September 8th 2022

The Economist this week

Highlights from the latest issue

This week we have two covers. In most of the world we warn that Brazil’s rainforest-slashing president, Jair Bolsonaro, is preparing to push a Big Lie. All the polls say he will lose an election in October, but he is laying the rhetorical groundwork to reject the result. A devoted pupil of Donald Trump, he constantly suggests to his supporters that the ballot could be rigged against him. If his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is declared the winner, he may incite an insurrection like the storming of the US Capitol by a Trumpist mob—or worse. 
 
In Britain and Europe we highlight the hellish job awaiting Liz Truss. Britain’s new prime minister must eschew pantomime radicalism if she is to start to pull the country out of its rut. Parts of the National Health Service are in disarray; trains and courts are crippled by strikes; but most urgent of all, soaring energy prices have helped create a cost-of-living crisis. Her new plan to help households with their heating bills is a stunning reversal of her recent stance against handouts. Her pragmatism is sometimes sensible, but should not mean reckless abandonment of free-market principles or fiscal responsibility. 

Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief

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The world this week

Liz Truss won the leadership contest of Britain’s Conservative Party, thus becoming prime minister. Ms Truss appointed loyalists to the top jobs in her cabinet. Kwasi Kwarteng was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, James Cleverly foreign secretary and Suella Braverman home secretary. There was no place at the table for Rishi Sunak, her opponent in the Tory race. Ms Truss’s most pressing task is helping Britons through the cost-of-living crisis. She unveiled plans to cap energy prices in order to protect households and firms from surging bills.

More from Politics this week

Volkswagen said it would list Porsche in an IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange that will take place in either late September or early October. The German carmaker is offloading only a portion of the stock, some of which will go to the Porsche-Piëch families, VW’s biggest shareholders. The rest will be sold to individual investors. VW will retain the remaining shares. The flotation could raise as much as €10.6bn ($10.5bn), which would make it the biggest stockmarket listing in Europe since Glencore in 2011.

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