Liz Truss news – latest: State pension lock at risk as Boris Johnson favoured by Tories

Spending cuts ahead could be as deep as those seen during the Tory austerity programme which followed the 2008-09 banking crash, economists have warned (Adam Forrest writes).

It comes as Labour accused Lis Truss’s new chancellor Jeremy Hunt of leading the push for “austerity season two”, as he looks to balance the books after the disastrous mini-Budget.

And experts have warned that families face annual household energy bills of £5,000 from April after the government’s U-turn on the promise of two years of support.

The Resolution Foundation said many middle-income families may be unable to pay energy bills next year after the two-year universal support package was ditched.

Chief executive Torsten Bell said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there was a fiscal black hole of around £30bn even after Mr Hunt scrapped nearly all of the tax cuts from the mini-Budget.

Labour opened up a 40 per cent lead over the Tories in the so-called Red Wall seats by Monday, polling by Redfield and Wilton found.

Support for the opposition party stayed on 61 per cent from 4 October while the Tories dropped another two points to hit 21 per cent in the mostly northern English constituencies where Boris Johnson claimed the votes of traditional Labour backers in 2019.

Sir Keir Starmer’s personal approval rating fell 6 points to 6 per cent – still relatively high for the Labour leader – but given Liz Truss’s continuing slide in popularity, the proportion of voters who believed he would make a better prime minister rose to 58 per cent against her 15 per cent.

Labour has torn ahead in the polls since Liz Truss set out on her doomed “dash for growth”, with the Tories forecast for near wipeout in a general election. A national poll by Redfield and Wilton yesterday gave Labour a 36 point lead.

Tuesday’s poll covered 40 traditionally Labour voting seats that were won by the Tories in 2019, with the exception of Hartlepool which Labour lost last year in a by-election.

Liz Truss is “charmless, graceless, brainless, and useless”, a former Conservative minister has said (Jon Stone writes).

Speaking on Tuesday Edwina Currie, an ex-health minister, said there was absolutely no way the prime minister would survive in office.

Her comments comes after a poll showed majority of Tory members now want the prime minister to resign.

55 per cent of card-carrying Conservatives want Ms Truss to step down – with just 38 per cent wanting her to stay in office, according to the survey by YouGov.

Asked during an interview with the GB News channel whether Ms Truss could survive, Ms Currie said: “Oh, no, of course she can’t survive. Oh my goodness. I’m going to put this on record. I think she is charmless, graceless, brainless and useless.”

Liz Truss has abandoned her commitment to the state pension triple lock, which raises payments in line with the higher of: 2.5 per cent, wages or inflation.

As recently as 2 October Ms Truss was clear state pensions would increase in April according to the longstanding system.

“I’ve committed to the triple lock. Yes,” she said in a BBC interview.

But, after replacing Kwasi Kwarteng in the Treasury after their disastrous mini-budget, Downing Street backed down on this pledge as new chancellor Jeremy Hunt told ministers they would have to find savings from their departmental budgets.

The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “We are very aware of how many vulnerable pensioners there are and indeed our priority ahead of this fiscal plan is we continue to protect the most vulnerable in society.

“The prime minister and the chancellor are not making any commitments on individual policy areas at this point, but as I say the decisions will be made through the prism of what matters most to the most vulnerable.”

A Tory MP has written a suspiciously timed article about the dangers of “dumpster fires” being allowed to rage for too long.

Political pundits on Twitter suggest the ostensibly safety conscious Robert Largan was really sending a coded message to colleagues that it was time for them to move to oust Liz Truss.

“Without action, dumpster fires can rage on for long periods of time, spreading quickly and causing major structural damage,” he wrote.

Another line was: “The longer the fire is left to rage, the greater the danger to the integrity of the skip.”

He concluded: “The act of extinguishing the flames could well be the end of the skip they originated in. But urgent action is necessary nevertheless.”

Mr Largan is not the first Tory to fire off apparently coded messages against the ailing prime minister on social media.

Michael Gove, Ms Truss’s cabinet colleague for many years who has lately been critical of her from the backbenches, posted a pair of tweets after the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday that many saw to be “trolling” the prime minister as her leadership floundered.

Tweeting about a pair of constituency visits, Mr Gove made a series of thinly veiled references to mounting pressure for Ms Truss to resign – “all should be fixed by mid November” – and the fallout from the failure of her economic policies: “discussed funding pressures, support for the vulnerable and recruitment and retention.”

The very hardest one begins with R. And we’ll be hearing it sooner rather than later, writes Tom Peck.

Read Tom’s full piece here:

There is no way of sugar-coating the harsh facts, writes Hamish McRae.

Read Hamish’s full piece here:

Liz Truss’s government has summoned the Chinese ambassador’s deputy after a Hong Kong pro-democracy protester was beaten in the grounds of China’s consulate in Manchester.

Foreign Office minister Jesse Norman said the government was “extremely concerned at the apparent scenes of violence” at the consulate and had told the Chinese embassy of the need to allow people to protest peacefully.

Our politics correspondent Adam Forrest reports:

Downing Street has insisted Liz Truss will not back down on a key commitment to boost defence spending after the armed forces minister publicly threatened to quit if new chancellor Jeremy Hunt ditches the pledge.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, would also be under pressure to follow James Heappey in resigning if the prime minister’s promise to spend 3 per cent of national income on defence by 2030 was broken.

Mr Heappey said he and Mr Wallace, who is tipped as a potential successor to Ms Truss in Downing Street, both believe the pledge “must be delivered” and warned there is “no prosperity without security”.

No 10 went on to insist the PM is “committed” to the promise, but hinted at possible slower rises in defence spending ahead of the end of the decade.

Mr Hunt has refused to rule out rowing back on the promise as he searches for cuts to plug a multimillion-pound black hole in the nation’s finances.

Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities are “cowardly” acts by Vladimir Putin, the UK has said.

Foreign secretary James Cleverly said they were the “desperate acts” of a man losing the war.

Meanwhile Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, was preparing for talks in the US about the situation in Ukraine and other issues of shared concern.