I have a confession…. One of my roles as a Tory parliamentary assessor back in the days of Cameron was to help ensure more women candidates were selected. I came across an email exchange in 2008 with one Liz Truss, providing coaching advice to help her selection chances. She was picked to fight a safe Tory seat in Norfolk shortly afterwards. The rest is history as they say. Only time will tell whether I should have kept this to myself…
So, as expected, Liz Truss is the new PM but by a smaller majority than many forecast. And what a mountain she now has to climb as she faces energy, inflation and NHS crises.
Expectations are so low there is little downside…
It will be tough. She starts with only 57% support from Tory members (47% if you include those who didn’t vote), 32% of MPs (15% at the start of the contest) and a 12% approval rating from general voters according to some polls.
Truss’s self-belief is apparently legendary according to colleagues. It will need to be.
And that self-belief has already showed itself with a bold start. A partisan Cabinet of allies and a move to the Right with tax cuts combined with huge amounts of new borrowing and continuing culture wars. One Cabinet minister particularly makes you shudder. Suella Braverman as Home Secretary. Really? Likely to be highly aggressive on immigration, the EU and careless with judicial independence. She will have liberals and the Left foaming at the mouth. Perhaps that is the point.
So the Opposition has all to play for. With the scale of crises engulfing the country, Truss hasn’t got long to prove herself and many of all persuasions think she will fail. One misstep and it is game over.
But therein lies the trap. Big policy announcements, some borrowed ideas from opponents, might just surprise massively low voter expectations on the upside. Constant, urgent activity from a government simply doing things might impress.
On balance, Truss will probably fail because her Government lacks the necessary communication skills from the top, is too right-wing and partisan, managing to upset voters in the North and South for different reasons in the process.
But if I were Starmer or even Ed Davey of the LibDems I would articulate a clear alternative quickly and keep my guard up.
Inside Right Politics 