Liz Truss: Winning the Poisoned Chalice

T here have, it is true, been stickier moments to become Britain’s prime minister: May 1940, for one, when Winston Churchill took the top job. Nevertheless, however glowingly Boris Johnson may, in his farewell speech, have spoken of his legacy (“foundations that will stand the test of time,” “great solid masonry,” the “path to prosperity” paved, and so on), the reality is that Liz Truss, his successor, has inherited one hell of a mess, politically and economically, and time is already running out for her to fix it.

The best thing that Truss has going for her may be that expectations are so low, partly because of some in the media caricaturing her as none too bright, a verdict very hard to reconcile with how far she has come. According to a poll reported in Bloomberg, only 12 percent of Brits believed she would make a good or great leader. More than half reckoned she would be poor or terrible. She is not an impressive speaker and, although her intentions are good, her policy prescriptions are not always properly thought through. She can give the impression of being a Thatcher tribute act. But if she wants to do Thatcher, she must do it right. That includes copying the unillusioned calculation with which Mrs. T pursued her agenda for most of her time in office.

Turning to the political challenges she faces, Truss heads a party that has, alone or in coalition, been in government since 2010. Assuming that the next election is held close to the last possible date (January 2025), the Conservatives will by then, one way or another, have been in power for 15 years and, fairly or unfairly, will be blamed by voters if the economy is in poor shape, as it may well be.

To be sure, in the 2019 election the Conservatives overcame the disadvantages of incumbency, winning their largest majority since Mrs. Thatcher’s heyday, but much of that was due to the ability of Johnson — a politician with proven cross-party appeal — to break through Labour’s “red wall” and win over significant numbers of the party’s traditional supporters in the midlands and farther north. This owed a lot to a likeably eccentric, if carefully crafted, public persona, and to the fact that he would finally get Brexit “done”. The economy was ticking over, and it didn’t hurt that Labour was led by Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left oddball with little evident fondness for democracy. Fast-forward to January 2025 and, even putting the economy to one side, the picture is very different. Johnson is gone, Brexit is either a distant memory or — depending on the dispute with the EU over Northern Ireland — an irritant. Meanwhile, Labour, under the seemingly moderate Keir Starmer, has camouflaged itself in a less threatening shade of red.

Truss has promised a more Thatcherite approach to the economy than that taken by recent Conservative governments (low bar). However admirable in theory, this is unlikely to attract red-wall voters, and, with barely more than two years until the election, it won’t be rewarded in time by the economic growth that, in any event, their part of England is typically very late to see. It is worth remembering that Mrs. Thatcher’s medicine took a while to work. Before growth resumed and the Argentines were routed in the Falklands, the Iron Lady was in deep political trouble.

Then there’s the small matter of the Conservative Party, an institution not known for its loyalty to leaders who are failing electorally. Johnson’s downfall was triggered by his hubris — a fitting fate, perhaps, for someone who rarely fails to miss a chance to display his classical education. Even in his farewell to the nation, he declared, “Like Cincinnatus I am returning to my plough,” a reference that may have left many bewildered. Only the more knowledgeable will have been aware that Cincinnatus returned from his plough to sort out Rome a second time. I’d be surprised if Johnson, who is said to be keen to make some money to provide for his new young family, is contemplating a return to 10 Downing Street, but even the hint of it adds to his market value. In the meantime, he “will be offering [Liz Truss’s] government nothing but the most fervent support.” Fervent.

Ultimately, Johnson was not so much brought down by hubris (in his case, a belief that he did not have to follow the same rules as lesser men), as by the parliamentary Conservative Party’s conviction, backed up by polling data, that the country had had enough. If that was so, then the strongest reason for sticking with him through what seemed like an endless stream of scandals — that they had no one with his electoral appeal to replace him — had evaporated. Even then a leadership gap remained. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), beat Truss in the final round of voting among Conservative MPs, only to lose when the question was put to party members, many of whom were angry about Sunak’s role in unseating Johnson.

Truss’s margin of victory was narrower (57-43) than expected. At least two polls showed that party members would have preferred Johnson as leader. Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that, in picking her cabinet, Truss has stuck with loyalists rather than recruiting MPs from the Sunak camp. That has its risks, but, as Truss tries to navigate her government’s way through growing economic turbulence, reducing the chance of dissent at the top table has a lot to be said for it. As for those who have lost out, there is not enough time between now and the next election for an anti-Truss rebellion to make much sense.

There is little doubt about the broad direction — Thatcher 2.0 — that Truss would like to take, a bundle of policies that includes tax cuts, deregulation, tougher immigration enforcement, and increased defense spending. If she gets her way, the Tories will move away from the mush of managerialism, Christian democracy, and nods to wokery that have come to define them. On Britain’s rush to net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions (a policy backed by all the major parties), Truss must steer a tricky path. In principle, net zero continues to be popular with Brits and is thus politically untouchable for now. In practice, the damaging effect that it will have (given its current trajectory) on the economy, consumer choice, and individual liberty ought to eventually lead to a shift in public opinion. Truss’s strategy should be to soften net zero’s worse effects for now, while waiting for the moment when the realization of what net zero will mean becomes more visible, and thus more vulnerable to political attack. If I had to guess, her comment that “we need to reach net zero in a way that doesn’t harm businesses or consumers,” something impossible if the race to net zero is maintained at its planned pace, implies that she has something like this two-step process in mind. Truss has said that she supports (natural) gas as a transition fuel and may well be ready to lift the ban on fracking, two policies consistent with a more measured energy transition.

Thatcher was a radical, but she was usually guided by a sharp grasp on the limits of the politically possible. She was also keenly aware that the most important task of a Conservative leader is to keep Labour out.

The Conservatives are four percentage points behind Labour — not bad, all things considered (and there are much worse numbers out there) — but this is before what’s going to be a rough winter. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats and Greens are polling well, raising the (still remote) possibility of a “progressive alliance,” that if cobbled together properly — no easy task under first-past-the-post voting — could sweep to victory and, in doing so, could change the voting rules in a way that could keep the Tories out of power for a long time.

This may explain (but only in part) why, against her ideological instincts, Truss is contemplating measures to cap the spiraling energy bills being paid by British households and businesses. At the time of writing, these, it is speculated, could cost as much as £150 billion, adding, presumably, to a national debt already swollen by Covid relief. We’ve yet to hear exactly what will be proposed, and how it will work, but if price caps — a grotesque market distortion, albeit in a market that has become a battlefield — are indeed the route taken, the consequences won’t be pretty. More selectively targeted relief might be a better way to go, but doing nothing would lead to extraordinary hardship for millions, massive economic destruction, and, quite possibly, widespread social disorder: a risk that no prime minister can afford to take. Truss won’t be the only European leader to think so.

I suspect that Cincinnatus may be looking at his plough with just a touch of relief.