Inside Politics: Rishi to the rescue

Parliament is in recess today but Rishi Sunak is out on the broadcast round defending his package of measures to ease the cost of living crisis. Is it job done for the chancellor? The Resolution Foundation has said the measures outlined by the Treasury since February cover around fourth fifths of the rise in energy bills.

Parliament is in recess.

Rishi Sunak has set out his rescue package to help with the cost of living crisis, with one of the main takeaways being that every UK household will get at least £400 off their energy bills. The story dominates the news agenda for the second day in a row and splashes the front of most major papers and news websites, whose coverage of the package of measures is broadly split between those who favour it and those who would have preferred tax cuts and less government spending.

The divide is perhaps reflective of how the chancellor’s intervention has gone down within his own party. Many Tory MPs welcomed the move but cabinet minister Jacob-Rees Mogg openly questioned the windfall tax element of the intervention in an interview with Sky News last night. Meanwhile, The Times reports this morning that Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, remains opposed to the levy.

It is not normal for usually loyal cabinet ministers to come out against a major policy so quickly. Those tensions at the top of government speak to a broader ideological fissure running through the Tories about what kind of party they have become under Boris Johnson, and whether they can continue to call themselves the party of low taxes.

The prime minister might argue that his only ideology is to win elections. Yesterday’s intervention will certainly help him to regain some of the popularity lost over a slew of recent scandals. But with bills expected to remain high for months, it remains to be seen how long that boost will last.

What is Labour saying? Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, told MPs in the Commons yesterday there is “no doubt about who is winning the battle of ideas in Britain – it is the Labour Party”. Labour certainly won the battle on the windfall tax. But some of the shine was taken off the victory by the fact that Sunak’s levy raised twice as much as the one proposed by Reeves (Labour says oil and gas giants’ profits have soared further since it first devised the policy).

Out on the broadcast round earlier, Reeves told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she “welcomed” the windfall tax. “I know from my own constituency in Leeds that people are really struggling at the moment and this is welcome relief,” she added. “But I’ve got to ask: what took them so long?”

One of the more underreported aspects of Sunak’s rescue package was the impact it will have on the environment. The chancellor has been accused of risking Britain’s reputation as a climate leader by announcing tax relief measures that will encourage energy firms to invest in fossil fuel extraction during a climate emergency.

“It’s bone-headedly stupid, even by this government’s low standards, not only to allow but in fact to incentivise the production of new climate-wrecking fossil fuels, rather than keeping them firmly in the ground where they belong,” Green MP Caroline Lucas told The Independent.

Although there was no big wave of calls for Johnson to resign in the wake of Sue Gray’s Partygate report being published, the trickle has started and four more Tory MPs withdrew their support for the PM yesterday.

John Baron, David Simmonds and Angela Richardson brought the number of MPs speaking out against Johnson following Wednesday’s report to five, after York Outer MP Julian Sturdy said yesterday he should go. A total of 22 Conservative backbenchers are now publicly demanding his removal, but behind the scenes, others have privately said he should step down.

Some rebel Tories have claimed that they could easily reach the 54 letters required to trigger a confidence vote in Johnson. But the fact that those notes have not yet gone in to the 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady suggests Tories looking to remove their boss are much less confident about hitting the 180 or so MPs needed to win that vote, thereby removing Johnson from office. If a no-confidence were to be held against the PM and he won, then he would be safe from a further challenge for 12 months.