My argument is simply one of affordability (including, by the way, by dropping the triple lock) if our public finances are going to be sustainable.
This vote must be chalked up as a convincing win for Sunak – and a sign that Johnson and Truss have less support among their colleagues than one might have thought.
It’s possible that he has pulled off a political coup, begun radically to re-set the UK’s relationship with the EU – and created the circumstances in which voters may give him a second look.
Our question is a finger-to-the-wind test not only of what the panel thinks of the Prime Minister’s handling of the Protocol so far, but of his standing generally – and it’s not good news for him.
Merely “looking at” such measures as raising the pension age and reforming the benefits system will not be enough to demonstrate fiscal credibility.
The former Prime Minister is of less importance than resisting the temptation to make her mistakes all over again.
Some will take the view that someone’s tax bill is their own private business. This is hard to maintain when the person concerned is Chancellor of the Exchequer.
From renationalisation of the energy and train companies to a bonfire of environmental and employment regulations, taking back control from Brussels has opened a new range of possibilities that were previously off the menu.
His plan for 2024 is to say: “I may not be most exciting politician in the world. But I’m the more reliable of the two before you. What I promise I then deliver.” It’s unlikely to be enough on its own.
Over this period, the UK’s economic growth was level with the US’s and exceeded the other five members of the G7. In other words, on international comparisons, we did well.
It’s a tribute of a kind to the topsy-turvy nature of 2022 that Johnson, Truss and Sunak were all eligible to be both Minister of the Year and Backbencher of the Year.
The public sector has just swallowed another semi-autonomous set of institutions with little protest or controversy.
The Prime Minister must make up his mind whether or not to see through a policy to stop the small boats – now an issue of profound symbolic importance.
Even though she won a big majority of the Conservative members plus the largest number of MPs declaring, there was a feeling from the very outset that she would not be allowed to govern in the way she wanted.