Inside Politics: Talking tough

Hello there, I’m Matt Mathers and welcome to The Independent’s Inside Politics newsletter.

Tory leadership rivals Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are set for another rumble tonight in Scotland as thunder rolls in across the UK. Sunak will be hoping he can make it rain on the foreign secretary’s parade after the two candidates talked tough on holding the SNP government to account.

Parliament is not sitting.

Ofwat chief executive David Black on BBC Radio 4 Today at 8.10am.

Labour shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband on ITV GMB at 8.30am.

The never-ending Tory leadership contest travels to Scotland later today as Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak seek to mop up the votes of Conservative members who are yet to cast their ballots in the race to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister.

Ahead of a hustings event in Perth, the two candidates have set out their union credentials, vowing to get tougher on Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP by announcing a series of pledges they claim will better hold the Scottish government to account.

Sunak, the former chancellor, says he would force the SNP to publish “consistent data” to allow performance comparisons with the rest of the UK on areas like the NHS and education. He says he would also force civil servants to attend Westminster committee hearings. Truss, the foreign secretary, says she would give MPs in Holyrood parliamentary privilege to “more stringently hold the Scottish government to account”.

The event is a much bigger test for Truss, the frontrunner in the contest, who looks almost guaranteed to become the next PM on 5 September. All eyes and ears will be tuned into the type of language and tone she uses when she attacks the SNP, after a previous event in which the foreign secretary called Scotland’s first minister an “attention seeker” (it has since been reported that she asked Sturgeon for tips on how to get on the front of Vogue magazine) – remarks that were widely condemned as being unbecoming of a future PM.

Tonight’s hustings might be for Tory members but the rest of Scotland – including the SNP, which is no doubt already using Truss’s attention seeker remarks to further its independence cause – will be listening.

Will Truss once again dip her hand into the Gavin Williamson bargain bucket of insults to please the more hard-line elements in her party, and the headline writers at certain newspapers, or will she show restraint? Only time will tell, but with the keys to No 10 apparently already in the bag, it seems she has little to gain by choosing the former course. The latter could result in her becoming an advert for independence, just like her predecessor.

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There was a deafening silence from the Truss and Sunak campaigns yesterday as Labour leader Keir Starmer set out his plan to tackle soaring energy bills.

Perhaps they were too busy preparing their lines for tonight? Labour’s policy has landed pretty well and there are a number of reasons why Sunak and Truss kept quiet.

The first is one Inside Politics told you about yesterday morning: the policy was wildly popular among Tory voters, according to a poll.

And by all accounts, it has gone down well among Tory MPs too, who are not so wild about it but think it is a reasonable plan that helps all sections of society.

There is, however, yet more bad news on the economic front just in the past hour: real wages fell at a record rate between April and June as Britain’s cost-of-living crisis took hold and inflation slashed the value of workers’ pay, official figures show.

When the effect of rising prices is taken into account, pay including bonuses declined 2.5 per cent in the latest quarter compared to a year earlier. Regular pay dropped 3 per cent, the Office for National Statistics said.

Wages increased in cash terms but have been dwarfed by soaring costs for gas, electricity, fuel, food and other goods which have pushed the overall inflation rate to 9.4 per cent.

Truss vows to hold SNP to account.

“For too long, people in Scotland have been let down by the SNP focusing on constitutional division instead of their priorities. That won’t happen under my watch. I’ll make sure that my government does everything to ensure elected representatives hold the devolved administration to account for its failure to deliver the quality public services, particularly health and education, that Scottish people deserve.”

New Statesman senior editor George Eaton notes the government is nationalising parts of national grid.

“Worth noting that the UK government is quietly nationalising part of the National Grid to help achieve net zero targets (yes, it’s privately owned despite the name).”

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