Inside Politics: Building bridges

Liz Truss attempts to heal rifts within party ahead of crunch week at parliament, writes Matt Mathers

Monday 10 October 2022 08:29 BST
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PM Liz Truss at the Prague castle where European Summit will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on 6 October 2022
PM Liz Truss at the Prague castle where European Summit will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on 6 October 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)

Hello there, I’m Matt Mathers and welcome to The Independent’s Inside Politics newsletter.

Arsenal have beaten a ‘top four’ side. These really are extraordinary times. It is another crunch week for embattled prime minister Liz Truss, who is now attempting to heal divisions in the Conservative Party as she battles to save her premiership.

Inside the bubble

Commons action returns tomorrow.

Victoria Prentis, work and pensions minister, is on BBC Radio 4 at 8.20am.

Rosena Allin-Khan, shadow mental health minister, is on LBC Radio at 8.50am.

Daily briefing

Let’s be friends

Liz Truss is known for her love of sums. But she and her aides will not have liked the look of the numbers crunched by Grant Shapps and reported over the weekend following a dire first month in office for the prime minister. Shapps, the former transport secretary who led the rebellion against Theresa May and organised Boris Johnson’s leadership, has recorded 237 recent conversations with MPs on their doubts about Truss and her libertarian economic policies, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

Shapps’s new spreadsheet perhaps explains a move made by No last night – and reports this morning that Truss will go on a “charm offensive” with her MPs this week. Greg Hands, an ally of Rishi Sunak – the former chancellor and defeated leadership rival – has been appointed to the trade minister role vacated by Conor Burns, who was sacked last week over “serious misconduct” allegations. The hire is a clear attempt by Truss to heal the deep divisions within that party brutally exposed at the party conference in Birmingham.

It is another crunch period for Truss, with her second meeting of the cabinet, a head-to-head with Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions and a meeting of the 1922 Committee of back bench Tory MPs. The main dividing line between Truss and rebel MPs is on welfare policy, with the PM said to have been keen on raising them in line with wages rather than inflation, which would effectively be another real-terms cut to the incomes of people already struggling with the cost of living crisis.

But it appears that the ground is already being laid for another climbdown, with reports yesterday suggesting the PM will cave in to the rebels following cabinet pressure and as the parliamentary arithmetic becomes clear. The message coming from No 10 now is that Truss is in “listening mode”.

PM Liz Truss at the Prague castle where European Summit will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on 6 October 2022
PM Liz Truss at the Prague castle where European Summit will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on 6 October 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)

SNP push

This week is also a big one for Nicola Sturgeon and the UK’s constitutional future. The first minister will close her party conference today with a speech in which she will claim that Scottish independence will create a partnership of equals in the UK.

Sturgeon will tell delegates that the nations of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, will “always be the closest of friends, always be family”.

The Supreme Court will also this week start to hear arguments on Holyrood’s power to hold a referendum without Westminster consent.

Over the weekend the SNP leader was accused of using “dangerous language” after saying “I detest the Tories” in an interview. Speaking to the BBC during the SNP conference in Aberdeen on Sunday, Sturgeon took a swipe at the Conservatives and said she would prefer a Labour government in Westminster.

On the record

Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary and Boris Johnson loyalist, on Truss’s premiership.

“The fact is that just after a leadership election, and at the start of a new administration, what we don’t need is a disrupter, what we need is a unifier.”

Twitterati

Jim Pickard, Financial Times chief politics correspondent, reports on more potential trouble in the economy.

“More financial stresses emerge in the British economy, this time in commercial property funds.”

Essential reading

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