Tory conference is shrouded in gloom – has Liz Truss already sealed her own fate?

Published

3 years ago

October 2, 2022

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A little under four weeks as prime minister and it couldn’t really have gone worse for Liz Truss.

A mini-budget that precipitated a run on the pound (it has rallied a bit since), a £65bn emergency intervention by the Bank of England to prop up pension funds, and the withdrawal of nearly 1,000 mortgage deals from the market in anticipation of a big hike in interest rates later this year.

The Conservatives are experiencing their worst polling since the late 1990s and dozens of Tories are contemplating losing their seats at the next election.

The question for me in Birmingham this week is simple: Has Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget already sealed her fate?

Ask Conservative MPs, and there is already a movement to try to oust her. Her insistence that she will not reverse any elements of her budget, regardless of the political toxicity or the clear economic risks, has led some MPs to say privately they want her to go.

“There needs to be policy change and personnel change,” said one senior Conservative.

“There are MPs saying she simply cannot lead us through a general election and MPs are putting forward suggestions to Sir Graham Brady about rule changes.

“One scenario is that MPs decide a new PM and it’s not put to members.

“People are very anxious.”

When I asked the MP if Ms Truss could survive until Christmas, they told me: “I think it’s probable that she will be gone by Easter.”

‘This plan is not going to work’

A former cabinet member also confirmed that colleagues were working up options to try to remove Ms Truss, as they whispered to me that they might now stand down at the next election in the face of almost certain defeat.

“This plan is not going to work,” they said.

For a new prime minister, who in typical times might expect a honeymoon period rather than the mutterings of divorce papers, such remarks are totally damning and speak to the extremely difficult predicament she now faces.

For, just as I’d never been to a more positive Labour Party conference than the one last week, I’ve never been to a Conservative one so shrouded not just in gloom about the electoral prospects of the party, but palpable anxiety about the Truss administration.

And this is about more than even the existential threat her policies could pose to the Conservative Party.

There is genuine fear too that she might “tank the economy”. As one former senior minister told me after the mini-budget: “It’s madness and I’m scared.”

Already MPs mutter that she will have to change – the policies and the personnel, or face a showdown with her party.

One MP told me there are easily 100 MPs who could rebel against her budget. The political toxicity of abolishing the top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000 a year, while mulling a real terms benefits cut for the four million at the bottom end of the income scale relying on universal credit, is plain to see for many MPs – even if Ms Truss wants to turn a blind eye.

But it’s not just the politics of her mini-budget, it’s the economics of it.

“We can’t ignore the cost of borrowing line item,” is how one former minister puts it. “What are the fiscal rules?”

If the prime minister can’t prove to the country, the markets, the Office of Budget Responsibility, and her backbenches that her government can achieve 2.5% growth, then the tax measures will have to be funded through debt.

And that has an obvious knock-on effect for families, with those on average mortgages having to potentially pay more in higher mortgage costs than in tax cut gains.

All of it is causing acute anxiety for MPs as they look at the polls and the prospects of their own re-election.

Plenty of those in the Sunak camp are keeping quiet for now, telling me that they want to let this play out and don’t want to take aim at Truss publicly – yet. But two outriders – former cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Julian Smith – are saying publicly what many are saying privately.

This is Mr Gove on Sunday: “I think there are two specific concerns that I have about the unfunded nature of tax cuts and about the 45p tax cuts, which we now have an opportunity to reflect on.”

“And I think it would be wise for us to recognise that they are neither the right economic nor the right political response to the situation that we face at the moment,” he told journalist Christopher Hope at a Daily Telegraph event.

When he was asked whether the policy should be reversed, he didn’t blink: “Yes”.

‘We cannot clap for carers one month and cut tax for millionaires months later’

And this was former chief whip Julian Smith in response to chairman Jake Berry’s warning on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday show that Tories who voted against the mini-budget would lose the whip: “The first job of an MP is to act in the interest of their constituents and in the national interest.

“We cannot clap for carers one month and cut tax for millionaires months later.”

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All of it appears to be falling on deaf ears, with the PM and her team adamant that her plan is the right one and the mistakes over the past week were about the communications strategy not the policies.

As one of her key allies put it to me: “The PM gets this past week has been disruptive,” but “she firmly believes her plan for the economy is the right one.

“We’ve been stuck in a world of high taxes, cheap credit, and low growth for too long, with too much focus on tax and spend at the expense of growth.

“That status quo isn’t working, so we have to change course, otherwise we’re consigning the economy and country to long-term decline.

“We’ll do that and manage the public finances responsibly.”

Pro-growth, pro-investment, low-tax. That’s the mantra.

‘There is still so much wastage across various parts of the system’

The PM’s cabinet and top team are also supporting her.

One senior minister pointed out to me on the eve of the conference that such a big change in approach – the biggest shift in economic approach for a generation or more – was “always going to shock the markets” but the principles of leaving more money with individuals and businesses was the right one, as were the efforts – and we’re going to see what this looks like in practice later this year – to cut back on government costs (read: spending).

“There is still so much wastage across various parts of the system,” they said.

But will this government even get that far?

Ms Truss has four days in Birmingham to try and sell her plan not just to her members and MPs, but to the country.

The problem she has is that so many people seem to have stopped listening already.

A PM not for turning and a parliament in which many MPs now think they have nothing more to lose. Strap in.

World

Mile after mile of grey rubble – the view from a plane dropping aid to Gaza

Published

49 mins ago

July 29, 2025

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Mile after mile of grey rubble - the view from a plane dropping aid to Gaza

We are on our way to Gaza with the Jordanian military.

The aircraft is hot and noisy and as we get closer, the atmosphere gets more tense. Aircrew gesture with their hands to tell us how many minutes there are to go. Fifteen. Six. One.

The Jordanian military C-130 flies out over the sea before banking and heading inland for Gaza. The parachutes, attached to the top of each of the eight pallets, are prepared for the drop.

As land approaches, I look down. The ground is modern and built up – we’re still over southern Israel.

Then a few short minutes later, it’s clear we’ve crossed Gaza’s border.

The ground turns grey, the shapes of buildings disappear, there are no cars, no people.

You can see the outline of communities and villages that are now flattened. Mile after mile of grey rubble.

This mission by the Royal Jordanian Air Force is one of the first aid drop flights since Israel announced they could resume. It is carrying eight tonnes of food and baby formula.

Foreign nations know this is a deeply flawed way of delivering aid – road convoys are far more effective and can carry far more – but the Jordanian flight crew say the need in Gaza is so urgent, it’s simply an attempt to do something.

When the aircraft ramp opens, the aid is pushed out and it’s gone in seconds.

The parachutes seem peaceful as they open and their fall slows. But dropping food from the sky is a dangerous and undignified way to feed people.

On the ground it’s chaos.

Our colleagues in Gaza say the fighting for food has become lethal – gangs are now punching and stabbing people to reach it first. Most critically, it’s not getting to the weakest. To those who really need it.

One man becomes emotional as he describes racing to find food and leaving with nothing.

“I came only for my son,” he says. “I wouldn’t come here if it was just for me. When you have a child, they need bread.”

He’s an engineer in normal times and seems in disbelief that his life has come to this. “The aid comes from the sky and we have to run after it. I’ve never had to do this in my life.”

It is hoped Israel’s humanitarian pauses in fighting will rapidly increase food distribution by road but it’s very unclear how that is going.

Hospitals in Gaza have reported another 14 deaths from starvation in the last 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said on Monday.

Airstrikes killed another at least 78 Palestinians across Gaza on Monday, local health officials said.

We cannot verify these numbers because Israel has not allowed international journalists access to Gaza.

And Monday’s flight came with strict media conditions.

We were told the Israeli side had warned that any shots of Gaza filmed from the air could result in these aid flights being cancelled.

But Israel’s tight grip has not stopped the images from Gaza getting out, horrifying people around the world.

The question now is what more the international community will do about it.

World

Israeli human rights organisations accuse country of genocide

Published

4 hours ago

July 28, 2025

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Israeli human rights organisations accuse country of genocide

Two Israeli human rights organisations have said the country is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

In reports published on Monday, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.

The two groups are the first major voices within Israeli society to make such accusations against the state during nearly 22 months of war against Hamas.

Israel has vehemently denied claims of genocide. David Mencer, a spokesperson for the government, called the allegation by the rights groups “baseless”.

He said: “There is no intent, (which is) key for the charge of genocide… it simply doesn’t make sense for a country to send in 1.9 million tonnes of aid, most of that being food, if there is an intent of genocide.”

B’Tselem director Yuli Novak called for urgent action, saying: “What we see is a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group.”

The organisation’s report “is one we never imagined we would have to write,” Ms Novak said. “The people of Gaza have been displaced, bombed, and starved, left completely stripped of their humanity and rights.”

PHR said Israel’s military campaign shows evidence of a “deliberate and systemic dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems”.

Both organisations said Israel’s Western allies were enabling the genocidal campaign, and shared responsibility for suffering in Gaza.

“It couldn’t happen without the support of the Western world,” Ms Novak said. “Any leader that is not doing whatever they can to stop it is part of this horror.”

Hamas said the reports by the two groups were a “clear and unambiguous testimony from within Israeli society itself regarding the grave crimes perpetrated by the occupation regime against our people”.

Dire humanitarian conditions

Since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, nearly 60,000 people – mostly civilians – have been killed, according to Gaza health officials.

Much of the infrastructure has been destroyed, and nearly the whole population of more than two million has been displaced.

An increasing number of people in Gaza are also dying from starvation and malnutrition, according to Gaza health authorities.

On Monday, the Gaza health ministry reported that at least 14 people had died from starvation and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths during the war to 147.

Among the victims were 88 children, with most of the deaths occurring in recent weeks.

UN agencies say the territory is running out of food for its people and accuse Israel of not allowing enough aid deliveries to the enclave. Israel denies those claims.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said “there is no starvation in Gaza” and vowed to fight on against Hamas.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that many in Gaza are facing starvation and implied that Israel could take further steps to improve humanitarian access.

Israel has repeatedly said its actions in Gaza are in self-defence, placing full responsibility for civilian casualties on Hamas. It cites the militant group’s refusal to release hostages, surrender, or stop operating within civilian areas – allegations that Hamas denies.

World

Why are airdrops on Gaza so dangerous?

Published

13 hours ago

July 28, 2025

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The United Nations has condemned airdrops on Gaza, warning they risk killing the starving Palestinians they are intended to help.

Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel parachuted aid packages into the territory for the first time in months at the weekend amid claims a third of the population has not eaten for days.

But Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general for the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), has said they “will not reverse the deepening starvation” and often do more harm than good.

‘Make or break’ as starvation looms; Middle East latest

“They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians,” he wrote in a statement on X.

What is an airdrop – and why are they dangerous?

There are several ways humanitarian agencies and international allies can deliver aid to regions in need – by land, by sea, or by air.

While parachuting in supply packages from planes may look impressive, airdrops are “fraught with problems”, Sky correspondent in Jordan Sally Lockwood says, and often used as a “desperate last resort”.

“Foreign nations know airdrops are a deeply flawed way of delivering aid,” she says.

“Palestinian sources tell us the aid that’s been dropped so far is not reaching the most vulnerable. They are an attempt to get something to a few – often viewed as a desperate last resort. Gaza is at that point.”

Military analyst Sean Bell says that delivering aid by air is ideally done when planes can land on a runway – but Gaza’s only landing strip in Rafah was shut down in 2021.

The alternative is “very dangerous”, he warns. “Aircraft flying relatively low and slow over a warzone isn’t very clever. When these parcels hit the ground, there’s a significant danger of them hitting people.”

Crucially, they can only deliver a fraction of what lorries can.

“The really big issue is aircraft can only deliver one truckload of aid. Gaza needs 500 truckloads a day, so it’s 0.2% of the daily need,” Bell adds.

They also risk falling into the wrong hands and ending up on the black market.

“Some of it has been looted by gangs and is on the black market already,” Lockwood says.

Why are they happening now?

Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza at the beginning of March, reopening some aid centres in May, but with restrictions they said were designed to stop goods being stolen by Hamas militants.

Israeli authorities control the only three border crossings to the strip: Kerem Shalom in the south, Crossing 147 in the centre, and Erez to the north.

Since the current conflict with Hamas began in October 2023, humanitarian agencies and world leaders have repeatedly accused Israel of not allowing enough deliveries through.

Mr Lazzarini says the UN has “the equivalent of 6,000 trucks” in neighbouring Jordan and Egypt “waiting for the green light to get into Gaza”.

Israel says it has commissioned a “one-week scale-up of aid”, having conducted its own airdrops on Saturday.

In a statement over the weekend, the Israeli Defence Forces said it will work with the UN and other aid organisations to ensure aid is delivered but no more details were given.

Meanwhile on Sunday, it began daily 10-hour pauses in fighting in three areas of Gaza to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry, 133 Palestinians had died of malnutrition by then, including 87 children.

Doctors Without Borders warned on Friday that 25% of young children and pregnant women in Gaza are malnourished.

Israel says there is no famine in Gaza.

What are in the airdrops and who is behind them?

Air packages are largely being delivered by C-130 planes. Jordan is reported to be using 10 and the UAE eight.

They can carry eight pallets of goods each, weighing around eight tonnes in total, according to Lockwood, who is on the runway at Jordan’s King Abdullah II airbase.

There are no medical supplies in the packages, she says, only dried food, rice, flour, and baby formula.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK will help with airdrops – but no British aircraft have been seen in Jordan so far.

He will discuss the matter with US President Donald Trump during talks in Scotland on Monday.

The RAF delivered 110 tonnes of aid across 10 drops last year as part of a Jordanian-led international coalition – but it is not clear what level of support will be offered this time.