Channel 4 will announce plans this week for deeper-than-expected job cuts amid a steep downturn in the broadcast advertising market.
Sky News has learnt that the state-owned broadcaster will say on Monday that it is cutting nearly 250 roles, a figure equating to just over 15% of its full-time workforce of more than 1,300 people.
Industry sources said this weekend that while the number of people being made redundant would be approximately 200, in line with earlier reports of the cost-cutting, close to an additional 50 roles were also being axed by chief executive Alex Mahon.
It is expected to be the biggest bloodletting in the history of Channel 4, which launched in 1982 and which came close to being privatised last year.
Ministers ultimately decided against selling the company despite having hired bankers from JP Morgan to oversee an auction.
This week’s job cuts will affect a range of departments at the Gogglebox and Great British Bake-Off producer.
Ms Mahon has described the ad market’s decline as “market shock territory” for the company.
A Channel 4 spokesperson said it was “a wholly commercially funded and self-reliant broadcaster known for producing iconoclastic programmes and generating enormous value for the UK creative economy”.
“Like every organisation, we are having to deal with an extremely uncertain economy in the short term and the need to accelerate our transformation to become a wholly digital public service broadcaster in the long term.
“As a result, we need to continue to divest from our linear channels business and simplify our operations to become a leaner organisation.”
London’s mayor has announced a £24m plan to slash peak time train fares on Fridays.
Sadiq Khan asked Transport for London (TfL) to trial off-peak fares all day on Fridays for three months in a bid to increase passenger numbers and boost the economy.
While TfL figures show midweek travel on the Tube is at 85% of pre-Covid levels, the figure for Fridays is just 73%.
On TfL and mainline rail services in London, peak fares apply on weekdays between 6.30am and 9.30am and between 4pm and 7pm.
Commuting by Tube from Zone 6 into Zone 1 at peak times costs £5.60 per journey. During the trial, the same route would cost commuters £3.60.
Mr Khan said he wants “everyone to be able to make the most all week of living or working in London”.
Read more: Fresh train strikes announced – full list of dates
The London mayor then said: “London has really bounced back since the pandemic, but the lack of commuters returning on Fridays is a clear exception – with a major knock-on effect on our shops, cafes and cultural venues.
“That’s why I’ve asked TfL to trial off-peak fares on Fridays, and I encourage Londoners to get involved.
“A trial will help us to see if it’s an effective way of increasing ridership and giving a welcome boost to businesses as we continue to build a better, fairer, more prosperous London for everyone.”
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of industry body UKHospitality, added: “There’s no doubt that Fridays have suffered as a result of changes to working patterns since the pandemic, and hospitality businesses have felt that loss of commuter trade.
“Responding to these challenges with innovative trials like off-peak Fridays is exactly the type of flexible approach needed to boost journey numbers and stimulate footfall in our venues.”
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Fares frozen & £250m more in funding
It comes a week after the London mayor announced TfL fares will be frozen until March next year, paid for by allocating £123m of Greater London Authority funding.
TfL will also receive £250m in extra funding from the government, which will be invested into new projects
Rail minister Huw Merriman said the £250m deal would have “a tangible, positive impact, not just for people travelling in and around the capital, but also the millions who visit every year”.
TfL welcomed the funding, saying it was “grateful for the support,” but it still claimed the network was being hit by a “continuing shortfall in funding” from Whitehall to pay for its day-to-day operations.
Rishi Sunak has suggested more tax cuts are on the way because the economy has “turned a corner”.
The prime minister told reporters that while he would not comment on specifics, trimming taxes was “the direction of travel from this government”.
But it came as he refused to say if the pensions triple lock would be in the next Conservative Party manifesto – despite Downing Street insisting in September that it was “committed” to the policy.
Mr Sunak’s comments echo similar remarks by his ministers in recent weeks.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt also said last month that the economy had “turned a corner” just before he unveiled a cut to National Insurance in the Autumn Statement.
However, four million people could also end up paying higher taxes if their wages rise after the government decided to continue the freeze on tax thresholds.
Reports suggest the Conservatives are considering additional cuts in 2024 as the party tries to woo voters and reduce Labour’s 20-point lead in opinion polls ahead of the next general election, which must take place by January 28 2025.
Cuts to stamp duty and inheritance tax are among the options reportedly being looked at by ministers.
When asked about the two policies, Mr Sunak said: “I would never comment on specific taxes. But what I will just say, though, is we have turned a corner.
“We have got inflation down, as I said we would, we have grown the economy and we are now focused on controlling spending and controlling welfare so we can cut taxes. So when we can do more, we will.”
He added: “We want to grow the economy, we want to reward people’s hard work and aspirations and cut their taxes responsibly. That is the direction of travel from this government.
“If you want controlled public spending, controlled welfare and your taxes cut, then vote Conservative.”
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Mr Sunak was unable to make similar promises about the triple lock, which ensures the state pension must rise every April by whichever is highest out of average earnings, inflation or 2.5%.
The policy has come under fire in recent months by critics who claim it has become too expensive and gives the government less financial “headroom” to deal with economic shocks.
Some senior Tories have called for it to be scrapped and Labour has refused to guarantee the triple lock will remain in place if it wins the next election.
While the government continued with the policy in its recent Autumn Statement, ensuring the state pension will rise by 8.5% in April 2024 to £221.20 a week, Mr Sunak refused to be drawn when asked directly if it would be in the next Tory manifesto.
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4:22
Analysis: Autumn Statement 2023
Speaking to journalists as he flew between the UK and Dubai for the COP28 summit, he replied: “[I’m] definitely not going to start writing the manifesto on the plane, as fun as that would be.”
Mr Sunak acknowledged there had been “some scepticism” about if policy was going to form part of the Autumn Statement, but said its inclusion had been “a signal of our commitment to look after our pensioners who have put a lot into our country”.
There will be a lot of positive talk from the chancellor when he delivers his autumn statement on Wednesday, but this will be a fiscal event full of illusory gains.
The government is on track to borrow less than previously forecast, which will give rise to a fantasy that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has more space to slash taxes than he actually has.
It’s a fantasy because these gains on borrowing are largely the product of high inflation, which has bolstered tax receipts. The government hasn’t admitted it yet, but inflation will inevitably drive up spending too.
It means Hunt’s room for manoeuvre is actually limited if he wants to meet his target of getting debt falling as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP).
Although interest rates, which have been higher than expected, will weigh on the public finances, the windfall from higher taxes bolstered by inflation and wage growth will more than offset this. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will likely show that the government’s headroom against that target has grown from £6.5bn to around £13bn.
Jeremy Hunt will want to claim this as a victory, while also tempering expectations for tax cuts. His message will be that the public finances are improving under this government but they are in too poor a shape to allow for any tax cuts.
This is where the political infighting begins. Many MPs within his own party want him to use that headroom to cut taxes. They are perturbed by the fact that a Conservative government has overseen growth in the tax burden to its largest in the post-war era.
Among the most egregious of these tax rises is the freezing of thresholds, a stealth tax which will see taxpayers pay £40bn a year more by 2028. It has dragged millions of public sector workers, including teachers and nurses, into the higher band of tax.
Tensions over taxation have been simmering in the party and will likely flare up again because Hunt is unlikely to make any big giveaways. The government is insistent that the priority must be to bring inflation down because any tax rises could drive inflation higher. However, with the target to halve inflation now met, MPs will be asking when the tax cuts can begin.
Image: Jeremy Hunt will deliver his autumn statement on Wednesday
Both Hunt and Rishi Sunak are sensitive to this and will probably throw a bone or two. Downing Street has been looking for options that are relatively inexpensive and less likely to increase inflation.
There are a number of policies under consideration, including the scrapping of inheritance tax, or a reduction in the rate from 40% to 20% on estates above £325,000. The government could also cancel a planned increase on stamp duty. Together, these policies would cost about £5.2bn. The chancellor is also expected to cancel the planned 5p increase in fuel duty from April next year, which will cost £6bn.
So, any giveaways would quickly swallow up the headroom, at a time when government spending will inevitably have to rise. Departmental budgets are set in cash terms and high inflation means that the cost of paying prison guards and running courts has gone up. Without substantial increases, public services face real-terms pay cuts.
On current plans, unprotected departments would see their spending power cut by 16% between 2022-23 and 2027-28, which would be a similar pace of cuts to those implemented by George Osborne in the early 2010s. The Resolution Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, described this scale of the cuts as a “fiscal fiction” that is “undeliverable”.
Read more: Jeremy Hunt signals tax cuts as lower inflation means economy has ‘turned a corner’ David Cameron’s official peerage title revealed Hunt contradicts PM on Rwanda flight take off position
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1:10
Chancellor on ‘next part of economic plan’
The opposition will be keeping a hawk eye on this and will be quick to decry any signs that the country is returning to a period of austerity. It will also be quick to attack any of the government’s tax-raising plans – and there will be a number of them.
Tax thresholds will probably remain frozen into 2029, a policy that could raise another £6bn. The Treasury will also be cracking down on benefits, uprating them in line with October’s inflation rate of 4.6% instead of September’s figure of 6.7%. That could save £2bn. A tweak to the triple lock calculation for pensions could net £600m.
So, for all the large upward revisions to the numbers coming out of the OBR, it’s a fiscal event that is unlikely to inspire. There will be some tweaks around the edges and some big talk on plans to boost economic growth.
However, the government will probably want to keep its powder dry for the budget in March. Unfortunately, that may not be enough to satisfy Tory MPs, who are hungry for tax giveaways now.
The Welsh government has outlined cuts to some services amid “unprecedented” financial pressures.
In the Senedd on Tuesday, the finance minister outlined a package of financial measures which she said would protect public services, the NHS and transport.
Rebecca Evans said she was “grateful” to cabinet colleagues for finding savings within their departments’ budgets.
She added the current economic situation meant the devolved government in Cardiff faced “incredibly difficult times”.
First Minister Mark Drakeford had asked members of the cabinet to find savings to combat the Welsh government’s “toughest financial situation” since devolution.
The government has blamed the pressure on a combination of high inflation, austerity and what it called the UK government’s “mismanagement of the economy”.
In response, Wales Secretary David TC Davies said the Welsh government was responsible for its own spending choices on devolved matters.
“For our part, we are providing the Welsh government with the largest funding settlement in the history of devolution,” he said.
The finance minister added the current financial situation meant the Welsh government would not be able to do “all the things we wish to do”.
Statements such as these are rare outside of a usual budget announcement, with the Welsh government’s next budget not due to be published until February.
The largest cuts have been made to the education and Welsh language budget which sees a £74.7m reduction in funding.
But two departments will see an increase in their budgets.
Health and social care will see an increase of £425m in revenue funding and an increase of £82.6m in climate change revenue funding has also been announced.
Transport sits within the climate change department and Transport for Wales will see an increase of £125m in its budget.
Read more: Call for referendum on increase in Senedd members Wales bans snares and glue traps in UK first
The Welsh Conservatives – the largest opposition party in the Senedd – have accused the Welsh government of having “grossly mismanaged their budget”.
They also accused Labour of having “the wrong priorities”.
Vodafone has announced a massive programme of job losses, that will impact its UK operations, in a bid to recover its financial performance.
The company’s new chief executive said the telecoms firm had become uncompetitive and 11,000 roles would go over the next three years.
The group employs just over 100,000 people globally, with just over 9,000 of them in the UK.
Vodafone was yet to respond to requests for information on how many UK roles would be affected but it was confirmed that its headquarters, in Berkshire, would see an impact.
Margherita Della Valle, who was permanently appointed CEO last month after her predecessor Nick Read was ousted late last year, said: “Our performance has not been good enough.
“My priorities are customers, simplicity and growth. We will simplify our organisation, cutting out complexity to regain our competitiveness.”
She was speaking as Vodafone reported a 1.3% drop in full-year earnings to £12.8bn.
That figure missed its own guidance.
The company forecast little or no growth in the same measure over the current financial year – with Germany, its biggest market, proving the major drag.
Growth in Africa and higher handset sales, however, enabled it to eek out a 0.3% rise in revenue over the 12 months.
Nottingham Castle was built nearly 1,000 years ago, designed as an impregnable Norman fort.
Today it is a tourist attraction – but just as inaccessible.
The castle, owned by the council, has been closed since November, when its trust went into liquidation.
It is a symbol of a city and of a council that has struggled financially in the two years since it lost £38m on a failed company – Robin Hood Energy.
But it tells a bigger tale, of a local government system which is creaking – stripped of cash by Westminster and shaped by incentives and pressures that can lead councils to financial disaster.
Explainer – Energy bills, council tax, broadband and everything due to rise in price from today
Just down the road from Nottingham Castle is a centre called Base 51 that works with vulnerable young people.
More on Data And Forensics
Its funding from Nottingham City Council has been completely cut so it’s launched a crowdfunding campaign. But as things stand, it will have to vacate its premises in six months.
Three teenagers were there when Sky News visited.
“Before I started coming here I was going out and getting into trouble,” Deyarni Beedy-Lamonte said.
“But since I’ve started coming here I’ve been offered counselling. And obviously that’s helped get me onto a better path.”
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2:04
Local councils explained
Quinn Vahey says there’s little else on offer for teenagers in Nottingham. “If I weren’t here, I’d be getting in trouble every day basically. I’d probably get arrested by now.”
Nottingham City Council told Sky News: “Like all councils, the City Council has been receiving less and less in government grants over the past 13 years to pay for local services, which has forced us to cut services that we would prefer not to.”
Not all councils have launched an energy company, though, and seen it go quite spectacularly bust.
But the council is right about government funding – grants from central government have fallen nearly 90% since 2014.
During roughly the same period, councils have cut back on discretionary spending.
Take roads, for instance – fixing things like potholes. Around £1bn was spent across all councils in 2013.
Today, that’s fallen to £690m, even after adjusting for inflation. Or street lighting, which has lost £100m in funding.
One of the most famous councillors in the country (not a crowded field) is Jackie Weaver.
She went viral after a chaotic Zoom meeting of a parish council, in which she was told: “You have no authority here Jackie Weaver. No authority at all.”
But Weaver is chief officer at Cheshire Association of Local Councils and knows the subject inside out.
“As money has gotten tighter over, I would say, the last 10 years, probably, we’ve seen the district and county councils in Cheshire disappear, the county council disappeared altogether, contract so much that now they only perform their statutory functions,” she told Sky News.
“Now, that means all the kind of community stuff that is visible, that makes us feel good, doesn’t happen anymore. They don’t have any money to do it. They only focus on statutory obligations.”
Statutory obligations are services that councils are legally obliged to provide and the most important, and the most expensive, is social care.
Councils are spending an ever greater share of their budgets on social care, as the population ages and care demands become more complex.
Total council spending has gone from £26bn 10 years ago to £30bn today, again adjusted for inflation.
If you look at social care as a proportion of councils’ total spending, you can see just how much it’s eating up – from 57% in 2012 to 62% last year.
Three councils – Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Halton in Cheshire – spent more than three quarters of their total 2021/22 budgets on providing social care.
So: add a massive cut in central government funding to a huge increase in demand for services councils are legally obliged to provide and spending cuts in other areas seem inevitable.
This isn’t just a tale of austerity, though, but a deliberate redesign, dating back to changes to the system made back in 2010.
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2:29
Who pays the most council tax?
“Councils were told to be innovative, entrepreneurial – to act like any other company, and this involved investments, property, other sorts of investments, maybe outside their own local authority area,” Jonathan Werran, CEO of thinktank Localis, told Sky News.
“But the reason they were doing this was to earn revenue to fund the local public services upon which people depend and rely upon – trying to plug the gap.”
That “entrepreneurial” model may have suited some councils – but it has led others, like Nottingham, into choppy financial waters.
Nottingham issued a Section 114 notice – a formal declaration of financial problems – in 2021.
But it’s far from the only one.
Thurrock, Slough and Kent have all issued Section 114 notices within the last year.
Levelling Up: Areas with high levels of deprivation suffered the most from austerity
Woking, which has racked up £2bn in debt investing in property, has said it is in danger of doing the same.
“There’s definitely more and more councils that are in challenging financial positions – a number of councils over the last five years or so particularly have borrowed quite heavily to fund investment in property,” Tim Oliver, chairman of the County Councils Network, told Sky News.
The person who changed the system was Lord Pickles, secretary of state for communities and local government in David Cameron’s coalition government, in 2010.
The idea behind the reforms was “essentially, to give [councils] more power and give them more say of how they spent things”, Lord Pickles told Sky News.
“And it’s called localism. And it really was designed to give power right down to the lowest level in local government.”
Sky News asked him about the councils that have issued Section 114 notices and whether it was a good idea to ask councils to be more entrepreneurial with public money.
“I want to say so, I think a lot of it boils down to a lack of due diligence,” he said.
“But the ones that we talk about, I think that there’s been a kind of a real problem when they’re sort of moved into this without properly thinking it through.”
Image: Tom Cheshire speaks with teenagers in Nottingham
Every council Sky News spoke to said they need more money from central government.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities told Sky News: “We are making an additional £5.1bn available for councils in England in the next financial year.
“We are also providing multi-year certainty to local government, outlining spending over the next two years to allow councils to plan ahead with confidence.”
Sky News understands that around £2bn of that new money is intended for social care.
Read more: Why are councils spending less on potholes and bin collections? See how much your council spends
But that represents just a 6.67% increase on the total amount spent by councils – at a time when inflation is significantly higher.
Councils will still struggle to afford social care, which means they will struggle to provide other services.
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And that may ultimately end up costing even more. Take Base 51 for example. As non-statutory spending, it can be cut.
But if those teenagers get into trouble and enter the social care or criminal justice system, that ends up costing more down the line.
“That’s the challenge we’re trying to work through now,” Mr Oliver told Sky News.
“You need to sort of double run it.
“So you need to have sufficient money to deliver the services to the people that are already in the system. But then equally you need to put funding and investment into prevention and early intervention.
“It is a false economy, not to invest in that early prevention. But that is the challenge around finding the funding to do both.”
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5:44
Labour demand council tax freeze
Local government can be an unglamorous subject but it has a huge impact on people’s lives: the fabric of our society is made up of many threads.
Many of them are small: street lights, bin collections, pot holes, community centres.
Some are huge, like social care.
And pick at those threads, year after year, and it adds up to the sense that the social fabric, the deal between citizens and state, is fraying.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Jeremy Hunt’s budget leaves household incomes stagnant and people paying higher taxes despite cuts to public services, the Resolution Foundation has said.
The thinktank, which aims to improve the standard of living for low and middle-income families, said the chancellor had announced an “impressively broad suite of policies” to encourage more people into work.
However, it said: “Britain’s economy remains stuck in a deep funk – with people supported into work but getting poorer, and paying more tax but seeing public services cut.”
Click here for our budget calculator to see if you are better or worse off
Here are the key findings of the Foundation’s budget analysis.
Beating the odds on a recession
The UK is forecast to have gone through “the biggest energy and inflation shock since the 1970s, while avoiding a recession, with unemployment peaking at just 4.4%,” the Foundation said.
It compared it to the mid-1970s energy shock which saw a recession with a 3.9 peak-to-trough fall in GDP.
A decline in living standards
However, RF pointed to a “disastrous decline in living standards”, with typical real household disposable incomes on track to remain lower by the end of the forecast in 2027-28 than they were before the pandemic.
“If even the slow growth of the past decade had continued, incomes would still be £1,800 higher than currently projected for 2027-28,” it said.
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2:40
Key moments from Hunt’s first budget
Taxes on track to hit 70-year high
RF said taxes as a share of GDP are on track to hit 37.7% by the end of the forecast, a 70-year-high and a 4.7% increase since 2019-20, the equivalent to nearly an extra £4,200 for every UK household.
It said despite this the chancellor only has a quarter of the average fiscal headroom of his three predecessors and would not meet the fiscal targets set by Rishi Sunak, Philip Hammond or George Osborne when they were chancellor.
Help for parents
The analysis notes the budget includes the biggest increase in childcare support on record, which it said would encourage more parents to work and make it worthwhile for many to work longer.
RF said under the current childcare system, a single parent of a one-year-old earning the National Living Wage would see their income fall after childcare costs by £370 if they moved from 25 to 35 hours of work a week.
However, under the new system, the same single parent would receive an income boost of £700.
The RF said the richest fifth of households are set to gain £180 on average from the extra childcare entitlement, compared to £130 for the middle fifth of households and £20 for the bottom fifth.
More on Budget 2023: The key points of the budget at a glance
‘An unneeded tax break for wealthy pension savers’
The report was critical of the chancellor raising the annual allowance and scrapping the lifetime allowance for tax-free saving, which it said cost around £1.2bn and were expected to increase employment by 15,000 – a cost of around £80,000 per extra worker.
However, the Foundation said “even those employment gains may be overstated, given that giving very large wealth boosts will actually encourage some people to retire earlier than they otherwise would have done”.
It said someone with a £2m pension pot will have received a tax cut of almost £250,000.
Austerity
RF said the chancellor had chosen to “ignore pressures on public services”, even though unprotected departments face 10% cuts to real day-to-day spending per capita by the end of the budget, raising to 14% if the newly announced aspiration to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP is met over the next parliament.
An investment ‘roller-coaster’
The Foundation said the £28bn three-year increase in investment allowances represents the fifth major corporate tax change in two years, which it said illustrated “the lack of certainty that has frustrated businesses”.
It said: “The policy will deliver a temporary 3% boost to investment, when what Britain actually needs is a permanent 30% boost to catch up with our competitors (France, Germany and the US).”
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Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “Jeremy Hunt’s first budget was a much bigger affair than many expected, combining improvements to the dire economic and fiscal outlook with a significant policy package aimed at boosting longer-term growth in general, and the size of the workforce in particular.
“A step change in childcare support stands out.
“But stepping back, the UK’s underlying challenges remain largely unchanged.
“We are investing too little and growing too slowly. Our citizens’ living standards are stagnant. We ask them to pay higher taxes, while cutting public services.
“No one budget could turn that around, but it’s time Britain did.”
British Steel has revealed it is to cut 260 jobs, almost 7% of its workforce, despite continuing government funding talks with its Chinese owners.
It was announced that the losses would be felt at its Scunthorpe plant through the closure of its coking ovens – used to turn coal into the high-temperature product needed to service its blast furnaces.
The Unite union responded by saying it would look to defend every job and did not rule out the prospect of industrial action.
The move was revealed after Sky News reported that officials from the Department for Business and Trade were due in China to meet executives from Jingye Group amid protracted talks about a £300m grant.
Sources said the talks were expected to focus on the value of an energy subsidy package, which could take the overall value of government support for British Steel to approximately £1bn.
The prospect of additional taxpayers’ cash had been dependent on job guarantees.
Sky’s City editor Mark Kleinman reported last month that Jingye was drawing up plans to cut around 800 jobs at British Steel.
The company placed no timeframe on its proposals but said it had entered talks with unions.
It placed an emphasis on cutting its environmental impact and energy bills.
Image: The Scunthorpe British Steel plant
The company said its costs, on both fronts, rose by a combined £190m last year.
It declared in a statement that “decisive action is required because of the unprecedented rise in operating costs, surging inflation and the need to improve environmental performance.”
British Steel chief executive Xifeng Han said: “Steel is vital to modern economies and with demand expected to grow over the coming decades, British Steel has a crucial role to play in ensuring the UK has its own supply of high-quality steel.
“To make sure we can deliver the steel Britain requires, we’re undergoing the biggest transformation in our 130-year history.”
He added: “We have taken action to reduce costs within our control; however, steelmaking in the UK remains uncompetitive when compared to other international steelmakers.
“Our energy costs, carbon costs and labour costs are some of the highest across the world, which are factors that we cannot influence directly.
“For the reasons outlined, we entered into talks with the UK government in summer 2022 and are extremely grateful for its support.
“It’s important we have the correct policies and frameworks in place to back our drive to become a clean, green and successful company and we’re continuing to discuss this with the government.”
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Unite general secretary Sharon Graham responded: “British Steel workers are faced with the toxic combination of a greedy employer that is reneging on investment promises and a shambolic UK government that has no serious plan for the industry.
“Unite’s members in British Steel are clear that they will fight this and they will have the full support of their union.
Unite national officer Linda McCulloch said: “This union has not yet seen any financial justification for the closure of the coking ovens. British Steel needs to come clean and open its book in order to try to justify its decisions.
“Unite will pursue every avenue, including industrial action, to defend members’ jobs at British Steel.”
Three-and-a-half weeks ago, Liz Truss was beaming as she was announced as the new leader of the Conservative Party.
She did not embrace her husband or console her defeated opponent – reaching instead for her victory speech and marching onto the stage.
The contrast as she heads to her party’s annual conference in Birmingham is stark. The prime minister already cuts a diminished figure after squandering much of her political capital – damaging her party’s reputation for economic management and demoralising many of her MPs, some of whom feel they are now facing an existential crisis.
Adam Boulton analysis: Autumn storm clouds are thickening thanks to mini-budget
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1:10
Truss acknowledges ‘some disruption’
“It was a foolish error,” says Martin Vickers, a normally loyal Conservative MP, of the government’s controversial mini-budget. “All we’ve done is supply ammunition to our political opponents.”
He added: “I’m not arguing about the direction of travel. But it was too much too soon. It has clearly spooked the markets and is causing unnecessary distress and concern to my constituents.”
“This can’t go on,” complains another frustrated MP.
“Meaning the policy or the people?” I ask.
“Both” is the reply.
The PM seems to be gradually willing to publicly accept a link between her policies and market turmoil – describing this overnight as “short-term disruption” – but there is no sign she is considering reversing any of the measures.
The government is instead expected to move ahead with significant spending cuts. Reports suggest that welfare benefits could also be affected and may only be increased in line with average earnings, not inflation.
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2:25
How might the government balance the books?
Mr Vickers is among a growing number of backbenchers happy to publicly express their exasperation and call for a change in government policy.
He will be attending the conference, but many colleagues critical of the leadership will be swerving it.
Former leadership contenders Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid are not expected to attend. The number of party members present may be diminished by rail strikes (ironic since the conference slogan is Getting Britain Moving) – and the cost of hotels in the city.
Alongside entertaining wealthy donors, meeting newspaper editors, and addressing members’ drinks receptions, Liz Truss is expected to carry out a series of national TV and radio interviews. Her bruising round of local radio interviews on Thursday morning suggests these encounters may be less than smooth.
The best opportunity to take control of the narrative, communicate directly with voters and reset her premiership remains the leader’s speech.
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3:06
Iconic party conference moments
In 2007, David Cameron delivered his 50-minute address without notes.
In 2017, Theresa May’s was almost brought to a standstill by a hacking cough, a P45 prank and a collapsing backdrop.
In 2021, a venue was constructed purely for Boris Johnson’s “Build Back Better” speech.
Mr Cameron wrote that his team would spend months “constructing the paragraphs, crafting the killer lines, choosing the ‘moments’ that would make people gasp or laugh or connect emotionally”.
Ms Truss’s team have not had the luxury of time for that level of preparation, yet the ideology driving her administration is at least settled.
Surviving a conference with her budget intact may be painful for the PM, but it seems perfectly possible.
A far more turbulent time is expected when parliament returns on 11 October, and the scale of backbench Tory opposition becomes clear.
