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Labour calls for Liz Truss’s resignation honours list to be blocked as ex-PM gives speech defending mini-budget

Good morning. Saturday will mark the first anniversary of Liz Truss’s mini-budget, arguably the most disastrous “fiscal event” in the long history of the Treasury. But Truss herself does not see it that way, and this morning she will give a speech defending her record and saying what she thinks the UK must do to promote growth. She has given speeches focusing on foreign policy since she resigned as PM, and earlier this year she published a 4,000-word article in the Telegraph defending the mini-budget, but this is her first big speech on domestic politics as an ex-PM. Kiran Stacey has a preview here.

Truss’s decision to give the speech will fuel speculation that she is interested in some sort of political comeback. No prime minister has returned to No 10 after leaving office since Harold Wilson in 1974, and the prospect of the Tories giving Truss another go seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened. In a recent interview with the Mail on Sunday, asked about a political comeback, she did not rule it out. She told the paper:

I want to stay involved in politics, I really care about politics. I went into politics not to become prime minister but to change things, that’s what motivates me and I will not rest until we have achieved the changes because I believe that Britain does need real change.
I think that can be delivered but I’m not specifying any role for myself in the future.

In response to the speech, the Labour party is saying Rishi Sunak should cancel her resignation honours list. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, told Sky News this morning:

The key issue here is that it’s 12 months now since that quite disastrous set of decisions the Conservative government took, which ran our economy off the cliff, it led to a run on pension funds, it means that homeowners are paying hundreds if not thousands of pounds more on their mortgages. And at the same time, I think something like £300bn has been wiped off the value of properties so people’s mortgages are going up, rent going up, and the value properties coming down because of decisions taken by the Conservative government 12 months ago.
And now for Liz Truss to be out here today saying it was the London dinner party circuit that blocked her when people in Leicester, in Ashfield, in Barry and Bolton and Bolsover are paying more for food, I think is just extraordinary.
If Rishi Sunak had any backbone, he would block this Liz Truss list today, because I don’t think businesses, hardworking families paying so much more on their mortgage think that list should go ahead. In many ways it’s a kick in the teeth.

Truss’s resignation honours list has not been announced yet, but it has been reported that there are 14 names on it, some of whom will get peerages. No 10 has in the past indicated that it won’t block the list.

I will be covering the speech in some detail. I will also be looking at reaction to Keir Starmer saying he wants a major rewrite of the Brexit deal. Jem Bartholomew has the story here.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Liz Truss, the former PM, gives a speech to the Institute for Government.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

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Key events

Q: How much power do you think economic institutions should have?

Truss says in some instances it is right for outside bodies, like regulators, to have power.

Bu over the last 30 or 40 years more power has gone to quangos, she says.

She says politicians end up getting the blame anyway. She thinks politicians should have more power.

Q: So would you be happy with, say, John McDonnell Treasury not constrained by outside bodies?

Truss says institutions are Balkanised. There are different ones competiting with each other.

She says, fundamentally, she is a democrat. If the public elect John McDonnell as chancellor, he should be able to implement its policies.

Q: Can you give examples of where you were blocked from doing things by institutions?

Truss says she is writing a book that will cover this.

She thinks many civil servants are brilliant at what they do. But she thinks “institutional bureaucracy” stops politicians doing what they want.

During the Tory leadership campaign she tried to challenge the economic orthodoxy of the Treasury. She did not get much support.

Truss says problem with NHS not lack of money

Liz Truss has finished her speech. She is now taking questions, firstly from the Institute for Government’s Catherine Haddon, who is chairing the event.

Q: Voters are already unhappy with the state of public services. Wouldn’t they be worse under the cuts you were planning?

Truss turns to housing. With proper reform of planning laws, housing could be cheaper. But that would take time, she says.

People want better services, cheaper housing, cheaper childcare and lower fuel bills, she says. She says they do not care how those things are delivered.

She says it would have been hard to implement these reforms before an election in 2024. But, as PM, she wanted to spell out a trajectory for reform.

Q: How would you reform the NHS?

Truss says there are serious problems with it. She wanted to decentralise, and to push power down. “I don’t think the problem in the NHS is lack of money,” she says.

Liz Truss is about to give her speech to the Institite for Government now.

I will post the highlights when I’ve read the full text.

After she finishes, she will be taking questions. I will cover those exchanges here in full.

In her speech this morning Liz Truss will claim that it is wrong to describe some of the measures in her mini-budget last year as unfunded tax cuts. She will say:

I felt we needed to begin reforming our tax system with measures to make it more business-friendly and make the UK a more attractive place to invest.
The impending hike in corporation tax needed to be reversed. Cutting the top rate of income tax would show Britain was open to talent.
Reforming IR35 would have cut red tape for small businesses. And a return to VAT-free shopping for foreign visitors would make our great cities more attractive.
Some people have described these as “unfunded tax cuts”. This is not a fair or accurate description.
Independent calculations by the CEBR [the Centre for Economics and Business Research] suggest that cutting the higher rate of income tax and the ‘tourist tax’ would have increased rather than decreased revenues within five years.
So quite the opposite of being unfunded, these tax cuts could have increased funding for our public services.
The CEBR also says that the cost of freezing corporation tax was much less than the Treasury suggested.
Their costing of the measures was £25bn over five years, not £45bn.
Regrettably the static models used by the OBR failed to acknowledge this.

Rupert Harrison, George Osborne’s former chief of staff, argues this is nonsense.

Even on its own terms this still leaves £25bn of permanent additional borrowing at a time when the main issue was inflation. But the CEBR costings are also wildly optimistic, and it’s factually incorrect to say that the OBR models are static.

Even on its own terms this still leaves £25 billion of permanent additional borrowing at a time when the main issue was inflation.
But the CEBR costings are also wildly optimistic, and it’s factually incorrect to say that the OBR models are static. pic.twitter.com/i70bvFos8K
— Rupert Harrison (@rbrharrison) September 18, 2023

Former Tory Treasury aide accuses Liz Truss of ‘brass neck’ in thinking party wants her advice on economic policy

Rupert Harrison, who was chief of staff to George Osborne when Osborne was chancellor and who is now the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Bicester and Woodstock, has accused Liz Truss of “brass neck” in offering advice on economic policy. He claims nobody in the party is listening to her.

The sheer brass neck of this. To presume to offer advice after what happened. And still no genuine acknowledgment of the real mistakes that were made.
Happily, nobody in the Conservative Party or the Government is listening. https://t.co/0i0ibHNdkk
— Rupert Harrison (@rbrharrison) September 18, 2023