The Situation in the Morning - Will Liz Truss Follow Boris Johnson?

Relief package – it's not just the numbers that count

The government decided on a third

package and announced it yesterday.

Among other things, it provides for an electricity price brake, one-off payments for pensioners and an increase in child benefit.

The package is said to total more than 65 billion euros.

That's a lot, a lot.

With the sheer sum alone, the traffic light coalition apparently wants to prove its ability to act, which was recently questioned, and that of the whole country at the same time.

Dizzying

have been associated with

since the beginning of the pandemic

.

As Minister of Finance, at the beginning of the

, he announced with optimism, almost cheerfully, that he would get the “bazooka” out, i.e. spend huge sums of money to get the country out of the crisis with “bang”.

As chancellor, in the new situation, in which a few more crises have been added, he is adopting a quieter, more serious tone.

There are reasons.

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a feeling (albeit erroneous) that the virus somehow threatened everyone equally.

With the

, however, it was clear from the outset that it would cause injustice and exacerbate social hardship.

Those who have no savings, those who live in an apartment building with gas heating, are hit harder than solvent owners of single-family homes, who can now consider whether they want to invest their savings in solar systems and heat pumps.

The

is endangered, the "Monday demonstrations" announced for today against the energy price policy of the government, to which the left is now calling, prove that. But they also show something else: Financial relief alone, no matter how necessary, will not be enough to calm the situation down.

What is needed above all is good communication.

During the "Monday demonstrations" it is unclear who the actual

is:

.

And what goal he is pursuing:

to shake the democracies of the West through

The government must therefore make much clearer what the cause of the current crisis is and what the goals of its policies are.

Scholz said yesterday in the summer interview that the times were agitated.

But he refuses to be excited.

No one expects him to stoke the fuss.

It would make sense to link numbers and measures again and again – and preferably calmly – with what is actually at stake here: the defense of democracy and freedom.

• Comments on the relief package: "Sometimes with the watering can on the way"

Who will succeed Boris Johnson?

And does it end well?

Today the

announces who will succeed Boris Johnson as the new prime minister.

Tory members had the choice between

and former

My colleague Jörg Schindler, SPIEGEL's London correspondent, has made a decision: "Given the current situation, that can only be Liz Truss," he writes in a portrait of the British politician.

Truss, as my colleague describes it, likes to present himself as the new Margaret Thatcher.

Her calculus is understandable: the Conservatives still worship the former Prime Minister, so it can only help Truss to be compared to Thatcher.

But if what von Truss's former politics lecturer recently wrote about the candidate in The Times is true, another comparison would be more obvious: "Her outstanding trait is the ability, without batting an eyelid, to replace one passionate conviction with another .«

That doesn't sound like the stubborn Thatcher, but more like Johnson.

And wasn't it primarily the constant changes in position that led to Johnson's dismissal?

• Boris Johnson's next favorite Liz Truss: The Human Hand Grenade 

In Germany, a dog sleeps

has been on a

to

since yesterday

.

Today he will take part in the memorial service for the Israeli victims of the 1972 Olympics attack in Munich, tomorrow he will address the plenary session of the Bundestag and then he will visit the memorial site for the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Celle.

As an officer in the British Army, Herzog's father was involved in the liberation of the camp.

What country is this that Herzog is traveling to?

Germany - almost eighty years after the end of the Holocaust?

What is Jewish life like here today?

A special issue of SPIEGEL was published last week. The headline reads "System Sprenger."

Relatives from different generations wrote letters for this issue.

We also asked 25-year-old

of the

Union , to write letters to his parents

.

"Hi, dear ones," he begins, and then describes how happy he is about the wide range of Jewish events in Berlin.

But he also writes: »In the meantime, you have to be really careful about how and where you openly show your Jewish identity«.

is "like a sleeping dog in this country, and everyone trusts that it won't be woken up."

Lars Umanski is a friendly, polite person.

Maybe that's why he didn't add anything to his wording, "too much": everyone trusts

that anti-Semitism will not be aroused.

• Vice President of the Jewish Student Union: Correspondence between Lars Umanski and his parents 

Pussy Riot - More than a portent

Before

attacked Ukraine in February, it was not customary to call

a dictator and Russia a dictatorship.

Avoiding these terms was also an act of consideration.

That didn't do any good.

Putin has long

treated opponents like a

On February 21, 2012, ten years before the start of the war, punk rockers Pussy Riot warned of Putin's pact with orthodoxy with a short protest appearance in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.

The women were arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism – an absurdly high sentence.

It would be an understatement to view the verdict as a harbinger of doom.

It was proof that the disaster in Russia had long since taken its course.

Today Pussy Riot is performing in Munster.

• Pussy Riot activist Alyokhina escapes from Russia

You can find more news and background information on the war in Ukraine here:

• Zelenskyj celebrates alleged territory gains, 13 freighters full of grain on the way:

  According to Kiev, the Ukrainian army is making up ground in the east and south.

  An exploded grenade launcher at a children's festival is investigated.

  And: Bundeswehr forces arrive in Lithuania.

  That happened in the night.

• This is how the Ukrainian offensive in the south is progressing:

  Ukrainian troops have been advancing for a week.

  Despite alleged territorial gains, the soldiers have a long way to go - the current status in maps and pictures. 

• "The nuclear power plant cannot be operated safely":

  Former IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen has himself inspected nuclear facilities in war zones.

  He worries about the condition of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia - and warns of a cooling failure. 

• »While you count pennies, we count our victims«:

  Olena Selenska keeps commenting on the Ukraine war.

  Now the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj spoke to the BBC - and addressed clear words to the people in the West.

Here is the current quiz of the day

The starting question today: Where was Angela Merkel on the evening of the fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989?

The latest news from the night

• At least ten dead in a series of knife attacks in Canada:

  Some victims were apparently targeted, others randomly: Ten people died in several knife attacks in a remote region of Canada.

  The perpetrators are on the run.

• Private plane crashes into the Baltic Sea after a random flight:

  The occupants may have been unconscious: A Cessna, which was traveling from southern Spain to Cologne, crashed off the coast of Latvia.

  Previously, Eurofighters of the German Air Force had risen.

• Chile's people smash new constitution:

  15 million people in Chile were called upon to vote on a draft constitution - and their verdict is clear: they let the paper fall flat

The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today

• How a damaged sailor survived 16 hours on the Atlantic

  :

  In the middle of the sea, Laurent Camprubi's boat fills with water and a short time later floats upside down.

  He waits for hours for help, but it is too dark and the sea too rough for his rescue. 

• Literature was supposed to save Thomas Melle – “perhaps that was a naïve belief”:

  Sad, funny, crazy: Thomas Melle touched his readership with a book about his manic depression.

  Now his new novel is appearing – and once again he has to find his way out of his illness and back into life 

• The fight for the semen of the miracle stallion:

  The horse dealer Paul Schockemöhle had a duel with a Dutch entrepreneur in front of a court.

  It's about 120 milliliters of semen - and the question of who is allowed to rake in millions with the legacy of a dead animal. 

• The pitfalls of the price cap:

  The coalition intervenes in the electricity market: Money from an excess profit levy is intended to finance a price brake.

  That relieves all Germans.

  Just how high?

  That is still completely unclear - and the project is very complex. 

I wish you a good start into the day.

Yours, Susanne Beyer