Misplaced Truss? Britain’s ruling party meets

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. Today from London, I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Russia's thinning and tired ranks need replenishing in Ukraine, but it's not clear President Vladimir Putin's partial mobilization will help. Conscripts are getting little training and the Russian public mood has shifted at the mention of a draft. And there's always some good press to be had when a newly discovered species is named after someone famous. But what happens when that someone famous becomes someone notorious? Turns out it's tricky to rename things like the Hitler beetle. But first, It's billed as the biggest annual political event in Europe. And the British Conservative Party's conference in Birmingham is certainly getting a lot of attention.

Less than a month since Liz Truss took over as the UK's new Conservative Prime Minister, her government's controversial tax and borrowing plans mean the Conservative Party conference is literally besieged by critics.

The conference will culminate in a speech tomorrow by Liz Truss, whose first few weeks as Prime Minister haven't gone very smoothly. A mini budget of tax cuts delivered less than two weeks ago sent the pound to a record low against the dollar. Banks pulled mortgage deals. The bank of England announced it was ready to buy unlimited quantities of long dated bonds to restore Some order to financial markets. Yesterday, the man who delivered that budget, the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, gave his conference speech with, with some suggesting he might not be in his new job for much longer.

Is it all over, Chancellor? This a humiliation, Chancellor?

He confirmed a climb down on one of his budget's most controversial proposals, a cut to the 45p tax rate, the 45% that the highest earners pay. A general election isn't due for two years, but polls suggest a huge lead for the opposition Labour Party right now. And delegates at the conference are engaging in a lot of soul searching.

Well, it's a slightly surreal mood in that this is a party that really does realize the trouble it's in. And yet there is, as always at conference, you know, lots of drinking, lots of champagne flowing, a rather sort of cheery spirit about the place, almost a sort of a gallows humor.

Matthew Hullhouse is the Economist's British political correspondent and is at this week's event.

They say that sincerity is one of the greatest sins in British politics and that's certainly the way in which this party is responding to this current cris.

And in a more general sense, where does the Conservative Party find itself right now?

So this ought to have been an immensely buzzy conference as they unveiled their new leader. Liz Truss became leader of Conservative Party at the very beginning of September. This is her first big introduction to the country and there was, particularly on the right of the party, a huge amount of optimism that she was going to take it in a new direction, pursue some quite radical policies on supply side reform and tax reduction. However, the context to that is that at the same time, this is the fourth prime minister that the Conservative party's had in 12 years, continuously in power. That brings all sorts of sort of exhaustion and friction as it faces the challenge of regenerating itself. You have lots of MPs who know they'll never be in office again and so sort of become disinhibited. It's become terribly rebellious. The cont, of course, is that the previous Prime Minister left office because he had lost the capacity to govern because he'd lost the support of his party. So this was already a very difficult party to lead.

And how has that leadership been now, given that Ms. Truss is only a month into her job?

What's taken place in the past two weeks is that Liz Truss's big budget, which she hoped really would set the direction of this new agenda, has had the most catastrophic reception. It led to the UK denting the confidence of the bond markets. It led to a sharp fall in sterling and a sense that she was sort of careless to the economic strengths which she faced in terms of exactly how much she could borrow. So that really led to this very, very adverse reception from the markets. That, in turn precipitated a very, very sudden drop in support for the Conservative Party. You saw a succession of polls which showed the labour party between 20 and up to 33%, which really is a seismic shift in support and a real precipitous drop away in support for the Conservative Party that has triggered all sorts of ructions within the Tory Party as they decide what to do next.

And we heard at the conference yesterday, Mr. Kwarteng, confirming that some of the points in that budget have already been backtracked, right?

That's right. So Kwasi Kwateng, the new Chancellor, confirmed in his conference speech that one of the most controversial policies in his package, which was the abolition of the 45p rate of tax, which is paid only by the highest earners, that would be reversed.

I know the plan put forward only 10 days ago has caused a little turbulence. I get it, I get it. We are listening and have listened. And now I want to focus on delivering the major parts of our growth package.

At the same time, the government has sort of gone crawling back to the Office of Budget Responsibility. This is the fiscal watchdog, and they will be sort of vetting spending plans, which is really an effort to win back the confidence of the markets.

And how significant is it to you that they had to backtrack on some of this policy after what could only be described as an uproar?

So Tress was prepared to be unpopular. She really wanted to reset the debate on growth in the uk. Her argument was that the distribution effects of policies were secondary to the overall picture of whether the UK was enjoying high growth or not. That gave her sort of the confidence, as it were, to, Amongst other things, scrambles 45p rate. But, you know, one of the rules of thumb of British politics is that, you know, it is possible to do things that the public disagree with and which they think are unfair as long as you retain a reputation for competence, particularly economic competence. Now, what appears to have taken place with these policies is that they were seen not only as unfair, but because of the very adverse market reaction. The perception came that she was incompetent as well. And the context, of course, to the tax cuts is they were meant to be the easy bit. They were meant to be the sweetener that put their party in a good mood so that they could Then go on and pass the really, really difficult stuff, which was the supply side reforms on stage stuff like planning and infrastructure. Now, as it's happened, given that the party has rejected the thing that it's supposed to in its DNA, like, which is lower taxes, it's looking very, very difficult to pass a lot of that other stuff which is meant to pay for the tax cuts.

So clearly the Prime Minister in some rough waters here, she's going to give her speech tomorrow. What's the feeling around that? Is there a chance she can get the party to rally around her, to forgive her these early missteps?

Well, it had to undergo a major rewrite and it is a very, very difficult speech to make for two reasons. One, it's, you know, her debut speech and she won, remember, not through winning a general election landslide of the entire country, but merely through winning the support of Conservative Party members who elect the mp. So not only does she have to sort of introduce herself to the country, she sort of has to answer the question, which is, you know, who put you here and where is your mandate to embark on a radical change of policy? So that's gonna be a very, very difficult speech.

So Ms. Trust is trying to win trust in her own government, her own competence, but also in the party as a whole. Right. This is a party that, as you say, has tanked in the polls. What's the longer run picture here?

Yes, I mean, the obvious context to the sort of insurrectionary mood here is the fact that MPs and activists can all see this succession of polls which gives a 20 or even 30 point deficit with the Labour Party. And those, if borne out, would point to a very heavy defeat at the hands of the Labour Party. And it's going to get tough because there are, across Europe and the States, a wave of interest rate rises coming through, which is going to really mean, you know, substantially higher mortgage payments as people move on to new rates. There is a big cost of living squeeze underway already with high energy prices, which the government has already stepped in to try and mitigate. But nonetheless, it will still be felt. So it's going to be a really tough, long winter with lots of pressures on the standard of living. This difficult week is simply a foretaste of some of the challenges that this government and this party are going to face.

Matthew, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

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The speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin made last week was pretty heady stuff. Mostly it was about annexing four regions of Ukraine, claiming them as Russian after a series of fake referendums. But he also had some stirring things to say about the West. They want to see us as a colony, he said. A crowd of soulless slaves. They don't want equal cooperation but robbery. Mr. Putin badly needs to rally support for his invasion of Ukraine because it's not looking good at home or on the battlefield. Two weeks ago he announced a few partial mobilization of reservists and conscripts that sparked protests in towns and cities across the country, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. One mother in the city of Nalchik confronts an official saying we are the occupiers. Ukraine has not been part of the USSR for a long time. For many Russians, the war was a thing happening on television. Now that a draft has started, it all seems much closer to home.

The partial mobilization or the so called partial mobilization which Putin has announced on 21 September, is a sign of desperation.

Arkady Ostrovsky is our Russia editor and.

Putin felt he had to do it for two reasons. One is to replenish the depleted troops which are struggling to hold a thousand kilometer long front. And another is to broaden the support for the war by stepping up sort of patriotic feeling and portraying it as this is now the west, the whole of the world, attacking Russia and it's the time to defend the motherland.

And what, on paper anyway, does the partial mobilization entail? How many people are we talking about?

On paper? It actually doesn't say anything about the numbers at all. The decree which Putin has signed has one paragraph which is classified following Putin's order. Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defense minister, talked about 300,000 men. Being drafted of the reservists. And Novay Gazeta, one of Russia's most highly respected independent newspapers, cited its sources in the Kremlin, saying the real figure could be as high as 1 million men. And we don't know over what time. But certainly from what we've seen on the ground in Russia, in terms of who's getting drafted, this doesn't suggest that this operation is limited just to the professionals or even to 300,000 men.

Which is to say this is not just about reservists, this is about full.

On conscription, which is to say, basically, yes, they're trying to get who they can. There's been stories, lots of them on social media, interviews, etc. Of it, specialists, doctors, teachers, people with chronic diseases, particularly protesters who came out very bravely to protest against mobilization and Putin war, who've been detained and served those draft papers while being in detention. We now hear reports of mobile drafting offices being set up on the borders with Georgia and Finland as people try to flee Putin's war. In people's mobilization so far, some 260,000 people at least have fled Russia. And there are queues at the borders with Georgia and Kazakhstan now stretching several kilometers.

But if it's this kind of willy nilly conscripting people to fight, this is not going to be the elite fighting force that Mr. Putin wants to have.

That's correct, Jason. So the elite forces, if there ever were some, have been very badly depleted and mangled now, which is why Putin had to call this mobilization. And the problem of course now for him is that these conscripts who don't have a particular motivation to fight or the skills are basically cannon fodder. They might make it harder for Ukrainian forces to liberate their territory, but it's certainly not a kind of a force that will be able to throw themselves forward. So limited effect in terms of the military utility, but certainly very big impact in terms of politics in Russia.

How do you mean?

So this mobilization, 21st September was the day when the war came back to Russia. This day is being described by a lot of Russians I've talked to as sort of the second start of the war. So the first, of course, was the 24th of February when people invaded Ukraine. But since then, for a lot of Russians, the war stayed on television. Putin kept telling them it was going to plan. He promised them just two weeks after they invaded that there will be no draft, that there will be no mobilization of conscripts or reservists. Now that promise has been broken, people understand that this is much bigger than special military operation. And most importantly, it has come back to affect them in their home. Because a lot of the support, particularly the passive support of Putin's war has been based on the idea that it stays. It's contained within the television screen, if you like. Now, that television screen just been shattered. So this creates a new political reality in Russia where the war now demands a sacrifice, affects every family, and how that's going to affect overall support for it is a big question. Of course, what Putin's now going to try to do. He'll use those images of Russians who have agency and money fleeing the country. And he will try to use them, already is using them to say these are traitors, and he will try to turn the rest of the country much poorer, with less agencies, against the better educated and more resourceful people who are fleeing the country. So we don't know exactly how it's going to play out, but it's certainly changed the whole political dynamic in Russia over the past two weeks.

And he's paying that high political cost from. For not a great deal of gain on the battlefield. Is there any other way to spin this than it was a tactical mistake?

Of course it was. You could say it was a tactical mistake. But then the whole war, Jason, has been a major mistake. And what it tells you is that Putin cannot admit that mistake. He cannot reverse this war. He cannot actually even end it. So he's proceeded to annex the territories in the south and east of the country, signaling that there is absolutely no way back to reverse thing. And he will throw as many men as need be to cover his mistake, to hang on to power. Because to him, any retreat, any defeat on the battleground absolutely equals the loss of power, freedom, and possibly his life.

So how does this partial mobilization, as it continues to play out, fit into that annexation story?

So Putin has justified this mobilization as not just to liberate the territories in Donbass, but actually to defend the motherland, to defend Russia's own territory. And that actually is an important point in one respect, that this will allow Putin to use conscripts to fight on Ukrainian soil in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Now, conscripts are different, Jason, from mobilization of reservists. Russia has always had a military conscription for men aged between 18 to 27. Students, or some students are exempt. This is a force of roughly 1.2 million people at any time. Of course, a lot of them are just very young men without any training, without military experience. They serve for 12 months being trained, but they're not really a match for much more motivated and now better trained and better equipped Ukrainian army. Now, if Putin actually commits this young man, aged 18 to 27, to battle in Ukraine, that will further, I think, antagonize Russian society. We remember the story of the war in Afghanistan, which the Soviets have started in December 79 and which went on for almost 10 years. Nothing turned the Soviet people and families away from their government and the Communist Party as much as that, because it was not just that they were deprived of the goods and the food by the Soviet rule, but actually there was a threat to life. And my sense is what this mobilization and what the annexation and deployment of recruits will do. It will create a very clear message in people's mind that is the Kremlin and their own government, which is the source of the biggest threat, not NATO or Ukraine.

Arkady, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

You've probably heard that Prince Charles is now King Charles iii, but the royal's princedom carries on through an endangered Ecuadorian frog, the Hyloscratus Prince Charlesi. Other species named after famous people include the Madagascan lemur, named after Monty Python's John Cleese. But what happens when a species is named after a less beloved figure?

Anophalamus hitleri is a tiny, blind, carybid beetle found in the remote caves of Savinia. It was named in 1937 after the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler and is probably the most offensively named animal in the world.

Caitlin Talbot writes about science for the Economist.

One of the particular problems that we have is that Nazi memorabilia enthusiasts make journeys to these caves and add it to their collections, and this is actually driving the beetle to extinction. This is a wider problem within taxonomy. We get many names that are deemed inappropriate or offensive in the modern context. And scientists really think it's time that there's a protocol in place for when this happens so that names can be changed.

Why can't you just rename them?

There's a code of priority to the first taxonomist to name a species. And this is for reasons of coherence and clarity. Some think that if a species was to be renamed many times in different contexts, it would result in chaos. The literature needs to be consistent in terms of the names of species so that they can be followed.

So that's the rule. Once something is named. Something that has to stick.

Yes. But researchers have noted that names change all the time building names, the names of awards or statues fall and portraits are removed from buildings when someone is deemed to be inappropriate or offensive in the modern day. So the rigid stance applies to all animals, including humans. There's calls to rename Homo rhodesiensis, which is obviously named after the controversial figure Cecil Rhodes, and the colonial state of Rhodesia to Homo bodiensis.

So why are creatures in general named after people in the first place?

It can be for matters of interest. It might be politically motivated. So if the researcher has a favourite politician or a favourite celebrity, they might simply give it the name because they like it. But it can also encourage popularity. Taxonomy is often thought of as quite a stuffy field, but when you have a name like Nanaria swiftday, Taylor Swift's millipede, suddenly it's in the news and people want to know about it. And that also boosts conservation efforts. So a frog named after Jacinda ardern will get hundreds of thousands of dollars in conservation, whereas if it was called something else, it probably won't.

So the rule is really strict on keeping something named the same thing, but not so strong on what things can be named in the first place?

Well, not exactly. So species have a two part scientific name. It's often thought it has to be Latin, but actually it can be in any language. So Homo sapiens, where Homo is the genus and sapiens is the species. These were formalized in 1753 by a Swedish botanist called Carl Linnaeus, and it's the job of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to enforce those rules today. The President told me that they are not there to impose ethical standards, but rather sound scientific communication. And that's really their priority. So they don't weigh in on ethical issues, but they do hold fast to the rule that you cannot change a name once it has been called that.

So what's to be done then, when there is this kind of controversy, if the people in charge of it won't budge?

The commission told me that one option would be to change the common names of species. So often we don't refer to a species by its scientific name anyway, like we would say humans rather than Homo sapien. So official bodies have done this in the past. The Entomological Society in America no longer calls the gypsy moth the gypsy moth because it's offensive to the Ramoni people. And some think that the problem could be avoided altogether if there was a rule that species can't be named after people who are completely unrelated to the field or science more generally. But then we won't have the joys of names like Nonaria, Swiftay or even the horsefly. Scaptia, Beyonce, Caitlin, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. Drop us a line@podcastseconomist.com or leave us a rating wherever you listen. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

Sam.