The contest to be the next Conservative Party leader now looks like a procession. Liz Truss has grown into the contest and the momentum surrounding her campaign will surely carry her to Number 10. Truss started the campaign on the backfoot, declaring her intention to stand days after the contest had started, and then performed poorly in the first televised TV debate in which an Opinium poll had her coming last with only 6% of the vote. Despite this, she continued to pick up support from fellow Conservative MPs and once the contest became a two horse race she has never looked back. A Conservative Home poll of over 1,000 Conservative Party members on the 4th of August had Truss leading Sunak 58% to 26%.
At a hustings in Cheltenham last week in front of 2,000 party members, Truss was relaxed, injected humour at times, and had a rapport with the chair and audience members. Her personality is coming through much more as the contest goes on, dispelling some fears of a May-bot 2.0. Sunak, on the other hand, was clearly trying to force matters and his increasingly high pitched tone does not give the impression of someone in control of events.
In the early days of the contest, Truss was a figure of ridicule to political commentators on the Left, with Guardian columnist Zoe Williams barely able to contain her glee at the prospect of Truss leading the Conservatives into the next election; a Conservative Party conference speech from 2014 of Truss getting absurdly angry about cheese imports was doing the rounds on social media; and Dominic Cummings was doing his best to get his nickname of her - the hand grenade - to stick. And yet, the more people see of Truss, the more they seem to like her.
An Opinium poll from the 7th of August had Truss out-performing Labour’s Keir Starmer 29% to 28%. Clearly, this is only one poll, and there are other recent polls which show Starmer ahead of Truss - a Lord Ashcroft poll from the 14th of August has Starmer ahead of Truss 55% to 45% (with don’t knows excluded). Considering how Truss was perceived at the start of the contest, however, her likeability will be a mystery to many.
A recurring fault of the Left is they underestimate the likeability of those on the Right. Boris Johnson is a keen example of this. It is baffling to left-wing voters why people like this ‘upper-class’, bumbling, gaff prone opportunist. But they do - Boris has never lost an election, whether that be at the Oxford Union as an undergrad or as Mayor of London. The Left simply cannot see his appeal, and because they cannot even countenance why he is popular, their attacks on him don’t land as they are aiming at the wrong target. It’s like arguing for Remain based on the economy, whilst people are voting Leave for cultural reasons.
If Truss goes on to become Prime Minister, Labour need to be sure they understand her appeal and this will mean listening to why people like her and formulating a response accordingly. This may be a hard task as Truss’ likeability is linked to her authenticity. A straight talking, state educated northerner who’s political judgement is based on lived experience, taking her from marching against Thatcher as a child, to a Liberal Democrat as a student, to Foreign Secretary in a Conservative Government. For those entrenched in a political view, this journey may seem inconsistent, but it is swing voters who decide elections and to them it may be relatable.
Swing voters are wanting honesty and integrity from their next Prime Minister and a candidate who is authentic and does what they say may well be a vote winner. It is difficult to gauge Truss’ wider appeal as the general public still don’t know her very well, and her electability will be directly influenced by how she navigates the upcoming winter of discontent. Once she pivots from throwing red meat to Conservative Party members to governing for the whole country, we will have a better understanding of whether she can win a historic 5th consecutive term for the Conservatives. If Truss manages to back up what she is saying over the next two years, she may well cause Labour a headache in a way that they may not currently comprehend.
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