What does Truss’s cabinet tell us about her?

‘Loyalty’ remarked Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe is ‘the Tory party’s secret weapon.’ The near constant blue-on-blue attacks of the last six years have made a mockery of this aphorism. But Liz Truss’s first cabinet has demonstrated the importance which she places on loyalty when it comes to selecting her top team. Some 31 names are now attending cabinet; of those just one (Michael Ellis) backed Rishi Sunak. New leaders are entitled to select who they want –⁠ Boris Johnson fired half the ministers upon taking office in 2019 and ruthlessly purged Jeremy Hunt’s supporters from his top team. But he, unlike Truss, surpassed expectations in the membership vote (winning 66 per cent) and came top of every round of the parliamentary stage, winning more than twice Hunt’s total of MPs on the penultimate round.

Truss, by contrast, was a clear second to Sunak throughout those early ballots and won 57 per cent in Monday’s result –⁠ a comfortable victory but the lowest margin of victory since party members were given a say.