Devolved nations demand urgent meeting with chancellor as Tory top team doubles down on plan to cut spending
The devolved governments of the UK want an urgent meeting with Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to discuss immediate action to reverse the damaging effects of the mini-budget.
In a joint letter, the finance ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are warning that the government’s spending plans are a “huge gamble” that will mean another decade of austerity.
It comes as one of Liz Truss‘s closest political allies doubled down on the government’s economic policy, with warnings that major cuts in public spending are to come.
Levelling Up Secretary Simon Clarke, who is among the prime minister’s inner circle, told The Times that the British people need to expect significant cuts in public spending, because for too long the West has been living in a “fool’s paradise”.
Following on from Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng‘s tax-cutting mini-budget, he said the government needs to make sure the “extremely large” state is in “full alignment with a lower tax economy”.
It has led to fears another period of austerity is just around the corner, with the hardest hit likely to be those reliant on welfare.
In their letter to Mr Kwarteng, Welsh Finance Minister Rebecca Evans joined finance ministers from Scotland and Northern Ireland in highlighting the profound impact of “the largest set of unfunded tax cuts for the rich in over 50 years” stating it was “a huge gamble on public finances and the health of our economy”
They warned against being condemned to another decade of austerity and expressed deep concern over reports that UK government departments would be asked to make spending cuts to balance the budget, which may have profound consequences for devolved budget settlements already eroded by inflation.
But Mr Clarke told The Times: “Western Europe is just living in a fool’s paradise whereby we can be ever less productive relative to our peers, and yet still enjoy a very large welfare state and persist in thinking that the two are somehow compatible over the medium to long term.
“They’re not. We need to address that… if we want those strong public services then we are going to have to pay for them.
“It is important that we look at a state which is extremely large, and look at how we can make sure that it is in full alignment with a lower tax economy.”
It comes on the eve of the Conservative Party conference and the chancellor defending his mini-budget by saying the government “had no other choice” than to do “something different” to spark the economy.
The mini-budget resulted in a tumultuous week which saw the pound fall to an all-time low against the dollar and the Bank of England being forced to spend billions to prevent a collapse of the pensions industry.
‘What the Thatcher government was doing in the 1980s’
Mr Clarke admitted it had been an “uncomfortable week” and defended Ms Truss, but said she would not be deflected from policies they predicted would be unpopular, and suggested her task was analogous to that faced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
“If I was to describe one word for Liz… it is purposeful,” he said. “She knew – and this was certainly something we discussed during the summer – that this would not be a comfortable process.
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Truss admits ‘disruption’ to UK economy but stands by forecast-free mini-budget
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PM acknowledges ‘some disruption’ to UK economy following mini-budget
“[She knew] particularly early on, there would be real potential unpopularity to be courted in seeking to say things and do things which weren’t going to be easy or quick wins. Frankly, she is doing what she believes is right.
“In some ways, there is an analogy with the 1980s and what the Thatcher government was seeking to do in terms of a reset moment where you fundamentally revisit how not just the previous government but multiple governments.”
‘We intend to be extremely rigorous’
Wales Secretary Sir Robert Buckland told Sky News that, while the government would work within its existing three-year spending review package, families could expect to find out what ministers are planning in the next few weeks.
Mr Buckland said he hopes the government’s upcoming announcements will be seen by the market as displaying “fiscal discipline”.
He appeared to confirm what Mr Clarke was suggesting when he said: “We intend to be extremely rigorous when it comes to bearing down on public expenditure.
“That will be developed in the weeks ahead. We’ve got a whole range of announcements coming out on not just spending, but supply-side reforms.
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Chair of OBR Richard Hughes says chancellor will be updated on Friday
“Whether it’s childcare… or… broadband connectivity, all these things add up to an overall package that is designed to, first of all, facilitate growth in the economy, but secondly to emphasise that the government is responsible.”
‘We had to do something different’
Overnight, Mr Kwarteng said the public expected public spending to be tightly controlled.
He wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “The British taxpayer expects their government to work as efficiently and effectively as possible, and we will deliver on that expectation.
“Not all the measures we announced last week will be universally popular. But we had to do something different. We had no other choice.”
The chancellor insisted he would produce a “credible plan” to get public finances on track with a “commitment to spending discipline”.
On Friday night, Ms Truss acknowledged for the first time that “there has been disruption” to the UK economy following last week’s mini-budget.
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‘Liz Truss is a danger to the economy’ says Starmer
Asked on Friday whether she accepted this was a crisis of the government’s own making, the prime minister said: “It was very, very important that we took urgent steps to deal with the costs that families are facing this winter, putting in place the energy price guarantee for which we’ve had to borrow to cover the cost… but also making sure that we are not raising taxes at a time where there are global economic forces caused by the war in Ukraine that we need to deal with.
“I recognise there has been disruption. But it was really, really important that we were able to get help to families as soon as possible.”
Nick Thomas-Symonds, shadow international trade secretary, told Sky News on Saturday: “This is a Tory crisis, made in Downing Street… They’ve crashed the economy by handing out enormous unfunded tax cuts to the very wealthiest people, and it’s going to be working people across the country that pay the price for this.
“They’ve also trashed our international reputation… and… what the government has done is going to lead to economic pain for people that they have chosen… What the government needs to do is recall Parliament and withdraw this budget.”
Truss and Kwarteng met top officials from Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) on Friday.
Mr Kwarteng intends to publish an updated set of economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and a medium-term fiscal plan setting out how he plans to bring down government debt on 23 November.
The Pope has appeared before cheering crowds at the Vatican.
It was the pontiff’s first official public appearance since he was released from hospital a fortnight ago.
Pope Francis, 88, had spent five weeks in Rome’s Gemelli hospital as he was treated by doctors for a life-threatening bout of double pneumonia.
The Pope, in what was a previously unannounced move, entered St Peter’s Square in a wheelchair shortly before noon local time at the end of the celebration of a mass for the Catholic Church’s Jubilee year.
The pontiff arrives at the end of a mass. Pic: AP
In front of the main altar for the service, Francis waved to applauding crowds, before briefly talking.
Speaking in a frail voice while receiving oxygen via a small hose under his nose, he said: “Happy Sunday to everyone. Thank you so much.”
A message prepared by the Pope and released by the Vatican said he felt the “caring touch” of God.
“On the day of the jubilee of the sick and the world of healthcare, I ask the Lord that this touch of his love may reach those who suffer and encourage those who care for them,” said the message.
“And I pray for doctors, nurses and health workers, who are not always helped to work in adequate conditions and are sometimes even victims of aggression.”
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Pope Francis is cheered by crowds on Sunday. Pic: AP
Francis had been out of public view since 23 March, when he had given a short greeting before being discharged from hospital.
The pontiff’s voice sounded stronger this time than when he addressed well-wishers outside Gemelli and struggled to speak.
Francis usually offers a weekly noon-time prayer in St Peter’s Square on Sundays.
But he has not been able to do this since 9 February, before going to hospital.
He was admitted to Gemelli on 14 February for a bout of bronchitis that developed into double pneumonia.
This is a particularly serious condition for him as he had pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed.
World
IDF says it mistakenly identified Gaza aid workers as threat – after video of deadly attack emerges
The IDF says it mistakenly identified a convoy of aid workers as a threat – following the emergence of a video which proved their ambulances were clearly marked when Israeli troops opened fire on them.
The bodies of 15 aid workers – including eight medics working for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) – were found in a “mass grave” after the incident, according to the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Jonathan Whittall.
The Israeli military originally claimed an investigation found the vehicles did not have any headlights or emergency signals and were therefore targeted as they looked “suspicious”.
But video footage obtained by the PRCS, and verified by Sky News, showed the ambulances and a fire vehicle clearly marked with flashing red lights.
In a briefing from the IDF, it said the ambulances arrived in the Tel Sultan neighbourhood in Rafah shortly after a Hamas police vehicle drove through.
Palestinians mourning the medics after their bodies were recovered. Pic: Reuters
An IDF surveillance aircraft was watching the movement of the ambulances and notified troops on the ground. The IDF said it will not be releasing that footage.
When the ambulances arrived, the soldiers opened fire, thinking the medics were a threat, according to the IDF.
The soldiers were surprised by the convoy stopping on the road and several people getting out quickly and running, the IDF claimed, adding the soldiers were unaware the suspects were in fact unarmed medics.
An Israeli military official would not say how far away troops were when they fired on the vehicles.
The IDF acknowledged that its statement claiming that the ambulances had their lights off was incorrect, and was based on the testimony from the soldiers in the incident.
The newly emerged video footage showed that the ambulances were clearly identifiable and had their lights on, the IDF said.
The IDF added that there will be a re-investigation to look into this discrepancy.
Analysis: Video undermines Israel’s account of aid worker deaths
The clip is filmed through a vehicle windscreen – with three red light vehicles visible in front
Addressing the fact the aid workers’ bodies were buried in a mass grave, the IDF said in its briefing this is an approved and regular practice to prevent wild dogs and other animals from eating the corpses.
The IDF could not explain why the ambulances were also buried.
The IDF said six of the 15 people killed were linked to Hamas, but revealed no detail to support the claim.
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Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
The newly emerged footage of the incident was discovered on a phone belonging to one of the workers who was killed, PRCS president Dr Younis Al Khatib said.
“His phone was found with his body and he recorded the whole event,” he said. “His last words before being shot, ‘Forgive me, mom. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives’.”
Sky News used an aftermath video and satellite imagery to verify the location and timing of the newly emerged footage of the incident.
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It was filmed on 23 March north of Rafah and shows a convoy of marked ambulances and a fire-fighting vehicle travelling south along a road towards the city centre. All the vehicles visible in the convoy have their flashing lights on.
The footage was filmed early in the morning, with a satellite image seen by Sky News taken at 9.48am local time on the same day showing a group of vehicles bunched together off the road.
World
France needs to sort its political mess – or populist winds blowing from the US will strengthen
Contemplating the turmoil sown by the return of President Trump, nobody could deny that the results of leadership elections in major nations matter to the rest of the world.
Take just the members of the G7 – so-called rich, industrialised democracies. Italy elected Giorgia Meloni in 2022, confirming the rise of the far-right. She was not only Italy’s first female leader, she was also the first from a neo-fascist party since Mussolini.
The arrival of Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer changed the complexion of politics in the US and the UK last year. Germany elected a more hawkish chancellor in waiting this spring.
Barring accidents, the next potentially transformative election in what used to be called the “Western alliance” will not be for two years.
France is due to elect a new president to succeed Emmanuel Macron in the summer of 2027. The contest is already plagued by undercurrents of disruption, conflict between politicians and the law, and populism – similar to the fires burning elsewhere in the US and Europe.
This week French judges banned the frontrunner to win the presidency from running for office for the next five years. It looked as though they have knocked Marine Le Pen out of the race.
Nobody, least of all her, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), knows what is going to happen next in French politics.
In opinion polls just over half of the French population, between 54% and 57%, agreed that justice had run its course. “The law is the same for everyone,” President Macron declared.
After lengthy consideration by a tribunal of three judges, Le Pen and nine other former RN MEPs were found guilty of illegally siphoning off some €4.4m (£3.7m) of funds from the European Parliament for political operations in France, not for personal gain.
Le Pen was sentenced to a five-year ban and four years in prison, not to begin before the appeals process had been concluded. Even then that sentence in France would normally amount to two years’ house arrest wearing an ankle alarm.
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Marine Le Pen hits out at ban
French presidents, such as Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, have been convicted before. Controversy is flaring because Le Pen was given an extra punishment: the immediate ban on running for political office, starting this week.
Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, her second in command at RN, likened the ban to a “nuclear bomb” and a “political death penalty”. Speaking in L’Assemblee Nationale, of which she is still a member, Le Pen identified herself with Alexei Navalny, the dissident leader murdered in Russia, and Ekrem Imamoglu, the recently imprisoned Turkish opposition leader and mayor of Istanbul.
The ban was imposed at the discretion of the chief judge Benedicte de Perthuis, a former business consultant, Francois Bayrou, France’s Macronist prime minister admitted he was “troubled” by the verdict. Not surprisingly perhaps from him, since the prosecution is appealing against verdicts in a similar case of political embezzlement, in which Bayrou’s party was found guilty but he was acquitted, escaping any possibility of a ban.
Bayrou is expected to be a candidate for the presidency. Meanwhile, RN has the power to bring down his government since it is the largest party in the Assembly, with 37%, but was kept out of power by a coalition.
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. File pic: AP
Populist forces on both sides of the Atlantic rushed to support Marine Le Pen. Matteo Salvini in Italy, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Vladimir Putin‘s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov all denounced what they saw as a “violation of democratic norms”. Hungary’s Viktor Orban said on X “Je suis Marine Le Pen”. Orban’s post came on the same platform Donald Trump Jr posted that “JD Vance was right about everything”, a reference to the US vice president’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he claimed Europe was silencing populist opposition.
President Trump weighed in: “The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech… it is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me.”
Le Pen has called for bans and tough sentences for corrupt politicians from other parties. In France, mainstream commentators are accusing her of hypocrisy and “Trumpisme” for attacking the courts now.
They also allege, or rather hope, that RN’s anger is endangering Marine Le Pen’s drive to make her party respectable with her so-called “wear a neck-tie strategy”, designed to dispel the loutish, racist image of her father’s Front National.
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Le Pen leaves court after guilty verdict
For all the protests, justice and politics are now inextricably mixed in France. A ban from political campaigning would be pointless for most convicts, who have no political ambitions.
Any suggestion that Le Pen was just being treated like any other citizen was dispelled when it was announced that her appeal would be speeded up to take place next summer. The president of the court de cassation conceded: “Justice knows how to adjust to circumstances… an election deadline in this case.”
The ban could be lifted in time to give Le Pen a year to stand for the presidency. At this stage, a full acquittal seems unlikely, given the weight of evidence against RN. That is awkward for her and her party because, presumably, she would be campaigning while under house arrest.
The best course of action for 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s apparent successor, or “Dauphin”, would be to stick with her now. He would gain little if he split RN by insisting she is fatally wounded.
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If she loses her appeal in a year’s time, his loyalty and indignation would be likely to boost his candidacy. Conventional wisdom is that without a lift he may be slick, but is too callow and too square to stand a chance of becoming president in 2027.
The far right in France is no different from the far right elsewhere – prone to internal rivalries and in-fighting.
The craggy intellectual Eric Zemmour came fourth in the first round in the last presidential contest in 2022. Back then he had the support of Marion Marechal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s flighty niece. The two have since fallen out and may separately bid to carry the far-right torch.
Macron is riding high as an international statesman but he is unpopular at home. Even if he wanted to, he cannot stand again because of term limits.
His attempts to spawn an heir apparent have failed. The 34-year-old prime minister Gabriel Attal led Ensemble to crushing defeat in last year’s parliamentary elections.
Current prime minister Bayrou, and former prime minister Edouard Philippe, will probably make a bid for the centre-right vote. Bruno Retailleau, the trenchantly hardline interior minister, looks a stronger candidate for the Gaullist Les Republicains.
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In the last presidential contest, Jean-Luc Melenchon of the hard-left La France Insoumise came third. He may fancy his chances of getting into the final two in 2027 against a right-wing candidate, unless the Socialists get it together. Or perhaps he may let through two finalists from the right and the extreme right.
It is a mess.
France and Europe need effective leadership from a French president. The unnecessary judicial suspension of Marine Le Pen’s candidacy has simply generated uncertainty. Her supporters are outraged and her foes no longer know who they are fighting against.
The French establishment thinks it will all blow over. Just as likely the controversy in France will strengthen the populist winds blowing across the continent and the US.
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