Liz Truss hits back after Tories disown her mini-budget, suggesting ‘nothing will change’ if shadow cabinet takes power
As Peter Walker reports, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, will give a speech this morning intended to disassociate the Conservatives from Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget – the event most often cited by Labour as evidence of why the Tories should not be in power.
Stride will say:
Mistakes were recognised and stability restored within weeks, with the full backing of our party. But the damage to our credibility is not so easily undone. That will take time. And it also requires contrition. So let me be clear: never again will the Conservative party undermine fiscal credibility by making promises we cannot afford.
Truss, who who become increasingly extreme since being voted out of parliament, has hit back. She posted this on social media this morning.
In attacking the Mini Budget, @MelJStride sides with the failed Treasury Orthodoxy.
Stride is a creature of the system.
When he served alongside me as Treasury Minister, he always went along with officials – including on the Loan Charge and IR35, damaging the self-employed and SMEs.
He backed Sunak’s huge spending, but not my tax cuts which were smaller in size and would have increased growth.
Britain’s system of government is broken.
Nothing will change with people like him in charge.
It is still less than three years since Truss was elected Tory leader and prime minister with the backing of 57% of Conservative party members who voted.
Key events
Stride says says politicians should not let digital media end ‘age of thoughfulness’ in policy making
Stride stresses the need for politicians to consider policy carefully, saying this is harder in the era of social media.
The digital age has many advantages, but in some ways, it has ushered in the death of what we might call the age of thoughtfulness, by which I mean, the careful consideration of arguments in order to establish the truth …
Audiences are increasingly attracted to the fleeting sparkle of the novel or shocking or celebrity, or in some cases simply the fake, and that risks allowing attractive but shallow arguments to take hold.
He says politicians should continue to think things through carefully, as they used to.
(This is a brave argument for Stride to make, because one of the complaints about Kemi Badenoch is that she has abandoned “the age of thoughfulness” for an obsession with social media, although in his speech Stride is supporting her, and not criticising her personally. Although being very socially media focused, Badenoch is also someone who talks about the importance of understanding problems properly.)
Stride says economy has not been working for many people ‘for some considerable time’
Stride says the Conservatives must accept that, for many people, the economy has not been working for them for a long time.
The fact is, for a large swathe of the population, our economy simply has not been working for them for some considerable time.
Incomes have stagnated. Many feel that the system only works for the benefit of others, for large corporations or people from other countries, but not for them and their families.
We must accept that for too long, governments of both colours have failed to free us from this malaise.
For my part, to find a path back to regaining trust, we must show that we are serious about listening to people and creating a better future underpinned by a credible plan.
If we do not, then we risk the same mistakes happening all over again.
Mel Stride gives speech on Truss’s mini-budget
Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, is giving his speech now.
He has just delivered the “never again” line briefed by the party in advance. (See 10.19am.)
Reform UK accuse Tories of being economically irresponsible – despite experts branding their own fiscal policies as disastrous
Reform UK has put out a comment in response to the Tory briefing about Mel Stride’s speech. (See 10.19am.). It is from Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader.
The first sentence could have been scripted by Labour. Tice said:
We’ll take no lectures on economics from a party that more than doubled the national debt, raised taxes and government spending to 70 year highs and shrank economic growth to 70 year lows.
But probably not the second sentence, which refers to Reform’s local council Doge operation. Tice went on:
Meanwhile we unearth Tory-run councils wasting £30m on a bridge to nowhere. They can never be trusted again.
Commentators would argue that Reform are in no position to lecture anyone (even Liz Truss) on fiscal probity. In a recent post on his Substack blog, the Economist journalist Archie Hall looked at Reform UK tax and spending plans in detail and concluded they would be an “unmitigated disaster”. He explains:
Implementing [the Reform plan], or anything close to it, would amount to a colossal fiscal shock—and one that Britain, still stumbling out of the shadow of the Truss debacle, can ill afford.
If we extrapolate from Sushil Wadhwani’s back-of-the-envelope breakdown of the impact of Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts on the gilt market, this policy package would mechanically raise borrowing costs for the government by something like 150 basis points (1.5 percentage points). Throw in the possibility of a proper loss of faith in Britain’s macroeconomic stability alongside that, and you can easily get to far scarier numbers still.
To be explicit: that would be an unmitigated disaster. Government borrowing would become more expensive, probably semi-permanently. Brits would pay the cost, in higher taxes and shabbier public services. Britain’s current bleak low-growth, high-rates quandary would shift from being an aberration to a norm. I can think of few faster ways to cement national decline.
Hall also cites this Economist chart comparing Reform’s plans to the Truss mini-budget.
Another commentator who has done a thorough analysis of Reform’s plans is Sam Freedman. In a post on his Substack blog, Freeman backs the Economist’s analysis of Reform’s fiscal plans and describes the policies in Reform’s election manifesto as a mix of “mainstream policies (a social care commission, increasing defence spending to 3%), completely delusional promises with no explanation of how they’d be achieved (ending NHS waiting lists in two years, radical tax simplification), and properly batshit crankery”.
Faro airport in Portugal will start the rollout of e-gate access to UK arrivals this week, MPs were told this morning.
Speaking during Cabinet Office questions in the Commons, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the minister responsible for post-Brexit relations with the EU, said:
The historic deal that we signed with the EU on May 19 is in our national interests – good for bills, borders and jobs. It slashes red tape and bureaucracy, boosts British exporters and makes life easier for holidaymakers.
Indeed, I’m delighted to confirm this morning that Faro airport in Portugal will start the rollout of e-gate access to UK arrivals this week.
Liz Truss hits back after Tories disown her mini-budget, suggesting ‘nothing will change’ if shadow cabinet takes power
As Peter Walker reports, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, will give a speech this morning intended to disassociate the Conservatives from Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget – the event most often cited by Labour as evidence of why the Tories should not be in power.
Stride will say:
Mistakes were recognised and stability restored within weeks, with the full backing of our party. But the damage to our credibility is not so easily undone. That will take time. And it also requires contrition. So let me be clear: never again will the Conservative party undermine fiscal credibility by making promises we cannot afford.
Truss, who who become increasingly extreme since being voted out of parliament, has hit back. She posted this on social media this morning.
In attacking the Mini Budget, @MelJStride sides with the failed Treasury Orthodoxy.
Stride is a creature of the system.
When he served alongside me as Treasury Minister, he always went along with officials – including on the Loan Charge and IR35, damaging the self-employed and SMEs.
He backed Sunak’s huge spending, but not my tax cuts which were smaller in size and would have increased growth.
Britain’s system of government is broken.
Nothing will change with people like him in charge.
It is still less than three years since Truss was elected Tory leader and prime minister with the backing of 57% of Conservative party members who voted.
Three cabinet ministers in Brussels for meeting with counterparts
Lisa O’Carroll
Lisa O’Carroll is a senior Guardian correspondent covering trade and Brexit.
In a sign that the Labour party is perhaps over its Brexit neuralgia, no fewer than three British ministers are in Brussels today with counterparts.
Trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds met European Commission vice president Stéfane Séjourné yesterday and he has been meeting trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič this morning.
Šefčovič joked that he meets Reynolds “everywhere” as they are both on intense travel schedules in the face of Donald Trump’s tariffs assault on former allies.
Also in Brussels is defence secretary John Healey who is at a Nato summit where ministers are set to approve plans to buy more weapons and military equipment to better defend Europe, the Arctic and North Atlantic.
Northern Ireland secretary Hilary Benn is also in town to meet Šefčovič to discuss the prospective elimination of sanitary and phytosanitary, or public health checks, on farm produce in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland has had to observe EU laws since Brexit causing years of political crises and division, with unionists arguing they effectively cut NI off from the rest of United Kingdom.
Five years after the divorce from the EU, the border checks are now set to be removed, although it could take a year before the detail is agreed.
Survey of Labour Muslim MPs shows extent of disquiet over Gaza stance
Labour is facing calls for action from a large group of its Muslim MPs, councillors and mayors, who believe Keir Starmer is mishandling the crisis in Gaza, Eleni Courea reports.
Bridget Phillipson says government to review food standards in English schools
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has been giving interviews this morning about the free school meals announcement. She told Times Radio that schools would not be expected to fund the policy from their current budgets. “Schools will receive the funding that they need to make this happen,” she said.
She also said the government will review food standards in English schools.
We’re also going to review school food standards, I know lots of campaigners have raised concerns that they haven’t been looked at for some time and that’s something we’re also going to do as part of this reform.
Experts back DfE’s claim free school meals plan will lift 100,000 English children out of poverty – but stress only over time
Good morning. Normally child poverty is not at the centre of the national political debate (although it probably should be). But yesterday, at PMQs, Kemi Badenoch did make it a lead talking point by asking Keir Starmer if he would commit to keeping the two-child benefit cap, the Osborne-era benefit cut that is seen as a key driver of child poverty. She was doing this not because she wanted to promote the Tories as supporters of child poverty (although arguably that is one interpretation of her stance), but because she knows the policy is popular with voters who accept George Osborne’s argument that it is unfair for the state to pay very poor people to have more than two children when many other parents restrict the number of children they have depending on what they can afford. (Welfare experts say this is a grossly misleading caricature of why people with three or more children end up needing benefits, and that even if it was true it would be unfair to punish children, but in the court of public opinion, the Osborne argument still seems to be winning.) Badenoch was using as a classic ‘wedge issue’, and her question was designed to force Starmer to choose between siding with Labour MPs (who want the cap to go) and mainstream voters (who want to to stay, by almost two to one, according to some polling).
Badenoch did not get very far because Starmer just dodged the question. (That does not mean she was wrong to identify this as a dilemma for Labour; it just means Starmer avoided it becoming a problem yesterday.) It is still not clear what Starmer will do about the two-child benefit cap. But he told MPs at lunchtime yesterday: “I believe profoundly in driving down poverty and child poverty.”
And, overnight, the government has announced a policy that has been widely welcomed and that will reduce child poverty in England. It is going to extend access to free school meals for poorer children. In a news release the Department for Education says:
Over half a million more children will benefit from a free nutritious meal every school day, as the government puts £500 back into parents’ pockets every year by expanding eligibility for free school meals.
From the start of the 2026 school year, every pupil whose household is on universal credit will have a new entitlement to free school meals. This will make life easier and more affordable for parents who struggle the most, delivering on the government’s Plan for Change to break down barriers to opportunity and give children the best start in life.
The unprecedented expansion will lift 100,000 children across England completely out of poverty.
But not immediately. In an analysis, which is generally positive about the announcement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that, although eventually 100,000 children in England will lifted out of poverty by this measure, in the short term the figure will be much lower.
Christine Farquharson, associate director at IFS, explains:
Offering free school meals to all children whose families receive universal credit will, in the long term, mean free lunches for about 1.7 million additional children. But transitional protections introduced in 2018 have substantially increased the number of children receiving free school meals today – so in the short run, today’s announcement will both cost considerably less (around £250m a year) and benefit considerably fewer pupils (the government’s estimate is 500,000 children). This also means that today’s announcement will not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year.
It is the second big announcement this week linked to next week’s spending review with positive news for Labour MPs and supporters. (Yesterday’s was about a £15bn transport infrastructure programme.) Westminster sceptics think the Treasury is trying to buy some goodwill ahead of an actual announcement that will generate grim headlines about spending cuts.
It is also not clear whether today’s child poverty story is evidence that the governnment is moving towards the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, which would have a much bigger impact on child poverty reduction, or whether it is just a substitute for it.
The free school meals announcement just covers England. England often lags behind the devolved governments in welfare policy, and it is worth pointing out that they have more generous provision on free school meals anyway. In Scotland all children get them for their first five years in primary schools, in Wales all primary school children get them, and in Northern Ireland a means test applies, but it is more generous than the English one. In Labour-run London all primary school pupils also get free school meals.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, takes questions in the Commons.
Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting a school in the south-east of England, where he is due to speak to broadcasters.
After 10.30am: Lucy Powell, leader of the Commons, takes questions from MPs on next week’s Commons business.
11am: Mel Stride, shadow chancellor, gives a speech at the RSA thinktank where he will say the Tories will “never again” risk the economy with unfunded tax cuts like those in Liz Truss’s mini-budget.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
And in Scotland people are voting in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection, where the death of an SNP MSP has triggered a byelection.
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