She'll have no clutching at straws
In office
5 September 2022 – 24 October 2022
The Truss Cabinet
There's nothing new in Liz Truss's manifesto...
Her war on tax, a cut to stamp duty, reversing the NI hike and ditching corporation tax and the City bonus cap, to boost the economy. This conjuring trick has been tried elsewhere to no good effect...See Arthur Laffer
Get Some History
Her Cabinet
acolytes, sycophants, and toads
Priorities: the economy, energy and the NHS
Kwasi Kwarteng sacked! He was been replaced by Jeremy Hunt
Kwasi Kwarteng - Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is the new chancellor – so he’s now the man in charge of the economy. The former business secretary is widely regarded as a close friend, as well as ally, of Liz Truss and his first big challenge will be her promised “mini-budget” and help with energy bills.
Kwasi Kwarteng is considering scrapping the bankers’ bonus cap to boost the City. He would like us to forget that uncapped bonuses lead to the excessive risk taking that spawned the financial crisis of 2008. He’s telliing the fairy story of making London a more attractive place for global banks to do business. He claims that the cap makes the UK less attractive than the US or Asia. That is complete nonsense, nowhere provides more opportunity than Treasure Island.
The City bosses don’t like paying their employee's a salary, they want to lower their fixed costs. Let’s not forget it was the bosses that turned a blind eye to the foolish bets of their employees and created the hidiousness of George Osborne’s austerity regime.
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Jeremy Hunt... read the CV
Hunt has a long cloudy record at the top of the Tory party
He backed Sunak for the recent leadership of the party. He made two failed attempts to get himself into No.10. In 2019 he lost to Mr Johnson by 66% to 34% in the members' vote. And in July 2022 he was knocked out in the first round of voting when he secured the backing of just 18 MPs in the contest which saw Ms Truss take up the mantle.
Before his political career began in earnest, he worked as an English teacher in Japan and then co-founded an educational publishing business. He sold 'Hotcourses' in 2017, reportedly for £14million, which made him one of the richest politicians in the UK.
Elected for South West Surrey, 5 May 2005. He went to the private Charterhouse School where he was head boy before going on to study philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Magdalen College, Oxford University, graduating with a first.
Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport from 2010 to 2012
His stint as culture secretary saw him work closely with then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson on the London 2012 Olympics and come under major fire for his role in the BskyB takeover bid. He faced calls to resign over his contacts with Rupert Murdoch's empire while the bid was being considered.
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care 4 September 2012 – 9 July 2018
Oversaw a period of cuts and privatisation across the NHS, he was also responsible for a highly controversial new contract for junior doctors.
It prompted medics to strike for two days - leaving emergency care uncovered - for the first time in the health service's history. Ultimately, a new contract was imposed. He was also responsible for ending the nursing bursary .
Stafford Hospital: hospital or abattoir
The report into the tragedy that is Stafford Hospital, indicates that patients were "routinely neglected ". It's said that Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period from 2005 to 2008.
The report cost £11m and, will it be money well spent, probably not, it will just be buried away along with the complaints against 41 doctors and 29 nurses that their so-called professional bodies did not take action on. Mad cap funny man, ex-culture secretary, and then health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said the NHS needed a "change of culture". He, of course, blamed New Labour for imposing a culture of targets and performance management on hospitals. This culture can hardly be considered to have taken much of a hold or else operatives performing poorly would have been shown the door.
We do not need to reform the whole of the NHS because Stafford hospital had the misfortune to employ a load of rubbish doctors and nurses, and a management team recruited from Toys-r-Us, all overseen by an inspection process that failed to notice patients drinking the water from the flower vases. The Healthcare Commission told us in 2009 that "appalling standards" were putting patients at risk. Four years on and no action, why are we waiting for yet another report to be published? Hunt took no action, he should have sent all the monkeys masquerading as doctors and nurses back to the banana plantations and zoos where they came from, got rid of the Toys-r-Us chancers and got Defra to pitch their tent in the Stafford Hospital car park until the place is run like a hospital and not an abattoir.
Foreign Secretary from 2018 to 2019
He was criticised for allowing the UK to sell arms to Saudi Arabia during its controversial military campaign in Yemen.
Interests
His register of interests reveals he has a half-share of a holiday house in Italy and seven apartments in Southampton.
Since 2017 he has co-owned a real estate business - Mare Pond Properties Ltd - with his wife.
On several occasions over the past year he has been paid between £2,000 and £10,000 to speak at various organisations, but has donated all fees to charity.
Rees-Mogg - business secretary
is commonly dubbed the minister fo
r the 18th century, he has now been given responsibility for what will help define our 21st century future. After 12 years as an MP he has only previously been an attending member of Cabinet.
He is a leading climate change denier. Given that the business brief encompasses Energy, can you really imagine Moggy sitting round the shiny table arguing for renewables.
Tourism
Rees-Mogg’s most recent piece of handiwork was to scrap a government ad’ campaign designed to attract visitors to Britain. This was his last act as Brexit Opportunities minister. In fact, it was the only thing he did in the job.
Company energy bills: What exactly was announced?
- Wholesale gas and electricity prices for firms are being fixed for six months from 1 October
- Hospitals, schools and charities will also pay the fixed price
- These non-domestic energy customers will be charged £211 per MWh for electricity and £75 for gas
- The scheme will be reviewed after three months and may be extended for "vulnerable businesses"
Fracking back on the agenda
The moratorium on fracking was imposed in November 2019. The UK Treasury and Ofgem chose to give fracking companies a refund of £640,000 after the government banned shale gas exploration in England, despite not being required to do so. The government’s plan to establish fracking across the UK was years behind schedule and has cost the taxpayer at least £32m so far, the Whitehall spending watchdog found. Auditors also expressed concern that official regulators such as the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment Agency and the Oil and Gas Authority rely upon the statutory self-reporting of problems by the industry. Concerns were also raised over the decommissioning costs of fracking sites, it was unclear who would pay the bill. There's more...
Beyond Fracking...
As well as plans to limit energy bill increases for households, Truss also outlined proposals "to make sure we have security of energy supply for the long-term". This included issuing new oil and gas exploration licences for the North Sea, lifting the ban on fracking for shale gas, and looking to negotiate lower-priced long-term contracts with renewable and nuclear power companies.
Therese Coffey - health secretary and deputy prime minister.
Best known for nothing but she is Liz's best friend. And she thinks she has a “laser-like focus” and she is going to use it to fix the NHS, when she's not down the pub doing some karaoke.
At the dispatch box: 22/09/22
“[We are] setting the expectation that everyone who needs a GP appointment can get one within two weeks.”
Then clever people asked: "However, there appears to have been confusion over whether this two week timeframe is a target, a requirement or just an “expectation”. (Full Fact)
Dr Coffey replied: “It’s clearly an expectation that I’m setting out on behalf of patients.”How great do you feel, having an advocate with a Dr. in front of her name, either if she's not a real doctor. Although, there's no evidence that real doctors actually exist, I have not seen one for three years.
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James Cleverly - foreign secretary , taking over Liz Truss’s former department.
It won’t be a totally new department for him - he’s been a foreign minister before, for the Middle East and North Africa, and later for Europe and North America.
25/09/22: Our Foreign Secretary likes to talk about the importance of reaching a negotiated resolution with the EU regarding the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Meanwhile, he continues to distract us by talking about the war in Ukraine.
Suella Braverman - Home Secretary SACKED by Liz, now reinstated.
She's from the same mould as Preti Patel, on the far right of the Tory gang. The criminal fraternity should be afraid, very afraid.
She supports the withdrawal of the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights and supports sending cross-Channel migrants to Rwanda. And she thinks, "Twitter is a sewer of left-wing bile".
Her Crime Cutting Agenda
Her latest brainwave, 24/09/22, is that the police should introduce Common sense into the job and forget about 'diversity and inclusion' schemes. Great but no one knows what she means by common sense policing?
Home Secretary Braverman Gone
19/10/22
Mad as a box of spanners, Suella Braverman, has resigned, she made up some silly nonsense about using her private email for office business. However, that is not the news...
Grant 'three names' Shapps is the new Home Secretary. 21/10/22
He was once seen as a high-flyer in the Tory party until he resigned following allegations he ignored warnings about bullying when he was party co-chairman.He was born in Watford and educated at a local grammar school, before going on to Manchester Polytechnic to study business and finance. He later set up his own successful printing business. Mr Shapps was elected MP for Welwyn Hatfield in Hertfordshire in 2005.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan - Transport Secretary
She supports fox hunting, fracking, and denies global warming. She replaces the man with three names, GrantShapps. She has no track record in transport, her previous experiece comes from International Development.
In April 2018, there were claims that a Russian businessman gave almost £50,000 to fund her campaign.
In May 2016, it was reported that Trevelyan was one of a number of Conservative MPs being investigated by police in the 2015 general election party spending investigation, for allegedly spending more than the legal limit on constituency election campaign expenses. The CPS took no action. Some rubbish about the "test not being met."
Ben Wallace - Defence Secretary since 24 July 2019
Silent at the moment 25/09/22 apart from repeating what the news media told us last night about the war in the Ukraine.
Mr Wallace trained at Sandhurst before joining the Scots Guards as a platoon commander. During his eight-year spell in the Army, he served in Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus and Central America. He was a member of the Scottish Parliament, before winning his seat of Lancaster and Wyre in 2005.Does that make him ready for war?
Brandon Lewis - justice secretary
Famour for...
In September 2020, Lewis, as secretary of state for Northern Ireland, provoked controversy when he conceded that a bill designed to amend the United Kingdom's withdrawal agreement with the European Union would "break international law" in a "specific and limited way".
20/09/22: New Justice Secretary Brandon Lewis urged striking barristers to return to work as they met with ministers for the first time since the start of their industrial action.
Ranil Jayawardena - Environment Secretary taking over from George useless Eustice.
He launched a new campaign in May 2022 to fix potholes in the local area, which present a real danger for road users. Who knows what he'll do next?
Michelle Donelan - back at Education
(Who Knew?) Michelle has been appointed culture secretary, giving her a second chance to make her mark in cabinet following her resignation two days into the job of education secretary in July.
Kit Malthouse - education secretary, replaces new Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
He is the fourth holder of the office in just over two months, the fifth in a year and the ninth since the Tories took charge in 2010.
He previously served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from July to September 2022 and Minister of State for Crime and Policing at the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice from 2020 to 2022.He was the Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service from 2019 to 2020. He has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for North West Hampshire since 2015.
Liz Truss has installed two pro-grammar school MPs, as she follows through on her Conservative leadership election promise to open new selective schools. Former teacher Jonathan Gullis – who led a campaign to lift the ban on opening new grammar schools – has been made a minister at the Department for Education (DfE). He joins minister Kelly Tolhurst, who represents a selective constituency and has spoken in favour of grammar schools.
Malthouse said “definitely obviously”…(27/09/22)
Malthouse said the PM wanted to “address the strong desire in quite a lot of parents to reflect the benefits that many got from grammar schools, in the wider education system. And so we’re definitely obviously going to be beavering away at that, and see where we get to”.
“Grammar schools are not just about results or economics, they’re about a kind of educational ethos. And if we can capture that in policy terms, then I think we’ll make everybody happy.”
But many in the sector are against expanding selection. Professor Becky Francis, the boss of the government’s go-to body for showing what works in education, urged new ministers last week to “focus on evidence not ideology” over potential plans for new grammar schools.
In an interview with Schools Week, Francis, the chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, said the evidence was “pretty clear” that grammar school expansion was “unlikely to reduce education inequality” – and could widen it.
More on Grammar Schools and ‘Voxbridge’ colleges
Simon Clarke - Levelling Up Secretary Simon Clarke has been promoted to the full cabinet as levelling up, housing and communities secretary, taking over from Greg Clark, who replaced Michael Gove in July.
Attenders
Nadhim Zahawi - has become Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, running the Cabinet Office. He's also minister for intergovernmental relations and minister for equalities.
Penny Mordaunt - Leader of the Commons
Wendy Morton - Chief Whip Wendy Morton has been appointed chief whip, responsible for party discipline and ensuring Conservative MPs vote along party lines, and will attend cabinet.
History
Take a look back...
What happened to the Department of Energy and Climate Change?
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was a created on 3 October 2008, by Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Following Theresa May's appointment as Prime Minister in July 2016, the department was disbanded and merged with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to form the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Tory oppinion was that departments and titles were not important, it was actions that they should be judged on?
Truss 'Held Back' On Fracking Risks 02/07/2015
A draft report from Defra the said fracking could reduce house prices, increase traffic, produce deafening noise for residents and damage the landscape in rural communities. Truss complained that Defra should never have produced the report. “The economic impact of fracking is a matter for the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC),” she argued. She said the report “was not analytically robust and was not signed off by Ministers”. The report was rendered useless by heavy redactions. Then Environment Secretary, Liz Truss, was urged to apologise to communities facing fracking for "holding back" evidence of the risks of shale exploration in rural areas, produced by her department. Defra was forced by the Information Commissioner to publish the document in full. Truss still tried to bury it by publishing a major report recommending a third runway for Heathrow.
Why did the UK close Rough gas storage?
In 2017 the facility was closed by Centrica after it said it was unsafe and uneconomical, while the Government was accused of not agreeing to pay for its costly repairs. The facility is able to hold enough gas to meet the UK's demand for winter for around 10 days when full.
The loss came on top of the diplomatic crisis in Qatar, which supplies a third of UK gas imports and has highlighted the UK’s increasing reliance on hydrocarbon imports.
Matt Osborne, a risk manager at energy consultancy Inenco, said: “We anticipate that the decision to close Rough will create uncertainty in terms of energy pricing.
Haunted by Arthur Laffer
The Laffer Curve displays the relationship between tax rates and tax revenue collected by governments and is often used to illustrate the argument that cutting tax rates can result in increased total tax revenue. Arthur Laffer claimed that tax cuts have arithmetic and economic effects on the federal budget, however, the curve assumes both a single tax rate and the behavior of businesses and individuals. (from Investopedia)
However, the neoliberal agenda is about more than cuts, it is also about shrinking the state. The argument was simple, government debt was out of control, cuts to local authority services just had to be made. The financial crash of 2008 required a big repair job, cuts were the only answer. So, it would be cuts to increase business confidence and tax cuts to increase revenue. The latter piece of nonsense came from Arthur Laffer who sold the idea of tax cuts and increased revenue to Republicans in the US and the idea was taken up elsewhere. President Reagan managed to triple his budget deficit following the Laffer scheme. Worse, everyone following Laffer chose to ignore how Kansas turned into a basket case, after the governor sat down with Laffer in 2012. Unfortunately, Mr Johnson and his chancellor Rishi Sunak are fans of Laffer, the latter was busy over-stating the incentive power of tax cuts for productivity and investment at the end of 2021. (from Absurd Economics p.205)
Kwarteng’s Budget 23/09/22
Most of this has been U-turned by HUNT.
Bringing in legislation for minimum service levels on rail as soon as possible. MSAs would set in advance the number and nature of staff who would remain at work during any strike. In the absence of an MSA, strike action would not be lawful.
Reversing the NI changes makes hypothecation for health and social care disappear. In his first speech as prime minister, Boris Johnson promised to ‘fix the crisis in social care once and for all'. The Tories promised £1bn per year over the course of the parliament to prop up the existing social care system – both children’s and adults’ services. But this won’t come close to the £4.1bn needed by 2023/24 to address the costs of rising demand and match NHS pay increases. In the meantime, more people will go without the care they need.
Cut in basic rate of income tax to 19% from April 2023. This will net £3.00 a week for the average wage earner, i.e. most people.
One single higher rate of income tax of 40% from April next year. Nice pay day for higher earners.
“The rate of corporation tax, paid on company profits, is to rise to 25% from 19%, starting in 2023.” That was the headline from Sunak’s 2021 budget, that will not happen now. There is considerable doubt about the precise long-term effects of a cut in corporation tax, There’s no evidence that it will always increase revenue. (Although, yesterday’s man, Boris, convinced himself that it will always raise revenue.)
Rules around universal credit tightened, by reducing benefits if people don't fulfil job search commitments. Jobseekers over 50 to be given extra time with work coaches to help them return to job market. People on Universal Credit to be asked to take steps to seek more work, or face having their benefits reduced.
IR35 rules - the rules which govern off-payroll working - to be simplified ?????
No stamp duty on first £250,000 and for first time buyers that rises to £425,000 - comes into operation today.
Rules which limit bankers' bonuses scrapped
VAT-free shopping for overseas visitors
Planned increases in duties on beer, for cider, for wine, and for spirits cancelled
Infrastructure and investment zones
Government discussing setting up investment zones with 38 local areas in England
Tax cuts and liberalised planning rules to be offered to release land for housing and commercial use
Investment zones offered measures such as no business rates and stamp duty waived
New legislation to cut planning rules, get rid of EU regulations and environmental assessments in an effort to speed up building
Grammar Schools Latest... 27/09/22
New Grammar Schools
The prime minister has tasked her education secretary with drawing up plans for new grammar schools to open in England, Kit Malthouse has revealed.
Speaking to the Yorkshire Post during a college visit yesterday, Malthouse said Liz Truss had “made clear during the leadership election that she wanted to see work on grammar schools, fundamentally, because there is a desire from parents in some parts of the country to have them.
“We’re about parental choice. Everybody needs to be able to make a choice for their kids. And so looking at that policy seriously and looking at areas that want to have it, or indeed, grammar schools that want to expand is something that she’s definitely asked us to do.”
Grammar schools fan Truss
But Malthouse stopped short of confirming the ban would definitely be lifted. Any lifting of the ban – in place since 1998 – would require primary legislation, which woud be an uphill battle for ministers.
Even if the proposal was passed in the House of Commons, where the Conservatives has a large majority, it is likely to face strong opposition in the House of Lords. The Sunday Telegraph reported at the weekend that Tory grandee Sir Graham Brady is planning to table an amendment to the government’s schools bill to try to lift the ban and allow new free schools to select on ability.
But it is not clear at this stage whether the schools bill will continue its passage through Parliament. Like all legislation set in motion under Boris Johnson’s government, the reforms are currently on ice while Truss reviews her priorities.The DfE are ‘beavering away’ on grammar schools policy. Truss pledged to replace failing academies with new selective schools during her leadership campaign
The prime minister has tasked education secretary Kit Malthouse with drawing up plans for two new vocational colleges in the north to rival Oxford and Cambridge.
Details of the new institutions, dubbed ‘Voxbridge’, are sparse but could be fleshed out as early as the spring, Malthouse told the Yorkshire Post during a visit to York College’s Institute of Technology on Wednesday.
But college leaders have slammed the idea as a headline-grabbing and tokenistic political measure that should be dropped. Instead, they want ministers to fund established colleges properly after over a decade of cuts.
The idea for ‘Voxbridge’ colleges comes just months after the government outlined plans for new “elite” academic sixth forms to become the Etons of the north in areas that have weak educational outcomes.
Prime minister Liz Truss made a pledge to open new ‘Voxbridge’ colleges during her leadership campaign over the summer.
The policy was first tabled by Jake Berry, the then-chair of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs, who is now Conservative party chair.In a letter outlining his “Northern agenda” to Truss in July, which the now prime minister signed up to, Berry called for “two brand new vocational institutions in the North of England which will be the national vocational equivalents of Oxford and Cambridge – with a high-skilled, economic development corridor between them.
“We want to celebrate excellence by creating the best dual-track education system in the world – putting academic and vocational education on an equal footing,” the policy paper added.
New types of further education institutions have been rolled out over the past decade despite calls for ministers to focus funding on existing colleges. These include Institutes of Technology, University Technical Colleges and National Colleges. The latter two have been plagued with recruitment and quality issues.
Malthouse said ‘Voxbridge’ colleges are an “incredibly exciting idea”.
“Having centres of excellence, as there is with universities, I think, is a really great idea, so we’ll be taking that forward in developing the policy over the months to come,” he told the Yorkshire Post.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said if Truss was serious about strengthening the UK’s vocational offer “then she should properly fund and support the brilliant institutions that already exist”.
“The government’s track record on establishing new institutions to deliver is not a good one, with both specialist colleges and many UTCs not faring well,” he told FE Week. “They have failed where they were not part of the system and where their contribution was not part of a coherent skills offer locally. I fear the same would happen with new institutions now, however well-intentioned, and however well-funded.”
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, echoed Hughes’ comments.
“Given the enormous financial pressure on colleges and the public purse, we would suggest that any additional investment should be targeted at existing providers to benefit all students,” he said.
“Sixth form colleges are centres of excellence, and they do an extraordinary job of helping students of all abilities to successfully complete academic, applied, and technical courses in order to reach a range of destinations. New investment, rather than new providers, is the key to raising standards and boosting the status of vocational education.”
The Department for Education confirmed that new ‘Voxbridge’ colleges are in the works but stressed the plans are in their infancy.
A spokesperson said proposals like these will “help to boost the profile of vocational education and get more people into apprenticeships, T Levels, degree apprenticeships and other qualifications”.