We are closing this blog now. Thanks for following along with us. You can read all our politics here .
As you all catch your breath from that on the edge of your seat viewing, some reaction from the commentariat.
Liz Truss did seem more human and compared to previous hustings, where she was criticised for being robotic. She seemed to go down better in the room, from what could be gathered from watching online, but it is backed up by people in Leeds tonight.
Sunak still has a long way to go. The next hustings is in the cathedral city of Exeter next week.
I mean, whisper it, but Truss is increasingly good at this. I think she’s demonstrated in this campaign that if she wins she won’t be any sort of pushover for Labour.
— Rob Burley (@RobBurl) July 28, 2022
I’ve found this LBC format the most interesting as it’s been useful to see and hear from actual Tory members about what they care about. A lot of non Tory people may be shouting at the wireless but it’s been fascinating to hear from them directly.
— Ayesha Hazarika (@ayeshahazarika) July 28, 2022
On my highly unscientific basis of the trusty clap-o-meter, the leadership hustings in Leeds was won by Liz Truss. pic.twitter.com/04lTpkMr8q
— Joe Mayes (@Joe_Mayes) July 28, 2022
Joking aside, the groans from those in the room to the guy asking why the triple lock remains in place symbolises the problem that the Tories need to face up to eventually - who votes for them when the old people die and the young cannot afford to buy houses? https://t.co/ivAeFDVpwa
— David Wilcock (@DavidTWilcock) July 28, 2022
Liz Truss won that #hustings @LBC ….next PM it would appear.
— Shelagh Fogarty 💚 (@ShelaghFogarty) July 28, 2022
Truss says that shortages of labour are the same across the world, in the US and Canada and not down to Brexit.
“In Europe they are also struggling to get workers on their farms as well. We have the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. I talked about my passion for British food, and I think it’s right we open up for these workers.”
Then a question about child benefits, and the threshold being £50k where if one of the parents get that income, they no longer qualify.
Truss repeats that she wants to reform the tax system. “We need to make sure it works with things like child benefit, but we need to simplify the system.”
She is then asked if Jeremy Hunt would get a job in her cabinet, she declines to answer but says jobs will be given out on the basis of whether they can do the job.
Final question, after the two hour marathon is about the difference between pensioners who have the triple lock on their pensions and younger people who are harder hit by the cost of living crisis.
Truss says she wants to get more people working part time, including retired people. “There are lots of roles that people can take up, and make a huge contribution to our society. People are living longer and one of the best things that David Cameron did was remove the compulsory retirement age.”
The foreign secretary then finishes up by reiterating her reforms to the planning system and housebuilding. And that’s it.
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After a question about local authorities, Truss is challenged over her negative comments about the school she attended, which others have called inaccurate. “You make it sound like it’s some bog-standard comprehensive, it’s nothing like it,” the questioner says.
“I’m not claiming it was a sink school, it was an average comprehensive at the time. And at that average comprehensive under the auspices of Leeds city council there were too many kids able to leave school without the education they need, the teaching was patchy, we didn’t have league tables at the time, or a national curriculum, there were kids who fell through the cracks.
“There were low expectations of some of the pupils at the school, and sometimes those low expectations were about where those kids had come from in Leeds. There were different expectations from the kids from the middle class areas, than who had come from the council estate. I thought that was wrong.”
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A question about mixed-sex toilets in schools, with an audience member saying that a lot of changes were made in schools during Covid closures, and that girls’ toilets were removed.
Truss replies: “I agree with you, I have sought to clarify that as women’s minister. I have been very clear that single sex spaces should be protected, particularly for young people, as well as vulnerable people, vulnerable women in domestic violence shelters, and I can assure you as prime minister, I would direct that to happen.
“Our girls, it’s a difficult time being a teenager, being a young girl and you should be able to have the privacy you need in your own loo.”
Truss says that she doesn’t believe teenagers should be able to make “irreversible decisions to do with their own bodies that they might later regret”. She adds that schools can provide additional facilities, but not by taking away single-sex toilets.
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Truss backs more investment and transport links in the north.
In response to a following question, she says that she was sceptical about HS2, but now it is going ahead there needs to be a focus on value for money.
She adds that it needs to be done quicker, now we are out of the EU, and that different procurement rules have slowed us down.
Then a question about energy supply, and fracking. Truss says she supports it in areas where people want it to happen, and it can be part of the future for energy in the UK, in conjunction with nuclear power.
In response to an opening question about how to support children who suffered through the pandemic, Truss says that support wil be given to early years.
“We need kids who get to school to be able to count, to be able to read, to be able to do all those basic things to be able to benefit from a primary education.”
She adds she will push for education standards over English and maths to be improved.
Truss goes on to say that there should be more mental health support available in schools for children.
She says that she would not have closed schools during Covid. “There was a time where we kept pubs open but closed schools.”
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Truss says the attempt to rewrite parliamentary rules to try and support Owen Paterson was a mistake and she wouldn’t do it again, if similar circumstances repeated themelves. She adds that there needs to be more support for MPs.
After questions about Johnson’s support for Ukraine, and a prediction for the women’s Euros final on Sunday that’s it for Ferrari’s questions. On to the audience now.
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Truss is asked about company profits, and is asked about windfall taxes. She says she doesn’t support another one as it puts off investment.
She said she would be encouraging Shell and other companies to invest in the UK to improve productivity. She would create low-tax investment zones to encourage more investment.
Truss seems to be addressing the audience as well as Ferrari, more than Sunak was doing earlier.
Ferrari brings up her previous republicanism and asks what happens if the Queen asks about it during their first audience.
“Almost as soon as I made the speech I regretted it. I was a bit of a teenage controversialist.
“Within these four walls, I was briefly a member of the Liberal Democrats, I did leave it when I was 21 when I came of age and realised the error of my ways.”
Truss said that Margaret Thatcher was the best Conservative PM, after “turning around the country ... as the sick man of Europe”.
“What I sensed in the 1980s was a growing sense of pride in our country and a growing sense of optimism in our future. I think the pinnacle was when we saw the Berlin Wall fall. When we saw the freedom and democracy and pride in our values influencing the rest of the world.”
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On to the yes or no questions.
Is Love Island misogynistic, Ferrari asks. Truss says she watched it recently with her daughter and was horrified but does not answer the question directly.
Then Ferrari asks if England and Wales should boycott the World Cup in Qatar, after previously backing a boycott of the Champions League final in Moscow. She says not.
“If we insisted that every contry we traded with, or did business with, or attended a football match in, had the same standards as the United Kingdom, we wouldn’t be doing business with many countries. We need to be pragmatic. What Russia did to Ukraine was beyond the pail.”
Truss then says she has never used illegal drugs.
Ferrari asks Truss if her plans really add up.
She says all of her tax reductions are costed.
“There is £30bn in the budget, and we will be able to start paying down debt in three years. It’s a false economy to raise taxes when it can cut off growth, we know that, we know what Britain was like in the 1970s with high taxes and militant trade unions. I didn’t agree with those people who say you can keep raising tax and the money will keep rolling in.”
She says people won’t want to work and won’t invest if taxes stay high.
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Truss says that the tax system in the UK is too complicated, in response to a question about inheritance tax. It needs to be fairer, she says, and would look at inheritance tax.
“I’d look at the overall tax system in the round and make sure it’s fair. We need to reward people who do the right thing, who set up businesses, who earn money and want to pass it on to their children.”
Ferrari asks who was better, Theresa May or Boris Johnson after Truss served both of them.
“Put it this way, in the 2016 leadership election after the referendum I backed Boris first, then I backed Theresa May once Boris had left the race. I’ve always been a fan of Boris Johnson, I think he did a fantastic job as prime minister, he delivered Brexit, he delivered on the vaccine and I was proud to serve as a loyal member of his cabinet.”
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Liz Truss now in the hot seat, with Nick Ferrari kicking things off by asking if there is a risk of Truss accidentally walking the UK into a nuclear war, after Vladimir Putin put his forces on high alert after her comments earlier this year.
She says: “The fact that Russia have spread propaganda about me, is I think a sign that the strength the United Kingdom has shown in leading the free world in the fight against Russia and supporting Ukraine has had a real impact.
“I take it as a badge of honour that I have been sanctioned by the Russian regime. We have stood up to Russia, we have encouraged our allies in the free world to stand up to this appalling regime. It’s completely wrong to listen to any of the sabre-rattling or propaganda. The reason they are doing this is that Putin’s evil plans to take Kyiv in a few days didn’t work.”
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Sunak finishes up after questions about the benefits system, which he says he would tighten up, and about appointing William Hague, his predecessor in Richmond, as Conservative party chair.
Sunak says he doesn’t think the former Tory leader would be interested.
Sunak accused of 'stabbing Johnson in the back'
Another audience member accuses Sunak of “stabbing Johnson in the back” over his resignation. He asks how will take the party through the next general election.
Sunak says he didn’t stab Johnson in the back. “There was a speech that was due to be given and it was clear we had very different points of view.”
He adds: “It was a very difficult decision - it wasn’t one I took lightly. I am very grateful to the PM for making me chancellor. I gave everything for that job and delivering for you and getting through coronavirus and I do think he was the only person who could have broken the Brexit gridlock.
“It got for me personally to a position where I couldn’t stay. I had a significant difference of opinion in the challenges ahead of us, and there was no way I could stay. There is no way a chancellor and a PM cannot be joined at the hip. I had no choice but to resign and that was the right thing to do.”
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Sunak says he would be firm with Nicola Sturgeon about another referendum. He says that the government should not just “devolve and forget” with ministers needing to be “more active” in Scotland.
“We can’t just talk in arguments to do with our head. Nationalism is a seductive and romantic idea. We have got to make arguments about the union that speaks to people’s hearts and their emotions. If we focus on the practicalities we will not be successful.”
A councillor in Selby asks about keeping small business relief to help support shops.
Sunak says he will. He refers to his “help to grow” programme among other initiatives he introduced as chancellor.
Theresa then asks about controlling illegal immigration with small boats arriving from France.
“That’s one of the things I want to grip as quickly as possible as PM. Some of the things we need to do quickly; we need to change the definition from what counts as asylum and move away from the very expansive ECHR definition where people can claim all sorts of reasons for being here, and move towards the refugee convention definition which is tighter.
“We should make our foreign policy more linked to taking back failed asylum seekers. If we are going to provide aid to countries, we should be linking it to taking back asylum seekers we want to make sure aren’t here any more. We need to improve the current system to get through it. We need to look at our rates of objection and acceptance. For some reason we reject far fewer asylum seekers than other countries.”
Sunak says he will make the Rwanda policy work, and believes it is workable in the long term.
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Sunak is now taking questions from the audience. Laura up first.
She asks a left-field one to get the ball rolling: if greyhound racing will be banned on animal rights grounds.
He says he hasn’t ever looked at it in great detail.
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Sunak says that ‘Eat out to help out wasn’t a mistake despite a rise in coronavirus infections. “Every country in Europe ended up having the same spike thereafter, every single one, and they ended up putting more restrictions in place afterwards. It’s hard to say that’s the difference.”
He says it helped protect jobs in hospitality, who are younger and on lower incomes. More applause.
Sunak is asked what he would say to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, to try and attract his support. He won’t give a figure on increases to defence spending, saying he doesn’t believe in “arbitary targets”.
He says: “I was a chancellor who supported Ben in the largest uplift in [defence] spending since the cold war, and we did that before we settled any other department in the middle of Covid, I was also the chancellor who ensured we supported Ben to get £2bn of aid to Ukraine to stand up to Russian aggression.”
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A question from Ferrari on image: Sunak is told he has Prada shoes, a photo opportunity with a car he doesn’t own, he pours pints for cameras despite being teetotal, and has a green card despite living in Downing Street. Ferrari asks what people should make of this.
“This is not about what shoes I wear, it’s about what I want to do in Downing Street,” he says. This gets the most applause he’s had this evening.
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Ferrari says that about 14,000 members of the Conservative party want Johnson back on the ballot. This gets support and applause from the audience. He asks what Sunak thinks of this.
“Close to 60 people resigned in parliament, it’s incumbent on the prime minister to have the confidence of the parliamentary party,” Sunak says. “That wasn’t there at the end. Whether he’s on the ballot or not, you have to command the confidence of your MPs, and we got to a position where 60 of them resigned from government.”
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Ferrari asks about using Boris Johnson as an envoy to Ukraine, after Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s praise for him. He asks whether the former chancellor would give him a role in his government. Sunak says he wouldn’t offer him a job in the cabinet.
“I don’t know if he would want to do it ... I’m not going to sit here and allocate jobs to people, but I do think we need to move forward, I don’t see that being a role in the cabinet for Boris, but I do think he’ll have a role in public life. He’s an extraordinary figure and I’m sure he has a lot more to give.”
Ferrari asks how striking workers would be tackled. Sunak says there should be a legal minimum level of service for critical industries including rail.
Some quick-fire questions from Ferrari: firstly Sunak says he would support the return of grammar schools, adding it’s in line with his prioritisation of education that he mentioned in his stump speech.
When Ferrari talks about water company directors going to jail in response to pollution, Sunak demures and says they should be “held to a high standard”, but doesn’t say they should go to prison.
Sunak then says he has never used illegal drugs, in response to a final question.
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Ferrari asks that with the economic sitaution so dire, why should people trust Sunak.
Sunak says that the UK had a faster recovery than other countries from Covid.
“If you look at it over the period, we are actually very much in line or to the top end of the G7. Of course I want to see growth. We have to look at how we do that. We’ve had a very narrow conversation about tax, and in a 21st-century economy there is many more things we have to get right.”
Sunak talks about financial markets reform, about a visa regime for migrant workers, and reviewing regulation to support entrepreneurs. The former chancellor says he wants to get more investment in the economy.
In response to another question he says that Margaret Thatcher was the best Conservative prime minister. Ferrari asks what her reaction would have been to Sunak raising corporation tax.
“If you look at her early budgets and what we had to do as a country, she understood that you had to get a grip of inflation first, and public spending and borrowing. Her mantra was to do that first, because if inflation had run out of control, it would have been far worse for the economy. It was only after that was under control that she embarked on a plan of supply-side reform,” he says.
He adds that he would cut tax on business investment, which gets applause.
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LBC’s Nick Ferrari takes the stage now, ready to ask questions of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
Ferrari speaks to Sunak first. he asks if he has done a U-turn over VAT on energy bills after saying it was “unconservative”.
“No, definitely not. There’s two very different things here. We have a short term problem with energy bills. We need to make sure that the support with energy bills is appropriate fo rthe scale for the challenge millions of households are facing.
“We announced support earlier this year for people after it was announced that energy bills will get to £2,800. For the most vulnerable families, that gets to about £1,200 of help. Now, people’s expectations of what will happen to energy bills has gone up. It is reasonable that there is more we can do.
“That’s a temporary and time limited support to help people.”
Another Yorkshire line from Liz Truss, who says that the Conservatives need to summon the spirit of former Leeds United manager Don Revie, who went on to have a chequered spell as England manager after leaving Elland Road.
“We need to win. My friends, we can win against Keir Starmer, who is a patronising, plastic patriot. He is beatable, but he is only beatable if we deliver. I can assure you, if you select me, if you elect me, I will work my socks off in No 10 to deliver all of the promises we made in 2019 and to deliver a victory for the Conservatives in 2024.”
That’s it for Truss’s speech, there’s a break now for a few minutes before it resumes with a question and answer session.
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Truss said that people should be encouraged to “love their country”, after more references to straight-talking people in Yorkshire, free-speech and people knowing “a woman is a woman”.
She adds that people need to be proud to be Conservative. “The people who voted for us in 2019 in seats like Keighley or Dewsbury, they didn’t vote for us because they wanted Labour policies. They were fed up of Labour and Labour councils. They voted for us because they wanted opportunity and aspired to better things and aspired for better things in their area.”
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Truss then turns to say that the UK needs to continue to stand up to Vladimir Putin, talking about the action that has been taken so far.
“I will not let up until Ukraine prevails and Putin fails.
“We have to recognise that we need to spend more on defence. After the cold war we let our guard slip and alowed the aggressors to expand. That is why I would put defence spending up to 3% of GDP by the end of the decade. There is nothing more important than freedom and democracy.”
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After being introduced by James Cleverly, and a promotional video being played, Liz Truss walks on to the stage, which is round with chairs surrounding it.
Truss talks up her Leeds connections, among other things jokingly apologising to any former teachers of hers in the audience, saying she got “grit, determination and straight-talking” from Yorkshire.
“The fact is, we face a huge global economic crisis. We have the worst war that has taken place on European shores happening in Ukraine. Now is not the time for business as usual. Now is not the time for the status quo, we need to be bold and do things differently.”
She said she would reverse the increases in national insurance, stop the green levy on fuel bills, and not increase corporation tax in an attempt to encourage investment. Truss said she would abolish “Soviet-style” housing targets.
“I believe that we need to be on the side of people who work hard and do the right thing. People who save their money, people who start their own businesses, the self-employed, people who go into work every day. That’s whose side I’m on,” she said.
Truss says she will give power back to local people over planning, saying rules should not be the same in London as Yorkshire or Cornwall. She goes on to refer to the transport system in Leeds, saying it is the same as it was when she was a teenager. The foreign secretary repeats her pledge to go ahead with Northern Powerhouse Rail.
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Sunak, speaking without notes, says borrowing is “not Conservative”, referring to Liz Truss’ plans, and adds that he will cut taxes for both people and business.
He says that he will take advantage of the benefits of Brexit, including reforming regulation in financial services, data and life sciences.
The former chancellor says that the Conservatives need to win a fifth election term. “It’s a challenge but I know we can do it together. But in order to do it, we will have to appeal to swing voters in every part of our country, north and south, remain and leave, urban and rural, Scotland and Wales, and I believe with all my heart, I am the person, I am the candidate, that gives our party the best opportunity to secure that victory and ensure that the Labour party and Keir Starmer never walk through the doors of No 10 Downing Street.”
Sunak admits he is the underdog, but compares his leadership candidacy to his attempt to become the candidate for Richmond seven years ago, when he became an MP.
“I promise you I am going to fight for every single vote. I am going to fight for the Conservative values that are core to who I am and what I stand for, and I am going to fight hard for the argument that we should not mortgage our children and grandchildren’s future to make our lives easier for today.”
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Sunak continues:
“I want a Britain where the birthright of every child is a world-class education. A Britain which is built on hard work, aspiration and hope. A Britain where we lead the world in setting the standard for integrity, decency and leadership, and a Britain where we have enormous pride in our history and enormous confidence in our future.”
Sunak adds that trust needs to be restored, saying he has not taken an easy road and has wanted to be honest about the challenges that Britain faces.
“That’s what leadership is about,” he says.
He talks about his plans to tackle the NHS backlog, illegal immigration and address the cost-of-living crisis and soaring inflation.
“Yes, this is a compassionate and welcoming country but we must also have control of our borders and as prime minister I will grip that problem and solve it and restore trust back in the system.
“We need to grip inflation because it’s the enemy that makes everyone poorer. It reduces their living standards and erodes their hard-earned savings. It pushes up mortgage rates, and I will grip inflation and get it back down.”
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David Davis is addressing the members in Leeds, as the event is now running behind schedule. The former leadership candidate – he came second in 2005 – calls Rishi Sunak a “man of great honesty and great integrity”.
Sunak’s first up. He says he’s had the “time of his life” in the last week as he’s been travelling across the country talking to members. He then launches into his stump speech about his family background.
“I’m standing before you all for one simple reason, that’s because this country did something absolutely incredible for my family. It welcomed them here as immigrants 60 years ago, and allowed them to build a better life. My Dad was an NHS GP. My Mum ran the local chemist in Southampton where I grew up. They brought me up with a set of values that are absolutely core to who I am today.
“The first of those values is that family means everything to me. The bonds of love, sacrifice, commitment that family brings are far greater than anything that any government could ever replicate, and nobody should ever forget that.”
He says his values are patriotism, aspiration, hard work, education, family and service. Sunak says they are Conservative values. “I want to put those Conservative values into action for this country,” he says.
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A reminder of the format for tonight’s hustings: each candidate will give a 10-minute speech to start, which will be followed by a Q&A session. We’re just waiting for it to get under way.
Iain Dale is currently talking about hosting the last hustings in 2019 on LBC, with his colleague Nick Ferrari in the chair tonight.
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Rishi Sunak has accepted another interview offer from a broadcaster, which Liz Truss is yet to agree to.
Sunak will speak to Nick Robinson in a one-on-one interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in August.
Although the broadcaster said it hopes Truss will also take part in an interview with Robinson in August, the foreign secretary’s campaign team has not yet confirmed if she will agree, PA Media reports.
Truss has so far declined to be interviewed by Andrew Neil on Channel 4, while Sunak has agreed.
The BBC News press team said on Twitter: “We can confirm Rishi Sunak will take part in a one-to-one interview with Nick Robinson on Wednesday August 10.
“As we announced last week, we’ve invited both candidates to be interviewed and we hope Liz Truss will join us later in August.”
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A Conservative party councillor who was at the same school as Liz Truss at the same time as her, is the latest to challenge her claim it “let down” children in Roundhay, a suburb in the north of the city.
Truss went to Roundhay school, which is rated “outstanding” by Ofsted. She caused unhappiness with her recent assertion that it “let down” children and drove her to become a Conservative.
Voters in Leeds told the Guardian this week that Truss was “delusional” and that her claims were misleading. Another former pupil at the school at about the same time as Truss, the Guardian US’s Martin Pengelly said she was misrepresenting her education.
ITV’s Robert Peston spoke to Nathan Hull, a Tory councillor who went to Roundhay, outside the hustings in Leeds. He is supporting Rishi Sunak for the party’s leadership. He said: “I was in the year below Liz, and it was a fantastic school. My parents sent seven children there, every single child came out with a degree.
“I have a different recollection to the school she describes. It was a friendly place, first class education, brilliant teachers, the facilities were fantastic and everyone there was pretty pleased with the education they got.
“I disagreed with the whole sentiment of what she was saying. I don’t feel the children were let down by the school.”
Tory councillor who was in the year below @Trussliz at school tells @Peston he has a different recollection to her
— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) July 28, 2022
'You have to be honest... I don't believe in stepping and treading all over your past and the people that've helped you get where you are, for political gain' pic.twitter.com/tfs0fNgp4R
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Former cabinet minister David Gauke, has written a piece for the New Statesman (paywall) saying he can understand why Conservative party members like Liz Truss, but that electing her leader would be a gamble.
Gauke, who voted to remain in the EU and was kicked out of the Conservative party in 2019, losing as an independent in the general election later that year, said Truss is likeable and “engaging”.
He adds:
Her political skills can be underrated. She can be perceptive – I recall her telling me about the UK’s political realignment long before the idea became commonplace. In contrast to the current prime minister, she is not motivated by the desire to hold office for the sake of it but wishes to gain power because she wants to do things.
However Gauke said he fears that her convictions and values might come unstuck in the current economic and political climate, and that her stubbornness might end up being fatal.
The biggest risk of a prime minister Truss – and I think it is a very real and substantial risk – is that her determination is not tempered by realism and a willingness to listen to expert opinion. Conservative party members admire her ideological clarity, but they are taking the most enormous gamble on her judgement.
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Candidates have started arriving at the Centenary Pavilion, in Elland Road, for tonight’s hustings. The venue is opposite Leeds United’s historic football stadium.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will face questions from LBC’s Nick Ferrari from 7pm, in front of about 1,400 Conservative party members in the event hosted by the party.
Sunak earlier admitted he was the underdog in the contest, and polling has shown he is trailing his opponent with Tory members.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit opportunities minister, told Times Radio this afternoon that Boris Johnson was entitled to mock Rishi Sunak earlier over his U-turn on removing VAT on fuel bills. (See 1pm.) Rees-Mogg said:
I think the prime minister was puzzled as to why that wasn’t policy earlier in the year when the prime minister and other members of the cabinet, including me, thought it was an extremely good idea but it wasn’t so popular in 11 Downing Street. So times change and we change with them, as they say.
That’s all from me for today. My colleague Harry Taylor is taking over now.
London mayor Sadiq Khan says he has no objection in principle to joining picket line
In his LBC phone-in this morning, Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, said he had no plans to join a picket line in the near future “simply because of pressure of work and stuff”. But he said he had no objection in principle to appearing on a picket line. Asked if he would join an RMT picket in the coming days, he said:
I have in the past appeared on picket lines and I think it’s really important to make sure we understand that actually the genesis of all these problems, the root cause of all these problems, are government policies. It’s either the government pulling the strings of the rail companies or not giving – whether it’s the rail companies, whether its TfL, whether it’s the NHS, whether it’s our schools – the money they need to give their workers a decent pay rise.
Khan said unions had been “a core force for good to our country over the recent weeks, months and years” and, as an example, he said everyone had benefited from what they had done during the pandemic to keep public transport safe.
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Sunak and Truss prepare for first official Tory hustings in Leeds tonight at 7pm
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are poised to go head to head in the first official hustings with Tory members in Leeds, PA Media reports. PA says:
It is the first of 12 sessions for party faithful across the country to quiz the final two candidates before voting for the next party leader and prime minister closes on 2 September.
The two-hour hustings will be broadcast on LBC radio from 7pm and hosted by presenter Nick Ferrari.
The event takes place in Leeds, where Truss was hoping to shore up voters’ support by backing Northern Powerhouse Rail in full and pledging to “turbocharge investment” into the north of England.
During a visit to the Yorkshire city, Truss insisted she is “completely committed” to the scheme to improve rail connections between Liverpool and Leeds, which was originally announced by Boris Johnson but subsequently scaled back.
She told reporters: “I grew up in Leeds, I know how poor the transport is and, frankly, it’s not got much better since I was a teenager getting the bus into Leeds city centre. What I want to see is really fantastic rail services, better roads so people are able to get into work”.
Asked how she would afford the scheme, given the vast tax cuts she has pledged, Truss said: “The taxes that I am cutting are affordable within our budget. By creating new low-tax investment zones in places like West Yorkshire, by enabling the post-Brexit reforms to take place, unleashing more investment from the city, we will grow the economy faster - that will bring in more tax revenue, and that will enable us to afford those projects”.
She also promised to “fix the Treasury’s funding formula” if she gets the keys to No 10 to make sure the region gets a “fairer share” of resources.
Truss took a thinly veiled swipe at Sunak, who is the MP for the North Yorkshire seat of Richmond, when she was asked whether he was as committed to the rail project, saying: “The thing about me is I’m prepared to take on the Whitehall orthodoxy, I’m prepared to challenge the groupthink that has, over decades, not put enough investment into this part of the country.”
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Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for government efficiency and Brexit opportunities, has opened a government hub building in Birmingham that will house up to 1,700 civil servants, from 20 government departments. This is part of a project that will see jobs relocated outside London. Some 880 jobs have already been moved to the West Midlands, the Cabinet Office says, and 2,100 will be relocated by 2025.
Rees-Mogg said: “This hub is an important part of our plans to create a leaner and more efficient public estate, which will save taxpayers’ money and serve the entire United Kingdom.”
.@Jacob_Rees_Mogg opened a new Government Hub in Birmingham today which will house 1700 staff, including roles relocated out of London.
— Cabinet Office (@cabinetofficeuk) July 28, 2022
The new site is part of our strategy to consolidate departments under one roof, saving the taxpayer millions of pounds.https://t.co/hvamj7XTLK pic.twitter.com/Gyv08FoaFo
'I think it’s pretty clear I’m the underdog' - Sunak admits Truss is ahead in Tory leadership contest
There are two long interviews with Rishi Sunak out today. He has spoken to Charles Moore for a Spectator interview, and to Andrew Gimson and William Atkinson for a ConservativeHome one. Here are the main points.
- Sunak said the Conservative party should negotiate a protocol for leadership debates with broadcasters to minimise the risk of debates damaging the party’s reputation. He told ConHome:
I think there might be an argument for the party negotiating on behalf of all candidates together with the broadcasters. That might be a sensible thing if the party sets the rules of the contest in general.
Because there’s two competing things we’re trying to balance. One is a genuine need for scrutiny of candidates, and that is entirely reasonable and fair, because ultimately this person is going to become prime minister.
But that need for scrutiny needs to be balanced with need as well to make sure that our party is not doing things that essentially write Labour’s next leaflets for them.
- He implied that he would prefer to negotiate a solution to the problems with the Northern Ireland protocol with the EU than go ahead with implementing the NI protocol bill, that allows the UK government to unilaterally ignore parts of the protocol. He told the Spectator:
There are some very real challenges with the arrangements that are in place currently. I’d like to see those fixed and the protocol bill gives us an opportunity to do that. But the door should always be there for a negotiated settlement with Europe, not least because it is a lot faster.
- He refused to describe Boris Johnson as a liar in his Spectator interview, but, explaining why he resigning from government, he said Johnson was not telling the truth about the Chris Pincher affair. Asked if Johnson was lying, Sunak said:
It’s unclear exactly what happened, but it was clear to me that what was said was not accurately reflective of what seemed to have happened.
- Sunak told the Spectator that his campaign launch video was put together in 24 hours. The video was so polished that it was widely assumed it could not have been produced that quickly. But Sunak told the Spectator:
I can honestly say with hand on heart that that video was put together in 24 hours. And I get a lot of criticism when people say: ‘Oh, gosh, it’s all very slick and professional.’ I think being professional is a good thing. I think being professional at things is something that we should celebrate and actually we need more of it.
- He rejected claims that he was the candidate of orthodox thinking. He told the Spectator that, when economic orthodoxy said the government could go on borrowing lavishly because interest rates would stay low, he did not accept that, because he thought they were bound to rise.
- He told ConHome that it was “pretty clear” that he was the underdog in the contest. He said:
I think it’s pretty clear I’m the underdog. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.
Updated
Truss wins backing of NRG chair Jake Berry as she promises to build Northern Powerhouse Rail
Jake Berry, the Conservative MP who chairs the Northern Research Group, which represents Tory MPs in the north, has declared that he is backing Liz Truss for the leadership.
🇬🇧I’m backing @trussliz to be the next leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of our United Kingdom. #lizforleader pic.twitter.com/mLNvCg2ToQ
— Jake Berry MP (@JakeBerry) July 28, 2022
His endorsement coincides with Truss saying she will build Northern Powerhouse Rail if she becomes PM, as my colleague Josh Halliday reports.
Burnham says Starmer needs to be careful, following sacking of Sam Tarry, to ensure Labour still seen as party that sides with workers
Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has expressed concern about Keir Starmer’s decision to sack Sam Tarry. In an interview with GB News, Burnham said there was a risk of the party appearing not to be on the side of working people. Commenting on the sacking of Tarry, he said:
Labour needs to be careful here. We can’t ever be a party that undermines working people fighting to protect their incomes and a cost of living crisis.
If we’re not careful, that’s how we might come over. There’s a real issue out there now for people in terms of wages and energy bills that keep rising.
People are going to have to fight to protect their incomes and Labour should be supporting people to protect their incomes.
Starmer insists that Tarry was sacked not because he showed his support for striking RMT members, but because he gave interviews in which he contradicted party policy. (See 1.11pm.)
Senior Aslef official resigns from Labour party following sacking of Sam Tarry
Kevin Lindsay, Scottish organiser for the train drivers’ union Aslef, has announced that he has resigned from the Labour party following the sacking yesterday of Sam Tarry. Lindsay also says he will now be backing calls for the union to disaffiliate from Labour. In his resignation letter to the party he said:
The Labour party was and is meant to be the political wing of the trade union movement but now it’s more interested in trying woo Tory voters in the shires of England than representing working people.
As a democrat, I respect that Keir Starmer has been elected the leader but I truly believe his performance and policies are making it impossible for the Labour party to return to power and that he should be removed from his position immediately. There needs to be a change in leadership and political direction but I sadly can’t see this happening and we will end up with PM Truss for several years.
Therefore I have made the decision not only to resign from the Labour party but now also support the proposal for Aslef to disaffiliate from the party.
Updated
Starmer says Truss's plans to limit ability of unions to call strikes 'completely wrong'
And here are some more lines from what Keir Starmer said to reporters during his Birmingham visit when asked about his approach to trade unions and strikes.
- Starmer said he would take “each case as it comes” when deciding whether to allow frontbenchers to join picket lines. In the past shadow ministers have been told not to appear on picket lines. Asked if they could support RMT pickets during the strike on Saturday, provided they did not give unauthorised interviews, Starmer replied: “We take each case as it comes. I want to see these issues resolved.” He also said the role of a “responsible government” was to get the key players around the table to resolve the issues.
- He said that Liz Truss was “completely wrong” in wanting to further curtail the ability of trade unions to hold strikes. Asked about her plans, he said:
I think she’s completely wrong about that. What we need to do is to improve the rights of working people. That’s why we’ve drafted a whole set of employment rights from day one for working people.
- He refused to say whether he would back calls for a general strike if Truss tried to implement her plans. But he said unions were right to stick up for their members. Asked about the prospect of some sort of coordinated strike action (see 9.58am), and whether he would approve, he said:
It’s quite right for trade unions to stick up for their members and to fight for their members. Of course, it is. And it’s their members who are really struggling under this cost-of-living crisis.
So, of course, trade unions are right to stick up for support and negotiate on behalf of their members. I’m fully supportive of that, working with our trade unions.
- He said the trade unions would “always” be part of the labour movement.
- He said he expected the Unite union to continue to have a relationship with the Labour party. Unite is Labour’s biggest donor and its general secretary, Sharon Graham, has been particularly critical of the decision to sack Sam Tarry. She posted these messages on Twitter yesterday.
The @UKLabour sacking of @SamTarry for supporting working people on strike, against cuts to their jobs and pay, is another insult to the trade union movement. Quite frankly it would be laughable if it were not so serious. 1/3 #SamTarry
— Sharon Graham (@UniteSharon) July 27, 2022
At a time when people are facing a cost of living crisis and on the day when the Conservative Government has launched a new wave of attacks on the rights of working people, @UKLabour has opted to continue to indulge in old factional wars. 2/3 #SamTarry
— Sharon Graham (@UniteSharon) July 27, 2022
.@UKLabour is becoming more and more irrelevant to ordinary working people who are suffering. Juvenile attacks on trade unionists will do absolutely nothing to further Labour’s prospects for power. 3/3 #SamTarry
— Sharon Graham (@UniteSharon) July 27, 2022
Asked if he was worried about Unite withdrawing funding from the party, Starmer said:
The Unite union and the Labour party have a very strong relationship.
I am a member of the Unite union. That relationship is historic, it is present, and it will be the future of the Labour party.
They work with us on our employment rights’ draft legislation, which is, you know, the most comprehensive set of employment rights that we have ever seen coming out of the Labour party.
Starmer says Sam Tarry sacked as shadow transport minister because he 'made up policy on the hoof'
Keir Starmer has said Sam Tarry was sacked as shadow transport minister because he “made up policy on the hoof”. Speaking on a visit to Birmingham, Starmer said:
Sam Tarry was sacked because he booked himself onto media programmes without permission, and then made up policy on the hoof, and that can’t be tolerated in any organisation because we’ve got collective responsibility. So that was relatively straightforward.
Of course, as far as the industrial action is concerned, I completely understand the frustration of so many working people who’ve seen the prices go up, seen inflation through the roof, and their wages haven’t gone up.
So the Labour party will always be on the side of working people, but we need collective responsibility, as any organisation does.
Starmer was referring in particular to an interview Tarry gave yesterday in which he said people like rail workers should not get below-inflation pay rises. That is not party policy.
Updated
Johnson mocks Sunak over his VAT on fuel U-turn in rare public intervention in Tory leadership contest
Boris Johnson has mocked Rishi Sunak, his former chancellor, for announcing a U-turn this week and proposing to scrap VAT on fuel bills for a year.
In a speech at the Commonwealth Business Forum in Birmingham, the outgoing prime minister acknowledged that he was leaving office sooner than he wanted. He told his audience:
We come now to the next stage in the great relay race of politics.
I didn’t think it was meant to be a relay race, by the way, when I started.
I can assure you that the baton is going to be passed seamlessly and invisibly to the hand of somebody else.
I’ll give you this assurance, they will continue with the same programme, cutting taxes, simplifying regulation as much as possible, taking advantage of all our new regulatory freedoms, getting rid of every encumbrance from solvency to MiFID to VAT on fuel - turns out to be easier than we thought.
Johnson has said almost nothing in public about the candidates vying to succeed him - even though it is an open secret that he favours Liz Truss. He feels betrayed by Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor precipitated a flood of resignations by ministers and ministerial aides that led to Johnson realising they would have to quit.
When Sunak was still at the Treasury, some in No 10 felt he was unreasonably blocking measures that would help people with the cost of living. During the 2016 referendum Johnson said the government would abolish VAT on fuel bills after the UK left the EU, but Sunak blocked proposals to do that earlier this year, arguing that it was better to target help for the poor than implement a tax cut that would be particularly helpful to wealthy people heating large houses.
Sunak announced his U-turn on Tuesday night. He said had had changed his mind in the light of evidence that the energy price cap is now expected to rise above £3,000 in October, but the announcement was also interpreted as a panic move from a candidate who fears he is losing.
Updated
In her interview on the Today programme this morning Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, appeared to play down the impact of the huge rise in fuel costs that people are going to face this winter. When it was put to her that bills would be going up by £2,300 this autum, Dorries replied: “Some, some people’s bills may increase by that amount.” The italics illustrate the words she was stressing. Dorries highlighted measures already taken by the government to help people with their bills.
The presenter, Martha Kearney, was quoting a figure provided by Martin Lewis, the money saving expert, in an interview on the programme earlier. As the Manchester Evening News reports, Lewis said:
Let’s be absolutely plain here, we know roughly what the price cap is going to be. It is set based on a published algorithm - it is based on wholesale prices. The October price cap is based on prices between February and mid-August so we’re nearly at the end of that.
And the current prediction is prices will rise 77% on top of the 52% rise we saw in April, taking the typical bill to £3,500 a year, that’s with the prediction I go for. Others are saying it will go higher we’re expecting it to rise again in January.
Now what that means year on year from last October to this October, a typical house will be paying £2,300 a year more on their energy bills alone.
These are from the consumer journalist Harry Wallop.
Enraging that @NadineDorries – representing the Govt – contemptusouly dismissed warnings by @MartinSLewis etc that average bills could increase by £2,300.
— Harry Wallop (@hwallop) July 28, 2022
"Some, *some* bills may increase by that amount," she told @BBCr4today
Does she not understand how averages work?
Just to be crystal clear. The warnings about £4,000 annual energy bills are based on @ofgem's "typical household consumption" (2,900kWh of electricity, 12,000kWh of gas), based on a 2.4 people household.
— Harry Wallop (@hwallop) July 28, 2022
For many large families/badly insulated homes it will be much higher.
The warnings about bills hitting £4,000 are not plucked out of thin air.@ofgem will soon announce the Oct '22 - March '23 price cap. This is based on wholesale energy prices between Feb - July this year.
— Harry Wallop (@hwallop) July 28, 2022
It's not a question of "may", Nadine. It's a question of "how bad"
Robert Colvile, head of the Centre for Policy Studies, a rightwing thinktank, and one of the authors of the 2019 Conservative manifesto, is in despair at Rishi Sunak’s green belt policy.
Some facts about the green belt. Yes, it has been shrinking. In 2021, it was a whole 194 sq km smaller than in 2014. At current rates (based on my analysis of CPRE figures) we risk concreting the whole thing over in just 5,000 years.
— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) July 28, 2022
As of Oct 2021, England had 16,140 sq km of green belt land. In 1997, it was 16,523. So there has been a small shrinkage.
— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) July 28, 2022
Except that in 1979, the green belt across the entire UK was just 7,215 sq km.
London is now surrounded by an area three times larger on which you cannot build a thing. More of England is designated green belt (12.4% of land area) than is actually developed (8.3%). And of course only 1% is actually used for houses (much of the rest is gardens, roads etc).
— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) July 28, 2022
As for the idea that we should redo the housing need figures - yes, we should. Because work by @CPSThinkTank has shown that if you use updated immigration stats, we actually need 40,000 more homes a year than the existing 300,000 target https://t.co/2t9XpkWWmg
— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) July 28, 2022
I like and admire both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. But both of their housing plans pander to the fantasy that we can build all the houses we need on brownfield far away from where any Tory voters might see it.
— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) July 28, 2022
Britain has a housing crisis. It is crippling our economy. It is blighting the lives of a generation. Yet more Nimbyism is emphatically not the answer.
— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) July 28, 2022
Updated
Sunak says as PM he would tighten planning rules to further restrict building on green belt
Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor and Tory leadership candidate, has announced that he would tighten planning rules to further restrict building on the green belt if he be became prime minister. He would also stop local authorities removing land from the green belt.
Citing an interview that Liz Truss, his rival, gave in 2019, in which she said 1m homes should be built on the London green belt, Sunak also claimed that this was now a policy area where the difference between the two candidates was “huge”.
Under planning rules for England, development can be allowed on the green belt in “very special circumstances”. Sunak says that if a local community judged such development inappropriate, he would not allow that decision to be overruled in any circumstances.
He says he would block the “loophole” that allows councils to take some land out of the green belt so that it can be freed up for development. As a result, the green belt has shrunk by 1%, he says.
But he also says he would change planning rules to make building on brownfield sites easier.
In a statement he says:
Green belt land is extremely precious in the UK. Over the last few years we’ve seen too many examples of local councils circumventing the views of residents by taking land out of the green belt for development, but I will put a stop to it.
Under my plans, if a local community has clearly judged a development to be inappropriate there are no circumstances in which planning permission should be granted.
More homes can be built while protecting the green belt and our most precious landscapes. Data shows that well over a million homes could be built across the country on brownfield sites with particularly high capacity in the north-west, Yorkshire and the West Midlands.
These places are crying out for new homes and a combination of building here and more inner-city densification will help us provide the housing that the UK needs, whilst protecting the countryside around our towns and cities.
Updated
Drug deaths in Scotland fall for first time since 2013, but still at 'unacceptable' levels, Scottish government says
Drug-related deaths in Scotland fell by nine in 2021, according to the latest figures released by National Records of Scotland, the first decrease since 2013 but falling well short of the significant reduction that campaigners are calling for.
The latest figure of 1,330 is still the second highest annual total on record, and Scotland continues to have by far the highest drug death rate recorded by any country in Europe and five times the rate in England.
The figures reveal a number of local rises in Edinburgh from 92 to 109 and Dumfries and Galloway from 22 to 35 and Glasgow 291 to 311, while deaths of women increased by 8% to 397.
Responding to the figures, the SNP MP Stewart McDonald said the figures were still “eye-watering”.
Having lost my own brother to drugs, I know the pain and guilt that many endure after losing someone. Although the first decrease for some time, the numbers remain eye watering. Turning the corner will take perseverance and resilience from us all. https://t.co/rNCKk1p8Cq
— Stewart McDonald MP (@StewartMcDonald) July 28, 2022
Angela Constance, the Scottish government’s minister for drugs policy, a dedicated position created by Nicola Sturgeon in December 2020 after the first minster admitted her government had “taken its eye off the ball”, said the number of deaths remained “unacceptable” and that work would continue “at pace” to address the public health emergency.
But other campaigners pointed to a “massive accountability gap” around quality and availability of services.
Justina Murray, CEO of Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs said she was calling for a target of zero drug deaths, saying anything less was an “insult”. She said:
We’ve had a raft of reports, policies and strategies that say what needs to change, and families are more likely to be included round the table, but it’s much harder to track their influence on the ground. We don’t understand what’s getting in the way of good words becoming good deeds.
Last week, Scotland’s drugs deaths taskforce published a hard-hitting report condemning “woefully inadequate” underfunding of services.
The Scottish Labour MSP Paul Sweeney, who has launched member’s bill to establish overdose prevention centres, where addicts can take drugs with support and supervision, said:
1,330 of our fellow Scots have died entirely preventable deaths and we should not be celebrating this as an achievement ... The solutions are no secret. We need action, not reports with recommendations that are never implemented.
Updated
Labour ministers did join picket lines in 1970s, says McDonnell, accusing Starmer of 'complete misreading' of public mood
On Tuesday, explaining his decision to order Labour frontbenchers not to join RMT picket lines, Keir Starmer said: “The Labour party in opposition needs to be the Labour party in power. And a government doesn’t go on picket lines, a government tries to resolve disputes.”
But in the late 1970s, when Labour was in government, government ministers did join picket lines, at the Grunwick dispute, John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, writes in an article for the Guardian. He says:
I went with our CLP delegation regularly. It was a tough and, at times, violent dispute as the police escorted a bus full of scabs brought in by the company to break the strike and teach the women a lesson.
The Labour and trade union movement came together as one to campaign against the exploitation of these women. Joining the picket lines to show solidarity were some of the most prominent members of the movement, and among those who joined the women’s picket line were Labour cabinet ministers. Not shadow ministers but cabinet ministers actually serving in government at the time, including, famously, Shirley Williams.
McDonnell says Starmer’s decision to ban frontbencher from joining picket lines is “a complete misreading of the mood within the Labour and trade union movement but also among the general public”. He says:
In terms of the general public, the reason that there is an unprecedented level of sympathy for these strikes is not just down to the impressive straight-talking eloquence of the RMT’s Mick Lynch. It’s because millions are being hit by the same cost of living crisis, which has become the key mobilising factor in the massive wave of industrial disputes that is currently building.
The risk is that when the millions involved go to the polls next, they will be asking the question of the Labour leader, where were you when we needed you? Whatever diktats from the Labour leader’s office, there is a weightier responsibility on the shoulders of Labour members, whatever position they hold. It is to stand up for one another in the Labour and trade union movement in this summer of solidarity.
You can read the full McDonnell article here.
Updated
Truss suggests she might reconsider government plan to privatise Channel 4
And here are some more lines from what Liz Truss has been saying to reporters on her visit in Leeds.
- Truss hinted that she might reconsider government plans to privatise Channel 4. Asked if she would go ahead with the privatisation as PM, she replied:
I believe that, where possible, it’s best to have companies operating in the private sector rather than the public sector.
I will look in detail at the business case on Channel 4, but one thing I’m absolutely committed to is it staying in Leeds.
Rishi Sunak, Truss’s rival for the Tory leadership, has said he would definitely go ahead with the privatisation.
- She said she would not commit to restoring plans for HS2 to go to Leeds. She said:
What I’m committing to today is Northern Powerhouse Rail. I grew up in Leeds, I know how poor the local transport is. What people need is good routes to commute into work. That is where there is a real issue for people getting into work around West Yorkshire ...
I’m not going to commit to restoring that leg of HS2 [to Leeds].
- She said it was “not time for another windfall tax” on energy companies to help with energy bills.
- She defended her plans to curb the ability of unions to hold strikes, saying she would “put through legislation making sure that essential services are provided on our railways”.
Updated
Truss rejects thinktank report saying Foreign Office under her leadership lacks expertise in Russia
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary and frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest, has rejected claims that the Foreign Office under her leadership lacked expertise in Russia.
The claim is made in a report into how the Foreign Office operates published by the Institute for Government thinktank. My colleague Patrick Wintour has written it up here.
Speaking to reporters on a trip to Leeds, Truss said the claim that the Foreign Office was short of experts on Russia was “completely untrue”. She went on:
We have led the world in standing up to Russia. We were the first country to send weapons to Ukraine in Europe, we put the toughest sanctions on Russia of any country, and we’re also making sure that nobody is allowing Ukraine’s sovereign territory to be given up, and we’ve worked with our allies to achieve that.
I’m proud of our record, but we need to do more, and one of the key areas in bringing down the cost of living is dealing with Russia - making sure they can’t hold the world to ransom over their gas supplies - and I will be tough in standing up to Putin.
Here is an extract from the report explaining why the IfG thinks Russia has been neglected by the Foreign Office. This is just one of several areas where the IfG thinks the department’s performance could improve.
The Institute has argued that the war in Ukraine requires the UK, and democratic nations more generally, to review its approach to Russia. But this is hindered by the relatively small team dedicated to it. This is not new; as many interviewees for this paper noted, and observers have commented publicly, after the Cold War there was a ‘moment of hope’ and a belief that the worst of the Russian threat had passed. Diplomatic expertise on the countries of the former Soviet Union was reduced. Ambitious members of the Foreign Office specialised in other fields, such as the Middle East and China. This decline in expertise on Russia and its neighbours was noted in 2014 after Russia’s invasion of Crimea by Sir Nigel Sheinwald, former UK ambassador to Moscow, who said: “When the [Crimea] crisis happened, there was a problem in the Foreign Office; the old Cold War cadre of people just wasn’t there.”
By 2016 the comparative lack of resources dedicated to Russia was well-established. Between 2016 and 2022, the Eastern Europe and Central Asia unit was consistently among the worst resourced of the geographical units in the FCO and then FCDO. The number of UKB staff at the embassy in Moscow has also been slowly reduced; exact numbers are not available for recent years, but staff numbers fell from 30 in 2016/17 to somewhere in the 20s in 2020/21.
Other elements of the Foreign Office’s Russian expertise have continued to be downgraded. Despite the Foreign Affairs Committee drawing attention to Russian language proficiency as a ‘weak spot’ in 2015, the number of staff in the department who could speak it at ‘advanced’ level dropped from 83 in December 2017 to below 60 in February 2022.
More than 100,000 people fleeing war in Ukraine have arrived in UK under visa schemes, Home Office says
More than 100,000 people fleeing the war in Ukraine have received sanctuary in the UK through its visa schemes, PA Media reports. PA says:
Some 104,000 people had arrived in the UK under Ukraine visa schemes as of Monday, figures published by the Home Office and UK Visas and Immigration show.
This includes 31,300 people under the family scheme, and 72,700 people under the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme.
The figures also show that, as of Tuesday, around 198,200 applications have been made for visas, and 166,200 visas have been issued.
These include 55,000 applications under the family scheme, of which 47,200 visas have been granted, and 143,200 applications under the sponsorship scheme, of which 119,000 visas have been granted.
Updated
Coordinated strike action by trade unions 'inevitable', says John McDonnell
Yesterday Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretry, suggested that if Liz Truss becomes prime minister, and tries to implement her plans to restrict the ability of trade unions to call strikes, the union movement should respond with a 1926-style general strike.
In his interview on Sky News this morning, John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, was asked if he would support a general strike. He suggested he would, saying it was sensible for unions to coordinate action. He said:
If you look at the ballots that are taking place across the trade union movement, we are talking about millions of workers now voting for industrial action. So, naturally, what people are saying as well, why not coordinate that?
I support co-ordinated action, because if that results in a decent pay rise for people, they are protected against the cost-of-living crisis. I think that’s the most effective thing to do.
McDonnell said the strikes would not be necessary if workers were paid properly. But, because the government was not listening, coordinated strike action was “inevitable”, he claimed. He said:
But, you know, this is completely unnecessary. What it needs is the government to recognise that you can’t expect people to stand on one side when their wages are being cut ...
You can understand why unions are saying that if we are going to strike, we might as well coordinate that action. So coordinated action, I think, is going to be inevitable, and I just hope that the government starts listening.
Nadine Dorries has suggested in another interview this morning that Rishi Sunak was part of a “coup” that brought down Boris Johnson, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports.
Johnson wants supporters to halt bid to get Tory party to give members vote on letting him stay, Dorries claims
Boris Johnson wants his supporters to abandon their campaign to get Conservative HQ to give party members a vote on whether he should be allowed to stay on as leader.
It is claimed that more than 10,000 members have signed a petition saying. members should get a vote on whether or not Johnson has resigned. But so far the party has not taken any notice, and CCHQ believes some of the people who have signed are not genuine members anyway.
In an interview with the Today programme Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, who is close to Johnson, said she had recently discussed this with the prime minister. Johnson told her, “Tell them to stop, it’s not right,” she said. Dorries went on: “They were his words, his exact words.”
She also claimed that a report in the Daily Mirror suggesting that she might vacate her Mid Bedfordshire seat, where she has a majority of almost 25,000, to make way for Johnson was “100% nuclear grade tosh”.
The Mirror says that the idea had been discussed because Johnson wants to stay in the Commons, and hopes that he may get a chance to lead the Tories again, but feels he needs a safe seat. Currently he represents Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where he had a majority of 7,210 at the last election but where a big swing to Labour could see him lose.
In her Mirror story Pippa Crerar writes:
Mr Johnson’s personal appeal with Tory voters in his West London seat, a popular local Conservative council and strong grassroots campaigners should, in theory, make ousting the top Tory a difficult task.
However, modelling earlier this month from Britain Elects predicted that Labour could get 43.7% of the vote in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, an increase of 6.1% on 2019, if there was an election held today. Mr Johnson’s vote share would drop by 11.5%, giving him just 41.1% of the vote.
Labour and Lib Dem voters have shown themselves willing to vote tactically in recent by-elections while constituency boundary changes would add Northolt, regarded as a Labour area, to the seat.
Young professional graduates who are more likely to vote against the Tories have been moving in droves out of central London to suburbs like Hillingdon.
Updated
Labour left accuses Keir Starmer of double standards over Sam Tarry sacking
Good morning. Tonight Liz Truss will compete with Rishi Sunak at the first of the official hustings being organised by the Conservative party for members. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary and Truss supporter, has been on the broadcast round this morning and, despite reportedly being told by Truss’s team to tone down her comments about Sunak, she has found it hard to resist, and her interviews have included various studs up attacks on the former chancellor. On LBC she accused him of “mansplaining” in the BBC debate on Monday, and said it was a “terrrible look”. And on BBC Breadkfast she defended her decision to have a go at him over his expensive clothes, saying “it’s about judgment, and it’s about who voters can relate to”.
But the Labour party is going through a bout of internal fighting too, triggered by Keir Starmer’s decision last night to sack Sam Tarry as shadow transport minister after he joined an RMT picket line (defying orders from Starmer) and then proceeded to give a series of interviews that had not been authorised by the leadership and in which he flatly contradicted party policy on public sector pay (the real reason why he was sacked, Labour says). My colleague Jessica Elgot has all the details here.
As Jess reports, union leaders have criticised Starmer’s move, arguing that it shows Labour is not committed to standing up for working people. This morning leftwingers in the parliamentary party have also accused Starmer of double standards, saying that Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, also gave an interview this week in which she departed form party policy, but that she was not sacked. Reeves said Labour was opposed to rail renationalisation, but later the party said that remained its policy.
John McDonnell, shadow chancellor when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, told Sky News:
Rachel Reeves went on an interview and made up policy on rail nationalisation which had to be contradicted by the shadow spokesperson on transport within hours. I didn’t see Rachel Reeves being sacked.
Diane Abbott, shadow home secretary under Corbyn, made the same argument in an interview on the Today programme.
McDonnell also told Sky News that Starmer had generated a “completely unnecessary row”. He said:
Just at a time when the Tories are tearing themselves apart, and we’ve got the maximum opportunity, I think, to gain an advantage in the polls that will build the support to take us into a government, we’re having this completely unnecessary row.
Sam went on the picket lines like shadow minister after shadow minister over the years in support of workers who are asking for a decent pay rise. It’s a just cause ...
The Tory leadership election is demonstrating how the Tories are ripping themselves apart. This is the time where we should have maximum unity and maximum solidarity for the support for workers who are desperate to have a decent pay rise because they’ve been impacted upon so badly by this cost of living crisis.
The Tory hustings does not start until 7pm this evening. There is not a lot in the diary until then, although Starmer is on a visit in Birmingham, and Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, is doing a phone-in on LBC at 10am.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com
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