PM preparing to curb English councils from introducing speed limits ahead of party conference

Good morning. The Conservative party conference starts on Sunday, and this is always a big moment when a governing party can reset, redefine itself and chart a new agenda for the next 12 months. But this time the pressure for a successful reboot is much more intense than usual, for three reasons.

First, it’s Rishi Sunak’s first party conference as leader. Second, the political model he has adopted over the first 12 months (steady “competence”, focusing on the five priorities) has totally failed (if success is judged by electoral performance, which unfortunately is the metric that matters most to MPs). And, third, with the election due in about a year, this is probably a last-chance conference. It’s all or nothing.

Yes, the costs of the high-speed rail project are getting ‘totally out of control’ – but it’s hardly lacked political oversight

One piece of political spin about HS2’s spiralling costs is nonsense: the idea that ministers have a right to be shocked by the numbers. HS2 Ltd, the body building the railway and new stations, may be “arm’s length” for shorthand purposes, but it is not some faraway entity operating beyond government scrutiny. Rather, it is tightly meshed to the Department for Transport (DfT), which is involved in all big planning and spending decisions.

So when the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, says costs are “getting totally out of control” – a reasonable analysis as the bill heads towards a grotesque £100bn – he should explain why the government is seemingly surprised. Whitehall insiders talk about HS2’s bosses behaving “like kids with the golden credit card” but that ignores the fact that there is an “open books” relationship with the DfT. The government sees the monthly credit card statements, as it were. And No 10, incidentally, signs off on the megabucks salaries (departing chief executive Mark Thurston got £676,000 last year) on appointment.

Martin Lewis and Citizens Advice among those telling PM poorer Britons must get help, as industry source calls idea ‘unworkable’

More than 140 organisations and individuals, including the consumer champion Martin Lewis, have told Rishi Sunak to make good on a promise to help Britain’s least well-off households with a social tariff for their gas and electricity.

The group has written to the prime minister reiterating calls to fulfil a government pledge to help vulnerable households with a discounted rate for energy bills before the last remaining support schemes come to an end in April.

Exclusive: Potential plan to restrict measures such as 20mph speed limits and levying fines from traffic cameras alarms travel groups

The government is to limit measures councils can take to curb car traffic including 20mph speed restrictions and bus lanes, the Guardian understands, under plans that have alarmed travel groups and risks a row with local authorities.

In another sign Rishi Sunak hopes to gain support by prioritising the needs of motorists, other plans expected to be announced next week include limits on local authorities’ abilities to levy fines from traffic cameras and restrictions on enforcing box junction infringements.

Sunak refuses to speculate on his own speculation over future of Birmingham to Manchester leg

What goes around, comes around. Last September it had been Liz Truss’s turn to do the annual local radio round before the Tory party conference. Like most things Truss comes into contact with, it had quickly turned into a chaotic disaster. One for the ages. It turned out no one had warned Liz that local radio presenters might actually ask her questions. Tricky ones at that. Maybe she had thought she was there to read out the traffic reports. Or the weather. Talking to people was just one of the things at which Truss was extraordinarily crap.

It’s not Rishi Sunak’s strong point either. He lives in his own bubble where other people only exist to be informed and entertained by his own brilliance. His is a gilded, entitled world where he can do no wrong. Any decision he makes is de facto right by virtue of the fact he made it. Any challenge is unwelcome and rebuffed with thin-skinned tetchiness. The idea that other people might have something of value to contribute is a category error. Without Rish! their existence is near meaningless. So fair to say that Sunak’s hour with local radio was one he will also be doing his best to forget.

Move comes after controversy over taxpayer-funded support for firms in which Catamaran has invested

Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, is winding down her startup investment fund, months after questions were raised over its links to taxpayer-funded schemes .

Murty’s venture capital fund, Catamaran Ventures UK, gave little detail, only saying that its directors “have decided to liquidate the company”, according to its latest filings at Companies House .

PM remains tight-lipped about rail project’s future and says his focus is on potholes and local buses

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Rishi Sunak has refused a dozen times to provide clarity over HS2’s future, but denied that scrapping the Birmingham to Manchester leg would be a betrayal of the north of England.

Despite two weeks of uncertainty over the remainder of the project, the prime minister remained tight-lipped on whether HS2 would be pared back in a series of BBC local radio interviews spanning stations from Shropshire to Teesside.

Prime minister says ‘majority of journeys are by car’ as he avoids question on HS2 extension from Birmingham

The Independent’s Tom Peck may have worked out why the HS2 project is going so badly.

Might seem like a silly question but are there actually “spades in the ground” on HS2, as Rishi Sunak claimed at least ten times this morning? Is it being dug by hand? That would explain a lot.

Jameson: Sorry, I feel we’re going off topic here and I just want to keep it focused on HS2. We’re straight-talking people in the north. It’s a yes or a no. Are you scrapping the HS2 line between Birmingham and Manchester?

Sunak: Like I said, I’m not not speculating on future things. We’ve got spades in the ground right now and we’re getting on …

The PM is rebranding himself as the man thinking far into the strategic future, because he can do nothing about the present

Rishi Sunak has been an MP since 2015 and has never known the indignity of opposition, or even the frustration of a slow track to ministerial office. He was chancellor of the exchequer within five years. That rate of promotion looked extraordinary from the outside. To its beneficiary it must have felt consistent with a record of precocious academic and professional achievement.

To observe the rapidity of the ascent is not to pass judgment on whether it was deserved. Sunak is smart, industrious and adept enough to have run the Treasury in trying circumstances. Enough Conservative MPs admired those qualities to install him as prime minister without a contest and in rebuke to their own members who had preferred Liz Truss only months before and who, given the chance, would probably have reinstated Boris Johnson.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist