Truss has just removed one of her biggest remaining arguments for staying in power
After allowing her chancellor to rewrite the government’s energy price plan, Liz Truss has just removed one of her biggest remaining arguments for staying in power.
Yes, reversing the Kwarteng income tax cut, abolishing the dividend tax changes and the VAT-free shopping scheme are very politically painful.
But abandoning the existing energy price cap scheme from April is on a different level of significance and leaves this government holed below the waterline.
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Hunt warns of ‘more difficult decisions’
Now people’s energy bills will be going up from April, just as millions face bigger mortgage payments too, but this is only one of several problems this decision causes.
Boris Johnson always attempted to make the argument that he got big calls right. This is now all but impossible for Liz Truss.
The prime minister has clung on relentlessly to the wisdom of her energy price plan: praising it again on Friday in the awkward mini-press conference, over the weekend in an article in The Sun, and allowing government ministers – like Treasury minister Andrew Griffith on Sky 24 hours ago – to point to it as the one government success.
It wasn’t even part of the mini-budget – announced 48 hours after she entered office – and over a fortnight before Kwasi Kwarteng’s calamitous statement.
Yet politically the Truss team allowed it to morph into the mini-budget’s biggest triumph, even as other parts were thrown in the dumpster.
Truss’s MPs like Robert Halfon could see the folly, but she could not until the very last moment. She clung on to it when everyone else could see the warning lights.
It is hard to overstate what a big deal this is because of the wider signal it sends.
This will be seen as the day when bailout Britain ended. Starting in the pandemic, getting a nation used to bailouts with the furlough scheme and business support schemes, there has been an assumption government will step in when external shocks take place.
This is no more.
Liz Truss had exposed the public finances to near unlimited liability for two years, because she cannot have known the cost of gas rises resulting from Putin’s war.
One of the most dangerous fiscal policies of modern times has been consigned to the bin.
It is for her MPs now to judge whether she still has enough credibility to remain in office after this particular U-turn.
A 15-year-old boy has died after “getting into difficulty” in a lake in southeast London, police say.
Officers and paramedics were called shortly after 3pm on Friday to Beckenham Place Park in Lewisham.
The Metropolitan Police said a boy “was recovered from the lake” at around 10.42pm the same day.
“He was taken to hospital where he was sadly pronounced dead. His death is being treated as unexpected but not believed to be suspicious,” according to the force.
The boy’s family has been told and are being supported by specialist officers.
The force originally said the child was 16 years old, but has since confirmed his age as 15.
In the earlier statement, officers said emergency services carried out a search and the park was evacuated.
Emergency teams were called to Beckenham Place Park on Friday afternoon
Beckenham Place Park, which borders the London borough of Bromley, covers around 240 acres, according to the park’s website.
The lake is described as 285 metres long, reaching depths of up to 3.5 metres.
It is designed as a swimming lake for open-water swimming and paddle boarding.
A London Ambulance Service spokesperson said on Friday: “We were called at 3.02pm this afternoon to reports of a person in the water.
“We sent resources to the scene, including an ambulance crew, an incident response officer and members of our hazardous area response team.”
Emergency teams have not explained how the boy entered the water, or whether he was accompanied by others.
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