Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.
When Jeremy Hunt received a message early yesterday morning from a ‘Liz Truss’ wanting to talk to him, he assumed he was being pranked. He later found out it was indeed the prime minister and she wanted to make him Chancellor. He has totally reset her economic policy this morning, so maybe the prank is
If government bond sales by pension funds are the fundamental cause of a potential systemic crisis that could hurt us all, as the Bank of England says, why are pension funds taking so little advantage of the Bank’s offer to buy £65 billion of the bonds? And why are bond prices still falling? It seems
How will and how should the Bank of England, and the Treasury, react to this morning’s continued fall in the value of the pound? I’ve been talking to former Bank of England executives and ex-Treasury officials, who make clear that the stakes are incredibly high and that reassuring markets will not be easy. This further
Here in Liverpool, at the start of Labour conference, politics feels more familiar than it has for many years, and also quite confusing and not wholly predictable. And the cause, mostly, is Friday’s budget, which very deliberately delivered the bulk of additional income from tax cuts to those on highest earnings. This feels in many
The government will announce tomorrow that it will cover the costs of more than £1 in every £3 of gas consumed by businesses and households over the next six months. There has been no subsidy of a market price on this scale in British history. Estimates of the final bill for taxpayers range from £100 billion
Liz Truss doesn’t waste energy on unnecessary emotion. At the announcement of her victory at the QE2 Centre, she ditched the convention of hugging your partner and shaking hands with the runner-up. Instead she grabbed her notes from her husband Hugh O’Leary and marched past Rishi Sunak without a second glance. No time for sentimentality!
Months ago I said the Bank of England would face a barrage of criticism and a challenge to its independence for failing to raise interest rates enough last year during the post-Covid economic rebound and then for putting them up big time now as we head into recession. So it has proved. And by the
Liz Truss may have been a Remainer but she has learned the political lesson of the EU referendum in the way that her genuine Brexiter opponent has seemingly failed to do. The point is that in today’s milieu, and especially with an electorate of 160,000 largely Brexit-supporting Tory members, power is with the insurgent. In
After all that, Sunak entered the final members’ round to be Tory leader and UK PM with a comfortable 24 vote margin of advantage over the runner-up Liz Truss. But her 113 votes are enough of a mandate from MPs to present Sunak with a serious challenge during the summer contest. What is striking is
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leadership contest’s Emma Raducanu, finally lost momentum. She put on just one vote to secure 59 backers, and is out. But that’s not the end of her story in this battle to find Britain’s next prime minister. Where she and her supporters now place their votes will determine which two Tory
That was quite a debate. I’ve never seen senior Tory ministers and MPs lay into each other so publicly. Rishi Sunak accused Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt of being socialists – not a compliment in the Tory lexicon – for being reckless with the public finances. Truss attacked Sunak for raising taxes to record levels. Kemi Badenoch
Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt were both committed Brexiters in the 2016 referendum campaign – and both took career risks to support leaving the EU, against the wishes of the then-Prime Minister David Cameron. By contrast Liz Truss campaigned enthusiastically to stay in the EU (see for example the below forceful speech to the 2016
Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch have both fought impressive campaigns. They were both relatively unknown before the contest and they’ve significantly enhanced their reputations. But they are both so far behind it would take a miracle for either of them to reach the magic 120 votes needed to enter the final run-off where members pick
There was only one lesson to be drawn from last night’s Peston show: the Conservative party is in a right old state. On it we had four senior Tory MPs who support four different candidates to be leader: the Treasury minister Lucy Frazer who backs Rishi Sunak, the friend of Boris Johnson Jake Berry for
To use a sporting cliche, Penny Mordaunt has brought the Tory leadership election alive. The little known former Defence Secretary placed second in today’s first round, with 67 votes – which is 17 more than third placed Liz Truss, and 21 behind the leader Sunak’s 88. And given that the MP contest is all about
Rishi Sunak has launched a slick, well organised leadership campaign very early. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that he has been preparing his leadership pitch quietly for weeks and months. Will this hurt or harm him? There may be some Boris Johnson loyalists who will accuse him of disloyalty – although Johnson did
The prime minister is resigning today, and staying on as caretaker till the autumn, but that leaves very big decisions to be taken not only about who succeeds him but about the process for replacing him. I am told Boris Johnson rang Sir Graham Brady – chair of the 1922 backbench committee and de facto
The 1922 Committee – the organising body for Conservative MPs – faces a momentous decision on Wednesday night. If its members believe the mood of their colleagues is that the Prime Minister must face an immediate further test of his popularity, following the Chris Pincher debacle and the serial resignations from government, they could allow
There are three big questions about Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘five point plan to make Brexit work’. First is whether it makes sense economically: will it help return the UK to growth? Second, will it impress the EU, and is there any chance that what Starmer wants will be agreed by EU leaders? Finally, does it
Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she will not contemplate breaching the rule of law by holding an independence referendum was pretty blatant trolling of Boris Johnson, given the multiple allegations he faces of being less than scrupulous in following domestic and international law. But Sturgeon also put Johnson and the Tory party in a tight corner by
