Liz truss

Thursday

The Spectator

Liz Truss can’t ignore the issue of NHS reform

It’s hard to think of any Prime Minister who has entered office surrounded by such low expectations. Liz Truss was backed by just over half of Conservative party members and secured barely an eighth of MPs in the first ballot. Her critics dismiss her as a lightweight, wholly unsuited to tackling the problems now facing the country. The presumption is not just for trouble, but calamity: the fastest drop in living standards in living memory, followed by prolonged recession and worse. So if Truss manages to send inflation into reverse and makes a noticeable cut to taxes by Easter, it will be seen as quite an achievement. She has also

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Truss in, Johnson out and Nord Stream 1 off

Home Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, said in a speech outside 10 Downing Street: ‘Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.’ For her part: ‘I am confident that together we can ride out the storm.’ Earlier, on being elected leader of the Conservative party, she had said: ‘I know that we will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver.’ She had been elected by party members ahead of Rishi Sunak by 81,326 votes to 60,399 (57.4 per cent to 42.6). Turnout was 82.6 per cent. She travelled to Balmoral the next day to

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Kwasi Kwarteng is a politician from a different age

Liz Truss doesn’t waste energy on unnecessary emotion. At the announcement of her victory at the QE2 Centre, she ditched the convention of hugging your partner and shaking hands with the runner-up. Instead she grabbed her notes from her husband Hugh O’Leary and marched past Rishi Sunak without a second glance. No time for sentimentality! Different from Johnson, surrounded by his siblings and ubiquitous father, or the uxorious Cameron and doting May. She knifed to the microphone with the same steely determination she showed all those decades ago when she told the Lib Dem conference to abolish the monarchy. The script has changed, the focus has not. Just before midnight

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Truss’s appointments are ruffling Tory feathers

Liz Truss has started to appoint supporters of her leadership campaign rivals to ministerial positions, answering the demand (mostly from said supporters of her leadership campaign rivals) to ‘reach out’ across the party to bring the Conservatives back together. There are Rishi Sunak backers in the latest slew of jobs – Robert Jenrick returns to government as health minister, Jeremy Quin goes to the Home Office, Mark Spencer to Defra and Victoria Prentis goes to DWP – along with two who had previously backed Kemi Badenoch (Rachel Maclean goes to Justice and Julia Lopez goes to DCMS). In the interests of fairness and equality, there are a few Truss backers

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Liz Truss’s first PMQs felt like a dress rehearsal

That felt like a dress rehearsal. Liz Truss sailed through her first PMQs which will probably be her easiest. It may turn out to have been her best. When she arrived, the House burst into ecstasies of joy as if she’d just found the cure for malaria, solved the Jack the Ripper case and liberated Hong Kong. The questions lobbed at her were as soft as pizza dough, and each was prefixed with a note of congratulation and welcome. The mood was warm enough even to thaw the frost that covers Theresa May. Suspending her sulk for a moment she made an ironic observation. ‘Why does she think it is

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Liz Truss should increase Universal Credit

Liz Truss’s plans for a two-year energy bill freeze, estimated to cost £100 billion, underscore three points. One, the incoming Prime Minister expects the energy crisis to be with us for more than one winter. Two, she grasps how lethal it will be to the Tories’ hopes of re-election if the Treasury doesn’t intervene in a big way. Three, she is prepared to run up government debt even further in order to mitigate a crisis that threatens people’s quality of life. This third point is the crucial one. When a neo-Thatcherite like Truss concedes the merits of transformative interventions funded by borrowing, it opens up a broader conversation. If the Treasury

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Liz Truss’s well-scripted first PMQs

Liz Truss’s first Prime Minister’s Questions was well-scripted, both for the new Tory leader and Keir Starmer. They had come along planning to talk about the cost of living crisis: Truss so that she could reassure the public (and her own party) that ‘immediate action to help people with their bills’ was on the way, and Starmer to probe her on how she was going to pay for it. The exchanges worked for both of them this time around. The exchanges worked for both of them this time around Because Truss is going for an energy price freeze – proposed by Labour – Starmer had to move his attack from

James Heale James Heale

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

Tuesday

Melanie McDonagh

The problem with Liz Truss

Was it just me or was Liz Truss actually smirking during her statement outside Downing Street, the one littered with cliches about spades in the ground and wince-making turns of phrase like ‘aspiration nation’? Another two years of this PM talking about being ‘determined to deliver’ (deliver what, Liz?) is going to be really hard going.  Just listen to her. Look at her. Is this really the best that we can get from a country of 67 million people? Liz Truss? Can even the most blinkered Conservative find any actual eloquence or charm of manner; or sincerity in the fashion of Theresa May, charisma like Tony Blair, or humour in

Liz Truss

Full text: The PM’s first speech on the steps of No. 10

Good afternoon. I have just accepted Her Majesty the Queen’s kind invitation to form a new government.  Let me pay tribute to my predecessor. Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister. I’m honoured to take on this responsibility at a vital time for our country. What makes the United Kingdom great is our fundamental belief in freedom, in enterprise and in fair play. Our people have shown grit, courage and determination time and time again. We now face severe global headwinds caused by Russia’s appalling war in Ukraine and the aftermath of Covid. Now

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is Coffey good for health?

Even though Liz Truss won’t start forming her government until after she has seen the Queen at Balmoral, many of the top roles are already nailed down. The latest dead cert is Thérèse Coffey, who will be Health Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister. The seniority of this role tells us a number of things. One is that Truss wants her strongest supporters close to her. Not only was Coffey pro-Truss from the outset, she is also one of her closest friends in politics. Linking the deputy and health jobs also signals that the new Prime Minister is taking the NHS backlog seriously. It would be a bizarre choice for a

Steerpike Steerpike

Flashback: Truss calls for the monarchy’s abolition

It’s Liz versus Liz today as the Queen prepares to kiss hands at Balmoral with Britain’s 56th Prime Minister. While attention will focus this morning on Boris Johnson’s imminent resignation statement, it will thereafter shift to his successor, as she becomes Her Majesty’s 15th First Minister of her 70 year-long reign. But Truss is slightly different from Elizabeth II’s previous 14 premiers: she’s the only one to openly call for the abolition of the monarchy. Archival footage remains of Truss delivering a fiery speech to the 1994 Liberal Democrat conference in which she talked of canvassing outside the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and (ironically) finding no support for the royals.

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Get ready for Liz mania

Here she is, then. Liz Truss is Britain’s third woman Prime Minister and she’s already suffering from the not-so-soft bigotry of low expectations. Almost everyone is looking at this woman the Tory membership has chosen to lead us all and feeling glum. She is someone widely seen in political and media circles as a lightweight and an embarrassment. The overly drawn-out and stale leadership battle between her and Rishi Sunak hasn’t helped either. Can Liz Truss ever hope to win a general election? But most new leaders enjoy a popularity bounce upon entering high office. Remember May mania? She experienced a five per cent surge in the polls in her

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Revealed: Labour’s tactics to deal with Truss

Keir Starmer tonight told the weekly parliamentary Labour party meeting that ‘we will never underestimate Liz Truss’. The Labour leader added that ‘she is a talented politician who has got to the top through hard work and determination’ and that ‘she will do whatever it takes to keep them in power’. He warned that ‘the polls might tighten and her plans might create some buzz’. It was a reminder to the party, which often struggles to accept female Tory leaders, not to fall into the trap of mocking Truss or feasting too much on the Tory civil war. How will Labour approach the new PM? Starmer will be asking her

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The problems of mid-term PMs

Any Prime Minister who takes over mid-term has to contend with a certain set of problems. Liz Truss will wish she had been propelled through the front door of No. 10 by the momentum of a general election victory. The first difficulty is that you have no personal mandate. This doesn’t just affect your relationship with the electorate, but your own MPs too. Boris Johnson benefitted from a sense that he was a winner, which made MPs more prepared to trust his judgment. Liz Truss will have to go that much further to persuade MPs of her political calculations. It also means MPs will be more jumpy if the polls are bad.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Liz Truss deliver, deliver, deliver?

What does deliver, deliver, deliver mean? Liz Truss had it as her payoff on accepting the leadership of the Conservative party this afternoon, so clearly it means something to her. She told the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre:  My friends, we need to show that we will deliver over the next two years. I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy. I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills, but also dealing with the long term issues we have on energy supply. And I will deliver on the National Health Service. But we will all deliver for our country, and I will

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The case against a snap election

Unless Her Majesty throws us all a curveball, Liz Truss will be the next prime minister. So let’s knock something on the head here and now: she is under no obligation to call an election before January 2025. The replacement of one prime minister with another in the middle of a parliamentary term is not a democratic deficiency. It is parliamentary democracy in action. The prime minister and their cabinet colleagues are the Queen’s ministers and when one ministry replaces another, power does not transfer directly but through the sovereign. It is the Queen who issues an invitation to form a government in her name and she does so on

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Are the markets scared of Liz Truss?

Look at the chart for interest rate expectations in isolation, and you might come to the conclusion that Rishi Sunak is right about Liz Truss’s fiscal policies. In June, markets were expecting rates to peak at around 3.5 per cent next year; now they are expecting them to reach close to 4.5 per cent. Moreover, as Truss’s victory came to be seen as inevitable, the FTSE 100 plunged from 7,550 on 19 August to 7,230 this morning – a fall of 4.2 per cent. The pound has fallen from $1.22 on 10 August to $1.15 now. Markets could be forgiven some apprehension But hang on a minute. Markets have been

Katy Balls Katy Balls

This week will define Liz Truss’s premiership

This lunchtime Liz Truss has been announced as the new leader of the Conservative party. After a contest that spanned the summer, the chair of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady announced the result, with Truss winning 81,326 votes to Rishi Sunak’s 60,339. Some 654 votes were rejected, suggesting spoiled ballots. This means Truss won with 57 per cent of the vote – a narrower margin of victory than her predecessor Boris Johnson who beat Jeremy Hunt with 66 per cent of the vote in 2019. This means her lead over Sunak was smaller than several of the membership polls suggested – and the contest was tighter than expected. Unlike Theresa

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Ten graphs that Liz Truss can’t ignore

The new Prime Minister’s honeymoon starts and ends today. Once Liz Truss formally enters Downing Street tomorrow she will be under pressure to tackle the enormous economic crises facing the country, with very little time to announce her policy plans. Truss herself has pledged to reveal her plan for rising energy bills within the first week of her premiership, and her plans to slash tax within the first month. While at the forefront of political discussion, these are but a few of the emergencies that the government must grapple with in the weeks and months ahead. Below are ten graphs that the Truss administration can’t ignore if she and her government