Liz Truss conjured enemy alliance to distract from the Tory rebels within

Published

3 years ago

October 5, 2022

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“Moving On Up” was a bullish choice of entrance music.

The 90s pop classic blaring from the speakers as Liz Truss stepped out on to the conference stage for her first speech as leader.

But while the M People track echoed her conference slogan “Getting Britain Moving”, the rest of the song’s lyrics may have raised some eyebrows.

“You’re movin’ on out”, “there’s no way back”, the song goes, “move right out of here, baby, go on pack your bags” – surprisingly apt for a fractious conference where the dominant conversation has been about whether the Truss premiership is over before it has even really begun.

Politics Hub: Latest reaction and analysis after Liz Truss’s conference speech

This speech then a chance to speak to both her party members and to voters, who have taken a look at the Conservatives under Liz Truss and don’t appear to much like what they see.

With Labour now commanding huge leads in the polls – one suggesting the opposition now has a 33-point lead – this prime minister has to get voters to give her a hearing if she has any hope of staving off the mutinous mood brewing in her party.

Not surprising then that her message to voters was not a million miles from what Sir Keir Starmer said in Liverpool last week – that she understands what they’re going through, that she’s been through struggles herself and that she’s on their side.

“I have fought to get where I am today”, she said. “I have fought to get jobs, to get pay rises and to get on the housing ladder. I have juggled my career with raising two wonderful daughters.

“I know how it feels to have your potential dismissed by those who think they know better.”

So a message that she is not part of a privileged elite but on the side of working people. Her sole focus, she said, was “growth, growth, growth” to “build our country for a new era”. Lower taxation, getting a grip on public finances and bringing forward economic reforms to “grow the pie so everyone gets a bigger slice”.

But there are many things that could blunt that message in the coming months: decisions to give big tax cuts to big business; the knock-on effects of her economic plan on inflation and interest rate rises; the pressure of public sector spending and rows over public sector pay, to name a few. And while the prime minister U-turned on her plan to abolish the 45p rate of tax for the top 1% of earners, the surrounding controversy may have already stained her reputation with working voters.

For her parliamentary party, there was a mixed message. For while she acknowledged there had been difficulties and she had “listened”, she also signalled she was in “complete lockstep” with her chancellor and was pressing ahead with her plan. “Whenever there is change, there is disruption,” she said.

“Not everyone will be in favour, but everyone will benefit from the result – a growing economy and a better future. That is what we have a clear plan to deliver.” The showdown then between Ms Truss and the rebel alliance led by Michael Gove looks guaranteed to grind on.

It was in her message for party members, however, that Ms Truss really hit her stride. Rather than attacking MP rebels, as her home secretary did on Tuesday, or previous governments, as her chancellor did on Monday, Ms Truss defined the enemy as the opposition, which she bundled into something akin to an ‘axis of evil’ coalition to the delight of the hall.

“I will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back. Labour, Lib Dems and the SNP. The militant unions and the vested interests dressed up as think-tanks. The talking heads, the Brexit deniers and Extinction Rebellion. They prefer protesting to doing. They prefer talking on Twitter to taking tough decisions. They taxi from North London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo.”

This was perhaps her best received moment of the speech as she gave party activists an external enemy to distract from the infighting of her own party.

But for all the external – perhaps imagined – enemies, it is the enemy within that will continue to cause the prime minister difficulties, and the lack of detail or new announcements in her speech was unusual.

Leaders typically launch a new eye-catching policy in conference set pieces. That Ms Truss didn’t announce anything new reflects perhaps that she knows she is constrained by the markets and by her party. For all her promises of growth, growth, growth, she is a PM who wants to try to reduce spending as she looks for government savings in the face of her ballooning debt pile.

This is also a prime minister who is facing a very organised band of rebels in parliament who are determined to pick off parts of her plan they don’t much like. They have already forced a U-turn on the 45p rate cut and are now looking to bounce a reluctant-looking prime minister into lifting benefit payments by inflation rather than earnings in order that the four million claimants don’t face a real terms cut in their incomes.

When Ms Truss kicked off her premiership, an ally told me it would be a “shock and awe” start. On that, she didn’t disappoint. But what her speech showed on Wednesday is how constrained this leader has already become.

Today’s speech will not answer the question posed by her entrance music – it won’t determine whether she moves on up from this low point, or is moved out by her party. It is fair to say she did not leave the hall weaker than she went in, which her team will see as a victory of sorts.

But there is no doubt she ends her first party conference as leader diminished by a torrid four days of division and infighting. It was not the start she hoped for. How it all ends is still so unclear.

World

Famine declared in Gaza City – and projected to expand to two other areas in the next month

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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Famine declared in Gaza City - and projected to expand to two other areas in the next month

A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.

These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.

The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.

“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.

Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.

Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.

Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.

Israel says no famine in Gaza

Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.

“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.

Israel accused of allowing famine to fester in Gaza

Tom Fletcher, speaking on behalf of the United Nations, did not mince his words.

Gaza was suffering from famine, the evidence was irrefutable and Israel had not just obstructed aid but had also used hunger as a weapon of war.

His anger seeped through every sentence, just as desperation is laced through the report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

Conditions are expected to worsen, it says, even though the Gaza Strip has been classified as a level 5 famine. There is no level 6.

But it took only moments for the Israeli government to respond in terms that were just as strident.

Read Adam Parsons’ analysis here.

Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”

Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.

Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.

“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.

The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.

The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.

The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.

But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.

World

Suspect arrested over Nord Stream attacks served in Ukraine’s army, Sky News understands

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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Suspect arrested over Nord Stream attacks served in Ukraine's army, Sky News understands

The Ukrainian suspected of coordinating attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines had served in Ukraine’s Secret Service and in the Ukrainian Army’s special forces, Sky News understand.

Serhii K., 49, was arrested in northern Italy on Thursday following the issuance of a European arrest warrant by German prosecutors.

It is not known whether he was still serving at the time of the pipeline attack in 2022 and Ukraine’s government has always denied any involvement in the explosions.

According to sources close to the case, the suspect has been found in a three-star bungalow hotel named La Pescaccia in San Clemente, in the province of Rimini.

When military officers from Italy’s Carabinieri investigative and operational units raided his bedroom, he didn’t try to resist the arrest.

The hotel’s employees have been questioned, but no further evidence or any weapons were found, the sources added.

Serhii arrived on Italy’s Adriatic coast earlier this week, and the purpose of his trip was a holiday. He was found with his two children and his wife.

At least one of the four people within his family had a travel ticket issued in Poland. He crossed the Italian border with his car with a Ukrainian license plate last Tuesday.

He was travelling with his passport, and he used his real identity to check into the hotel, triggering an emergency alert on a police server, we have been told.

After the arrest, he was taken to the Rimini police station before being moved to a prison in Bologna, the regional capital, on Friday.

Deputy Bologna Prosecutor Licia Scagliarini has granted the German judicial authorities’ requests for Serhii’s surrender, but Sky News understands the man told the appeal court that he doesn’t consent to being handed over to Germany.

He also denied the charges and said he was in Ukraine during the Nord Stream sabotage. He added that he is currently in Italy for family reasons.

While leaving the court, he was seen making a typical Ukrainian nationalist ‘trident’ gesture to the reporters.

The next hearing is scheduled for 3 September, when the Bologna appeal court is set to decide whether Serhii will be extradited to Germany or not. He will remain in jail until then.

In Germany, he will face charges of collusion to cause an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and the destruction of structures.

German prosecutors believe he was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022.

Serhii and his accomplices are believed to have set off from Rostock on Germany’s north-eastern coast in a sailing yacht to carry out the attack.

The explosions severely damaged three pipelines transporting gas from Russia to Europe. It represented a significant escalation in the Ukraine conflict and worsening of the continent’s energy supply crisis.

According to a US intelligence report leaked in 2023, a pro-Ukraine group was behind the attack. Yet, no group has ever claimed responsibility.

Sky News understands Genoa’s Prosecutor’s Office in northern Italy has requested their colleagues in Bologna to share the information related to Serhii.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating another alleged sabotage linked to the Russian shadow fleet oil tanker Seajewel, which sank off the port of Savona last February.

On Thursday, they asked an investigative police unit to figure out whether there is a link between that episode and the Nord Stream attacks.