The comments made by Ben Bradley, the Conservative MP for Mansfield, on Twitter on 17 October 2022.
Well, that effectively renders all the political fallout, criticism, dive in the polls etc of the last few weeks entirely pointless doesn’t it… Right back where we started, just far less popular than before.
The comments made by Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, on Twitter on 17 October 2022.
Hunt smoothly says he’ll take “whatever tough decisions are necessary” after saying there’d be public service cuts – why are such “difficult” decisions always on the backs of poorest & public services, when instead he could take the “difficult” decision to up taxes on wealthiest?
The statement made by Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, on 17 October 2022.
The public rightly expects the highest standards of behaviour from police officers and the vast majority meet this expectation.
But recently too many high-profile incidents and reports, especially in London, have damaged trust.
This cannot continue.
It’s unfair on the public and lets down other serving officers.
Culture and standards in the police must improve.
And where an officer has fallen seriously short of these expectations, demonstrable, public action must be taken.
It’s absolutely vital that the police act to restore trust, return to common sense policing and treat the public and victims with the respect they deserve.
I welcome the Met Police’s commitment to tackling the issues raised in the Baroness Casey report and hope this review will also help to address underlying concerns.
The comments made by Ed Davey, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, on Twitter on 17 October 2022.
So much damage has already been done by these reckless Tories.
Now they will slash spending on our NHS and schools, while propping up bankers’ bonuses to keep their donors happy.
General Election NOW.
The comments made by Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, on Twitter on 17 October 2022.
There is no unity candidate.
No one has enough support.
Only one MP has a mandate from party members and from the British public – a mandate with an 80 seat majority. Boris Johnson.
The choices are simple – back Liz, if not bring back Boris or face a GE within weeks.
The comments made by Alison Thewliss, the SNP MP for Glasgow Central, on Twitter on 17 October 2022.
Such a massive contrast between the First Minister spending an hour and fifteen minutes presenting the case for independence and taking questions from a range of journalists, and the Prime Minister barely able to form a sentence, taking only four questions before scuttling off.
The comments made by Liz Kendall, the Labour MP for Leicester West, on Twitter on 17 October 2022.
How can Truss remain when everything she stands for is gone? And – crucially – where is the mandate for what the Tories are now proposing? Why should my constituents pay the price for the economic damage this Tory Govt has caused? Untenable. Undemocratic. Unforgivable.
The comments made by Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, on 17 October 2022.
The Prime Minister says she is in charge but the evidence this weekend suggests she is in office and not in power.
Friday’s press conference completely failed to answer any of the questions the public has.
Mortgages are rising and the cost of living crisis is being felt more acutely: the Conservative Government is currently the biggest threat to security and the finances of families across the country.
That’s why the Prime Minister must come to Parliament on Monday, to explain what she plans to do to turn the situation around.
If the Prime Minister won’t take questions from journalists, Liz Truss must at least take them from MPs representing the families whose livelihoods she’s putting at risk.
The comments made by Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, on 17 October 2022.
Let’s be clear: this emergency statement is not in response to an external crisis, a war, a pandemic or global energy prices – it’s in response to the ongoing crisis in the Conservative Government.
It also speaks volume about the Conservatives’ total disregard for rural communities like ours in Cumbria, that one of the only things that hasn’t been axed from the mini budget is the cut in stamp duty – a measure which will fuel excessive second home ownership and the Airbnb boom that is turning our communities into ghost towns and ejecting local families.
This chaos cannot be allowed to go on for any longer – it’s time for a General Election.
The speech made by David Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford, in the House of Lords on 10 October 2022.
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe back to the Front Bench and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, on her maiden speech. I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham is leaving us.
I begin by reminding your Lordships of something they probably do not need reminding of, but the media and many critics of the Government certainly do. After the two years of shutdown of the entire economy during Covid, plus now a war in Europe, after a huge swelling of public spending to cope with all that, and now the enormous energy cap finances and subsidies to stop the bleeding, it cannot be any surprise at all that we are in a very tight public finance situation.
I cite the Office for National Statistics in saying that public sector debt, excluding public sector banks, at the end of last month was running at £2.428 trillion. That is a couple of hundred billion more than this time last year. That puts net public debt at 96.6% of GDP. That is a net level last seen here in the 1960s and just slightly lower than at the end of the Second World War, or some of the levels experienced in the 1930s. This is not the highest in the world by a long chalk. In fact, it is the 11th highest in Europe. I see no harm and some good in judicious tax cuts, especially those that would bring down the CPI, which has an enormous effect downwards on government finances, or those that actually increase revenue, such as lowering fuel tax or going back to the income tax top rates the country enjoyed under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, which were quite happily accepted then but now seem to cause such agitation.
But when all that is done, it is obvious that very big steps are now needed on the spending side. I beg Ministers to understand that the sane and effective way of bringing public finances into some sort of reputable balance is to identify and remove functions from the public sector, rather than slashing budgets all round by 10%. That is the classic Treasury style. The functions approach, which is questioning systematically the objectives of endless departmental activities and why they need to be in the state sector at all, was what we tried in the 1970s and later in the 1980s when I worked with John Hoskyns, as has been mentioned, which eventually led to taking most major industries out of state ownership, a healthy restoration of the balance between the state and the market, a real reduction in civil service manpower and a major contribution to growth.
I take my last minute to argue on another point: to make the real case for levelling up. By that, I mean by universal capitalism, rather than trying to do it by universal income redistribution. Assets and savings in the bank are what every family in the land needs for their security and dignity. Measures to bring about a capital-owning democracy and a much fairer and more widespread form of social capitalism than we have now are what Governments of the last 50 years have shied away from again and again. Now is a much better time to approach this. This is the real levelling up—the capitalism working for everyone everywhere that Theresa May used to speak about. It is time for serious action on that front to make a real difference to people’s prosperity, certainty and prospects.