On Tuesday, Elizabeth Truss became the UK’s third female Prime Minister on Tuesday, and the fourth Conservative Prime Minister since the 2010 election. Over the next two days she carried out one of the most dramatic purges of a cabinet and government in the history of intra-party transitions, one with dramatic implications for the future direction of British government. This overhaul took place against plans to launch the second largest fiscal stimulus in British history in an effort to counter skyrocketing energy prices which threatened to bring the British economy to a halt this winter and reduce millions to penury. Then, as Truss was preparing to present the plan to the Commons, the Queen died at the age of 96. As the ascension of Charles III to the throne passed largely without drama, a contrast with what might have been expected if the suddenly forgotten Boris Johnson had remained premier, Ukrainian forces launched a counterattack against Russian forces around Kharkiv which enjoyed success hitherto unprecedented in this war. It was an eventful week.
If history was playing a cruel joke on Boris Johnson, by forcing him from office two days before he would have the chance to place his rhetorical stamp on history, it seemed to also be playing a trick on Truss. The event seemed to play to her weaknesses - public speaking, emotion, poise, the inability of the Prime Minister to pose for a camera or her team to remedy that problem - rather than her strengths. It provided Penny Mordaunt, a leadership rival banished to the second-tier role as Leader of the House Commons, and the even more pro forma Lord President of the Council, the chance to preside over the Ascension Council in one of the only duties reserved for the latter office.
Nonetheless, it is possible to believe that Truss has benefitted from the week. For one thing, the contrast with Boris worked to her advantage. One of Johnson’s selling points was a belief in the mythical power of his verbiage. Britons have managed to survive the last week - the Queen’s death, Charles’ ascension, and now a Ukrainian counteroffensive - without the need for Boris’ “unique” talents. It is possible to ask, and quite probable that many will, whether the last week would have gone better with Boris Johnson in office? Would the country’s mourning have been more dignified in Boris Johnson had spoken for 30 minutes as opposed to Liz Truss’ three? Would the royal family have needed him in their photos? Would they rather have had Mark Spencer MP preside over the Ascension Council than Penny Mordaunt? Leave aside whether Boris would now have flown to Ukraine to be on the spot for a Russian rout.
Liz Truss was always threatened far more by Boris Johnson than Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak. Betting agencies had Johnson as her most likely successor, and he had made no secret of what he thought of her prospects, whether through leaks, or his invocation of the Roman Statesman Cincinnatus during his final remarks as Prime Minister. She was doubly threatened by his legacy. For many Tory members and fans of the former Prime Minister, he lack of his charisma was a fatal flaw. For voters who had abandoned the Conservative party over revulsion at Johnson, she was his preferred candidate, and represented a continuation of many of the same issues and approaches to government.
This week allowed her to separate herself from both groups. As noted, by creating a contrast between her quiet, minimalistic approach and what Johnson would have done. By raising questions as to whether Johnson’s skill set is what they really want, it diminished Johnson’s appeal as the “prince over the water.” In turn, by providing perhaps the most extreme contrast possible between Truss and her predecessor in a situation where it would be most apparent, the death of the Queen, it made clear to skeptical voters that while they may have plenty of other reasons not to think much of Liz Truss
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that Truss may be being written off too soon. She ran a highly disciplined campaign, and if her weaknesses were on display such as a lack of charisma and the hostility of much of the non-Rightwing press, it was a campaign which was aware of her weaknesses and sought to minimize their impact while maximizing her strengths. In fact, her entire career has demonstrated a ruthless instinct for survival that surpasses Boris Johnson’s legendary skills, and far exceeds May or Cameron. The very willingness to bend with the prevailing winds and do whatever it takes to survive and prosper, the characteristic which has bred so much contempt for Truss within the media and among peers, is precisely what made her PM. And the refusal of Cameron and May to “demean” themselves in that way with good grace explains why Truss is Prime Minister and they are not.
In short: Truss is willing to do whatever it takes to advance, no matter what others may say. Critically, however, and this is where she differs from Johnson for whom this was instinctive, she has over the last two decades demonstrated a keen analytical knack for knowing exactly what it is she needs to do. Unlike May, she neither waits too long to bend, nor displays bad grace when she eventually bows to events. Rather, Truss gets in front of them. She is resented not because she plays the game, but because she has consistently won it.
The first 24hrs of her Premiership are a case in point. Both her cabinet selections, and her announced policy on energy showed not a pandering to the Right or a paucity of talent, but rather a keep awareness of the desperation of her position, an understanding of what she needs to do and the team which can do it. In turn, she also appears to believe she cannot afford those who will play politics while the city is on fire.
At the same time, the government’s briefed intention to freeze energy prices across the board for a period of at least 18 months indicates a willingness not just to break with free-market orthodoxy, but to assess the available options, eliminate the impractical third options which will not work in practice, and having concluded that only one actual course is available, commit to the most efficacious version. It is not the decision to freeze prices, or even the scale which is insightful, nor even the, for now Westminster-inside baseball argument over whether it should be covered by a Windfall profit tax. Rather it is the speed of the process, which is almost unprecedented in British governance. A process which was carried out by a smaller kitchen cabinet, rather than by civil servants. The result is a process which bypassed two separate deliberative processes. That of intra-cabinet discussion and that of Ping-Pong between civil servants in different departments.
This was a good week for
Elizabeth Truss: While the death of the Queen represented a challenge, it was one which it would have been difficult to fail. It was also one where all of Truss’ weaknesses of presentation ironically allowed her to mark a clear break with Boris Johnson. It negated any scrutiny of her energy relief plans, and effectively silenced not just Johnson loyalists, but also discontented Tories angry over having been denied jobs. Politics appeared in bad taste, which meant both the cabinet reshuffle, and a subsequent reshuffle at the higher levels of the civil service with the dismissal of the permanent secretary at the Treasury, Tom Scholar, passed without much comment. It was certainly not a fun or easy weak for Elizabeth Truss, but from the perspective of her medium-term prospects it is hard to imagine a better one.
The Royal Family: This may seem an odd and disrespectful entry to include in the “winners” column. King Charles III has lost his mother. William has lost his grandmother. The family has lost its personification, and greatest political asset. No one lives forever, and the Royal Family benefitted from the length of the Queen’s reign in general, and that it did not end in 2002. There will clearly be moves towards establishing republics in the Caribbean, and stories about how Charles lacks the prestige of his mother, but no one was going to match the respect Queen Elizabeth II built up. The proper comparison is with the 1990s, when Charles was seen as actively divisive rather than “lesser” than his mother, or in the 2000s when it was more easily felt that traditional institutions could be dispensed with. The 2010s have been a chaotic decade almost everywhere, and while this is particularly true of the UK with Brexit, Covid19 and political instability, it is true in Australia and Canada as well. If, in the 1990s, politicians such as Bill Clinton or Tony Blair could command more respect than Prince Charles, and hence make the case for a republic, the thought of even electoral winners such as Justin Trudeau or Anthony Albanese, much less David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss, or Keir Starmer as head of state seems almost laughable. The monarchy’s successful rehabilitation is a reflection on the collapse in faith of the political class, and Charles is taking the throne at a time when even a newly installed PM needs him far more than he needs her. The same is true of almost everyone, even Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, and this means that while Charles can of course “screw” this up, he will start out with almost every elected politician seeking his blessing.
The Diligent Outsiders: With the exception of Ben Wallace at Defense, Truss’ ascension saw a clean sweep of the senior offices. Kwasi Kwarting, her stalwart ally, received the Treasury. Therese Coffee received Health. James Cleverly received the Foriegn Office. Jacob Rees-Mogg received a now-expanded Business Department with responsibility for energy. This team has come in for criticism both for lack of experience and rightwing sympathies but both are in error. Kwasi is probably one of the most qualified individuals to ever hold the Chancellorship in history, with an economics Phd, multiple books, and a Newcastle Prize from Eton which for a scholarship student s rare indeed. He is far from far-right either, his work, Ghosts of Empire, breaking with current Brexiteer orthodoxy by arguing that rather than being well-run, the British Empire was actually poorly administered, kept together in moments of crisis by the heroic improvisations of a few individuals, whose success helped hide the weaknesses of the system. Rees-Mogg would disagree with that outlook, having written his own history of the Victorian era, but Rees-Mogg too, for all he is dismissed as a foppish toff, had much more senior experience in the private sector than Rishi Sunak. The unifying trait of this group is that they were for various reasons outsiders, dismissed both by the party leadership and the media as fringe figures, despite evidence of serious qualifications to the contrary. If Liz Truss, who has held a near-record number of offices over the last decade but nevertheless found herself dismissed as a lightweight, felt kinship with their experiences it would explain the unity of the group far more than ideology. To the extent many on the left of the party could find advancement in the Cameron years despite being viewed as lightweights it is a right-leaning group, but it hardly includes the entire right. Witness the absence of Lord David Frost or Iain Duncan Smith from the cabinet.
Mixed
Penny Mordaunt: If a bond of exclusion unites Truss’ inner circle, it is clear that her former leadership rivals were excluded from it even if they endorsed her, or were perceived as ideologically close. Penny Mordaunt narrowly came third in the leadership contest, with 105 MPs, to the 113 won by Liz Truss and the 137 by Rishi Sunak. It is quite possible had she won eight more, she, not Truss would be Prime Minister. She endorsed Truss, campaigning inperson with her. She had served as Defense Secretary during the dying days of the May government, and reportedly sought the Foriegn Office. Mordaunt was clearly a more substantial political figure than Cleverly, but Truss made a decision not to appoint substantial figures to senior roles. Mordaunt reportedly turned down Health and the Northern Ireland office before settling on Leader of the House of Commons, a role which will see her seated next to the Prime Minister in Parliament if largely without power, and the normally honorary Lord Presidency of the Council. The latter role, however, entitled Mordaunt to preside over the Ascension Council following the death of a monarch. The result was that for the first time in 70 years, the office entitled her to the second most high-profile role over the past week. This was a surprise political consolation for what was otherwise disappointing reshuffle. It may also be the high point of her public profile for some time to come if Truss has anything to say about it.
Kemi Badenoch - If Truss was willing to offer Suella Braverman the Home Office, despite winning less than 30 MPs, it must have been frustrating to Badenoch, who polls showed was the runaway favorite of the Conservative membership and much of the media, that she not only was denied a great office of state, but either of the two roles which would have allowed her to capitalize on her culture warrior profile. Not only were both Education and Culture denied to her, but Truss reportedly had offered to let Nadine Dorries of all people stay on in the latter. Badenoch was denied the office she craved and many thought she deserved, and to make matters worse it was given to Michelle Donelan who had previously served as Badenoch’s deputy. While International Trade is technically a promotion, it takes Badenoch far away from any of the issues which raised her profile, and furthermore is one of those roles whose relative power is dependent on the PM. It is hard not to see this as a calculated snub of a perceived threat. Something I predicted two weeks ago.
Relative Losers
Keir Starmer - Starmer had not only seen Labour surge to a lead, but with his call for a freeze on energy prices, he had found an issue which not only excited Labour voters, but even won over Tories. While Starmer must have welcomed Liz Truss’ election, accepting the conventional wisdom that she was a lightweight who lacked charisma and would inherit a divided party, her quick move to steal his signature policy left him with few options other than to quibble about how it was paid for. The argument about a windfall profit tax, while not useless to Labour, seemed technical, and was conflated with the tax increases which had made Rishi Sunak so unpopular. It was then all but obliterated by the Queen’s death. Starmer now seems to have no clear message, and no way to get it out, a situation which seems likely to persist at least through the funeral and emergency budget debates. This setback has to be kept in perspective. It is an erasure of the progress of the summer rather than a disaster in and of itself, but that is not where Labour wanted to be, or for that matter, where it was happy to be for much of 2021.
Boris Johnson - Boris Johnson began the week as Prime Minister and ended it as a private citizen, joining other former Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition in hailing the ascension of Charles III. They, however, had left office years ago. Boris had left it a week ago, against this will. While Boris is far from a humble man, he must realize on some level that if he could not have avoided the fate of virtually every Tory leader who failed to jump before they were pushed, he could have with a minimal of effort delayed his fall by the weeks or months which would have seen him preside over the royal funeral. Not to mention the Ukrainian counteroffensive which followed. But Johnson’s losses this week go far beyond what might have been. Johnson has made clear, his desire to return, perhaps all too clearly for Liz Truss when he invoked Cincinnatus in his final speech. Boris allies leaked over the summer that he believed Truss would be a disaster, and that he would be willing to return next year if called upon. This may have contributed to Truss’ ruthless clear-out of Downing Street. For Boris, however, the week could not have gone worse. Rather than causing the public to regret the absence of his wit and dramatic flair, Truss’ brevity seemed to add to the somberness of the occasion. It was not merely that Boris was not missed, but that many believed it was a good thing he was gone. For someone who staked his future on his brand, rather than personal loyalty, this was a major blow. Boris’ power comes from the attraction of the “idea of Boris” and that idea took a brand beating this week.
Team Rishi: They clearly expected a purge, but not the ruthless totality. By Wednesday they were already briefing the papers about plots and revolts, how Truss had blundered in creating enemies. Then Truss stole a march on them policy-wise, with her Energy price freeze, and that was followed by the Queen’s death. They found themselves, irrelevant, their sour grapes seen in bad taste. They may not be down for the count anymore than Keir Starmer is, who reportedly was congratulated by two Tory MPs on having won the next election following Truss’ first PMQs, but they are definitely down.