy is sceptical that any fundamental challenge to Truss’ position is imminent, in part because backbenchers have no widely shared diagnosis of the severity of the problem. “Some of them think they’ve already lost their seats. Some of them think they have time to turn it around. Others genuinely believe tax cuts are the answer, and they just need to stay the course and things will get better.”
Ironically enough, the fact that the parliamentary party has been through the trauma of defenestrating a leader already this year, and knows just how rough the results can be, may actually protect Truss: “One longstanding MP told me that things would have to get worse before they’d get rid of her. A lot of them just don’t have the appetite for a leadership contest.”
One obvious boiling point might be Kwasi Kwarteng’s expedited fiscal statement, now due on 31 October. “You never know what the thing will be that will make things blow up,” Katy said. “But there aren’t conversations about ‘they have until this date to fix things’. We’re not in that territory yet.”
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… but some backbenchers are very unimpressed
If you are here for the schadenfreude, you may find it in the fact that while Truss’s position as prime minister doesn’t appear to be imminently at risk, the mood is nonetheless one of “despair”. Yesterday afternoon, Katy rang around some backbench MPs asking how Truss might win them over. “One of them said they were going to quote Blackadder,” before following up with the title character’s assessment of what Field Marshal Haig would need to do to boost morale: “Immediate resignation and suicide.”
That doesn’t exactly suggest a party uniting behind its leader. MPs who are not ready to force Truss out may still rebel in parliamentary votes, be vocal about their opposition to parts of her supply-side agenda in an attempt to persuade their constituents that it’s not their fault, and generally cultivate an atmosphere that will make it very difficult for Truss to get on the front foot.
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The need to appease
“In the initial days after the not-so-mini-budget, No 10 was almost alarmingly calm,” Katy said. “There’s been a gradual realisation since then of how serious the situation is.” In the last few days, Truss has made a series of concessions to backbenchers and the markets in an attempt to mitigate that.
After Conor Burns was sacked as a trade minister over allegations of serious misconduct at conference, Greg Hands, a key supporter of Rishi Sunak, was appointed as his replacement. Katy reported in a Spectator piece on Monday (£) that while it was a tacit acknowledgment that Truss’s initial cabinet was from too narrow a section of the party, Hands had, crucially, met with the prime minister to give “constructive” feedback in private, rather than speak in the media: “Team Truss is trying to show that … there is a way back for all MPs so long as they approach it the right way.” In other words, Katy said: “They’re saying to MPs: voice your concerns with us, just don’t do what Michael Gove did.”
Bringing forward the fiscal statement is also a concession – and there was a remarkable U-turn on the identity of the new Treasury secretary, with old hand James Bowler appointed instead of the widely reported favourite Antonia Romeo, who had no Treasury experience. “All of that plays into the message No 10 is sending that Truss is in listening mode,” Katy said. “They have acknowledged that they’ve had to calibrate their position.”
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Ultimately, Truss is in a position of limited power
Which is a funny thing to say about a prime minister with a large parliamentary majority. And yet: even if MPs are reluctant to act, and even if the concessions are helpful, Truss and Kwarteng have painted themselves so far into the corner that it will take more than a conciliatory ministerial pick to get them out. “She is still in an extremely difficult position,” Katy said. “She needs to calm the markets – but anything that does that is going to be politically difficult.”
The polling suggests that her claim to be fine with being unpopular is about to come under the most severe, and most practical, kind of test. “There are loads of tricky positions on supply-side reform that she’s going to need ministers to defend, but are they going to be willing to do that if they don’t think she’s going to be around for that long? It’s fine to say you’re OK with being unpopular, and to say that it will pay off in the long term, but the bottom line is that if you’re doing badly in the polls, you lose political capital – and it’s much harder to bring people into line.”
At prime ministers’ questions today, Truss will make her first substantial appearance since the relatively controlled environment of party conference – and we may get a sense of how close all of this is to boiling over. “PMQs is important for morale,” Katy said. “At the moment, I think more MPs than not want to try to make this work and give her a chance. This will give us a flavour of whether that’s plausible.”
What else we’ve been reading
Helen Pidd’s feature on Alex Belfield, who was recently jailed for stalking broadcasters including Jeremy Vine, is an extraordinary account of how a former BBC local radio DJ was able to make the lives of people he’d never met unbearable – and monetise it in the process. Archie
Marina Hyde runs the rule over John Cleese’s claim to have been cancelled by the BBC because they haven’t given him a series of one-hour shows like GB News has, “a kind of delusional broadcast disorder... overwhelmingly suffered by men”. Archie
I loved this candid interview with Sadie Frost because it seemed to turn the clocks back to the carefree decade of the 1990s. Emine Saner talks with Frost about her shift from actor to director, her family and leaving Primrose Hill behind. Nimo
Among the subplots of a new raft of allegations against Associated Newspapers, contained in lawsuits from public figures including Doreen Lawrence and Elton John, is the question of former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s well-trailed peerage. Jane Martinson argues that any decision must be delayed until the claims are resolved. Archie
Last week I came across this excellent analysis (from April) of how the jokes work in two minutes of the Simpsons by comedy writer Joel Morris. I know you’re not meant to explain jokes – but even if this isn’t all that funny, it does give a deeply satisfying sense of the writers’ craft. Archie
Sport
Football | Chelsea’s Champions League campaign is back on course after they cruised to a 2-0 victory against AC Milan after a controversial red card for Milan’s Fikayo Tomori. Manchester City were as disjointed as they have been this season, drawing 0-0 with Copenhagen but securing qualification from Champions League Group G. Celtic crashed out of the tournament after losing 2-0 to RB Leipzig.
Football | Amber Barrett scored surely the most important goal in the history of women’s football in the Republic of Ireland, to secure a 1-0 win over Scotland and take Vera Pauw’s side to the World Cup - their first major tournament.
Cricket | England have announced a pared-down list of central contracts for 2022-23 with only 18 players on the main list, down from 20 last year. One-day mainstays Dawid Malan and Jason Roy miss out, as do Test openers Alex Lees and Rory Burns. But there are new places for Ben Foakes and Liam Livingstone.
The front pages
The Guardian reports that “Power giants to face windfall tax after all as Truss delivers U-turn”. The Times warns of “Threats to pensions as Bank cuts its support”. The Financial Times adds “Bank of England buys gilts again to prevent ‘fire sales’ by pension funds”. The Telegraph notes that “Sterling falls as Bank pulls plug on pension help”.
Confirmation of the date of King Charles’ coronation leads a number of papers. The Express claims “King demands coronation to reflect cost crisis”, while the Mail reports on pleas from some MPs, “Now move bank holiday for the coronation”. The Sun leads with “Suspect ‘attacked girl near Praia’ days before Maddie taken” about the charges against a suspect in the Madeleine McCann case. The Mirror carries a plea from the mother of James Bulger: “Don’t let James’ killer walk free”.
Today in Focus
The meteoric rise of Suella Braverman
She’s been an MP for only seven years, but has been catapulted into one of the biggest jobs in politics. And, just over a month in, she is already making waves. But what do we know about the former lawyer – and what does she want to do as home secretary?
Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Dave Hollins and Eric Gill met in the 1950s – Gill was a prolific goalkeeper for Brighton and Hollins was his understudy. Their rivalry spanned several years: Gill’s skills meant that most of the time Hollins was left warming the bench. Eventually, Hollins usurped Gill, and he went on to represent Wales at under-23 level and then joined Newcastle United in a big-money transfer. Once their careers in football ended, the two men maintained a friendship that has stretched over almost seven decades. Until Covid, they met up every few weeks to catch up over a cup of tea or a game of bowls.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
