What struck me watching Liz Truss’ first speech as Prime Minister outside the door of Number 10 is how she spoke as if she had just won a General Election and a 5-year term. Truss spoke of ‘transforming Britain into an aspiration nation’ where people have the ‘opportunities they deserve’, and even spoke of building new roads, hospitals, and schools. The idea that Truss can transform the country in less than 2-years is fanciful. There is not enough time in the current parliament to tackle the structural challenges holding back the country. New Governments make tough, sometimes painful decisions early in a parliamentary cycle knowing that benefits will be realised in time for the next election. Truss does not have this luxury - Boris Johnson was already looking ahead to 2024 knowing that Covid had wrecked any grand plans he had for the current parliament.
I would have approached her first speech as Prime Minister quite differently. Truss may have just got through what must be the longest job interview in history, but in many respects she is now embarking on another long job interview - to be an elected Prime Minister. I would have acknowledged that she does not have a mandate to govern from the people but that at the present time, with a war on European soil and a cost of living crisis, it would not be appropriate to hold a General Election. I would have asked the British people for their trust until the next election as I focused specifically on the cost of living crisis, energy security, and NHS waiting times which have escalated dramatically since Covid. I would have set my Government up as if on a war footing, in a similar vein to what we saw during Covid, with regular press conferences to keep the British people abreast of how these challenges were being dealt with. By making reference to how she is in effect a ‘care-taker’ prime minister tasked to navigate the current crises, she would have shown that she does not take the voting public for granted and seeking to earn their trust by delivering on her promise to ‘reduce the burden on families and help people get on in life’.
My rationale for the above approach is that the economy, and to a lesser extent NHS waiting times, will determine the outcome of the next election. Truss could improve relations with the EU by sorting out the Northern Ireland protocol or bring an end to the small boats crossing the channel, but unless Truss can successfully address the cost of living crisis the 2024 General Election is lost and then Truss really won’t have an opportunity to reform the country. There is also good politics in putting the Government’s efforts to tackle the cost of living crisis front and centre of its agenda with regular press conferences. The cost of Truss’ strategy for tackling energy bills will be enormous, with reports saying it could cost as much as £150 billion. This is not free money and will have to be paid back by the British taxpayer with interest. By regularly and repeatedly drawing attention to Putin’s war in Ukraine and the vast sums of money being spent to keep the country from recession, Truss would be able to make a virtue of the emergency energy package and ensure that the serious harm it will cause the country’s finances is not placed at the door of the Conservatives for years to come, in contrast to how the financial crash in the late noughties was placed at Labour’s.
That said, to announce a comprehensive energy strategy just 3 days into her premiership suggests that Truss’ Government has a grip on what needs to be done and puts to bed any idea that she didn’t have a plan to tackle the cost of living crisis. Indeed, an Energy Supply Taskforce is being set up, led by Madelaine McTernan who headed up the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce, to negotiate with domestic and international energy suppliers to agree long-term contracts that reduce the price they charge for energy and increase the security of its supply. It is fair to say the Liz Truss Government has hit the ground running.
Although I thought her first speech as Prime Minister was average at best, and not a patch on Prime Ministers that have gone before her, her performance at her first Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday the 7th was very assured. Keir Starmer’s line that without a windfall tax the Conservatives will be borrowing more than they need to was persuasive, but Truss simply swatted it away by declaiming that ‘there is nothing new about a Labour leader calling for more tax rises’. Truss may not be the slickest of operators but she can be dogged, and there is no sign that she is at all fazed with being Prime Minister and the tasks at hand. She may have banished some big hitting Conservatives to the backbenches with her cabinet reshuffle, but with more performances in the House of Commons like that she will have enough political capital to shrug off any inconvenient detractors from Tory colleagues.
I will be interested to see how Truss’ strategy for tackling energy bills will be received by the general public. Broadly speaking, there is support for a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies, with a YouGov poll published on the 8th of September 2022 stating that 68% of Britons are in favour of a windfall tax to help pay for a freeze on energy prices. Although Truss, the Conservative free marketeer, has taken a pragmatic approach to the cost of living crisis by freezing energy bills, she is sticking to her guns and resisting another windfall tax. This marks a clear distinction between her premiership and Boris Johnson’s, with Boris giving in to pressure and introducing a windfall tax in May 2022. Truss has been clear that she is not a believer in windfall taxes, arguing that they deter investment; as the UK begins to pursue energy security, encouraging energy companies to invest, particularly in green technologies, is going to be increasingly important. At the present time, however, I am not sure Truss has come down on the right side of the windfall tax debate as the sums required to tackle the cost of living crisis are so great that energy companies should be asked to do more.
I am heartened that Truss thinks there is sufficient time in the current parliament to do more than simply address the cost of living crisis. One of my perennial criticisms of the politics of today is its short-termism. If Truss can make the most of her time at Number 10 and do more than simply firefight and hold onto power then the country will be the better for it. One thing is for sure and it is that Truss has to deliver, for the 2024 election campaign has already begun.
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