‘I know brighter days lie ahead’: Liz Truss bids farewell to Downing Street

Published

2 years ago

October 25, 2022

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Liz Truss has insisted “brighter days lie ahead” for the country as she gave her final speech before leaving Number 10.

Speaking outside Downing Street, Ms Truss, who has become the UK’s shortest serving prime minister after just seven weeks, wished Rishi Sunak “every success” as he takes the reins.

But she appeared to double down on her political philosophy, saying “Brexit freedoms” should allow taxes to be lower, and adding: “We simply cannot afford to be a low growth country”.

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“I am more convinced than ever that we need to be bold and confront the challenges that we face,” she said.

“As the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, it’s not because things are difficult that we do not dare is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

Ms Truss went to Buckingham Palace to officially offer her resignation to the King.

Just before 11am, the Royal Household confirmed the event had taken place and that King Charles was “graciously pleased to accept”.

Now the new leader of the Conservative Party, Mr Sunak, is meeting the King, where he will be asked to form a new government.

In her speech, the outgoing PM claimed her short-lived administration had “acted urgently and decisively on the side of hard working families and businesses” by reversing the rise in National Insurance and introducing help with energy bills over the winter.

But there was no apology after the economic chaos of recent weeks following her tax slashing mini-budget that ultimately let to her downfall.

Instead, she revealed she planned to stay in politics, “spending more time in my constituency and continuing to serve South West Norfolk from the backbenches”, before echoing the speech she made on entering Downing Street.

“Our country continues to battle through a storm, but I believe in Britain,” she said. “I believe in the British people and I know that brighter days lie ahead.”

Truss was forced to focus on principles, not achievements

Joe Pike

Political correspondent

@joepike

Liz Truss’s speech departing Downing Street was only slightly more memorable than the one she delivered on arrival.

With such an insubstantial legacy, she was forced to focus on her principles, rather than her achievements.

Ms Truss returned to her insistence that the UK “cannot afford to be a low growth country”, her belief in lower taxes, and also said: “Ukraine must prevail”.

She seemed to be attempting to argue that it was her boldness that brought her down – critics would argue it was a dangerous and irresponsible lack of political caution.

With echoes of Boris Johnson, Ms Truss quoted the Roman philosopher Seneca, saying: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

These Downing Street farewells are by their very nature laced with failure, but today there was no real acknowledgment of the disastrous nature of Ms Truss’s premiership.

In the three minute six second address, she did not apologise or show regret for the economic mess she has left for her successor, or indeed for millions of people across the country.

Instead she seemed to be offering advice to Mr Sunak – that he should be radical in delivering Brexit and changing the economic landscape of the UK.

Like Gordon Brown in 2010 and David Cameron in 2016, the Truss children (Frances, 16, and Liberty, 13) watched their mother speak outside Number 10 and joined her in meeting the monarch at Buckingham Palace.

Liz Truss said she will now be spending more time in her Norfolk constituency – a clear sign she is not expecting a role in Rishi Sunak’s cabinet.

Reports suggests she intends to “take a break” from frontline politics, but that of course is hardly her choice. Ms Truss toxic reputation means future prime ministers are unlikely to want her anywhere near their top teams.

Ms Truss won the keys to Number 10 at the start of September after a summer-long leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson.

She beat Mr Sunak with 57% of the votes from party members and promised them she would “deliver, deliver, deliver”.

The start of her premiership was dominated by the death of the Queen, with her attending tribute events across the country to support the new King and giving a reading at the monarch’s funeral.

But her time in office was defined by the mini-budget that sent markets into turmoil and the pound dropping at record rates.

Ms Truss tried to regain her authority by firing her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and replacing him with Jeremy Hunt, who within days had reversed nearly all her policies.

But after the resignation of her home secretary and chaos in parliament over a vote on fracking, she said she accepted she could no longer stay in post.

Mr Sunak was chosen to replace her by Tory MPs four days later, and will shortly become the country’s new prime minister.

UK

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

48 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the quarter.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.

“At my budget, I took the difficult choices to fix the foundations and stabilise our public finances.

“Now we are going to deliver growth through investment and reform to create more jobs and more money in people’s pockets, get the NHS back on its feet, rebuild Britain and secure our borders in a decade of national renewal,” Ms Reeves added.

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.

UK

Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is ‘growing in popularity’

Published

48 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is 'growing in popularity'

“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”

This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.

I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood-panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how “the system” works. Mr Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.

With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Mr Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.

As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.

Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.

Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.

In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”

The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence.

Instead, they are focused on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Mr Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.

“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.

“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”

Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”

Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Mr Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.

I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.

“Well that’s proved,” Mr Stone says. “We only deal with facts.”

Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.

Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.

But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.

“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”

He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.

“These are the people who control government,” he explains.

“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”

Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.

“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.

“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.

“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”

Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.

Mr Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.

Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.

“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”

The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.

But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.

UK

Wes Streeting ‘crossed the line’ by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Published

48 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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Wes Streeting 'crossed the line' by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Wes Streeting “crossed the line” by opposing assisted dying in public and the argument shouldn’t “come down to resources”, a Labour peer has said.

Speaking on Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harriet Harman criticised the health secretary for revealing how he is going to vote on the matter when it comes before parliament later this month.

MPs are being given a free vote, meaning they can side with their conscience and not party lines, so the government is supposed to be staying neutral.

But Mr Streeting has made clear he will vote against legalising assisted dying, citing concerns end-of-life care is not good enough for people to make an informed choice, and that some could feel pressured into the decision to save the NHS money.

He has also ordered a review into the potential costs of changing the law, warning it could come at the expense of other NHS services if implemented.

Baroness Harman said Mr Streeting has “crossed the line in two ways”.

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“He should not have said how he was going to vote, because that breaches neutrality and sends a signal,” she said.

“And secondly… he’s said the problem is that it will cost money to bring in an assisted dying measure, and therefore he will have to cut other services.

“But paradoxically, he also said it would be a slippery slope because people will be forced to bring about their own death in order to save the NHS money. Well, it can’t be doing both things.

“It can’t be both costing the NHS money and saving the NHS money.”

Baroness Harman said the argument “should not come down to resources” as it is a “huge moral issue” affecting “only a tiny number of people”.

She added that people should not mistake Mr Streeting for being “a kind of proxy for Keir Starmer”.

“The government is genuinely neutral and all of those backbenchers, they can vote whichever way they want,” she added.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously expressed support for assisted dying, but it is not clear how he intends to vote on the issue or if he will make his decision public ahead of time.

The cabinet has varying views on the topic, with the likes of Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood siding with Mr Streeting in her opposition but Energy Secretary Ed Miliband being for it.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is being championed by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, who wants to give people with six months left to live the choice to end their lives.

Under her proposals, two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and a High Court judge must give their approval.

The bill will also include punishments of up to 14 years in prison for those who break the law, including coercing someone into ending their own life.

MPs will debate and vote on the legislation on 29 November, in what will be the first Commons vote on assisted dying since 2015, when the proposal was defeated.