STEPHEN GLOVER: Some may feel sorry for Liz Truss, but I’m angry. She’s ensured the keys to No 10 are now firmly in the hands of Keir Starmer
Liz Truss’s stint as Prime Minister is plainly nearly over. Some may feel sorry for her. My overwhelming response is one of anger.
In common with millions of others, I’m angry because she and Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor whom she ruthlessly sacked, have set back the cause of a low-tax economy for a decade or more.
And, at the same time, by her ill-judged actions she has ensured that the keys to No 10 are firmly in the hands of Sir Keir Starmer and Labour. Only a miracle can save the Tories at the next election.
Almost everything that Miss Truss stood for — the mandate on which she was elected Prime Minister by the Conservative rank-and-file — was torn up and binned yesterday by the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, in order to soothe the markets.
Only the cuts in National Insurance and in Stamp Duty have been retained. Everything else has gone — including the reduction in the basic rate of income tax from 20p to 19p, which even Labour had approved.
Jeremy Hunt and Liz Truss at UQ in commons today, after replacing her Chancellor and reversing her economic plan. Stephen Glover asks: How can Liz Truss imagine in her wildest dreams that she can stay on?
Not only that. It was clear from what Mr Hunt said that spending cuts are on their way, though as recently as last Wednesday Liz Truss appeared to rule them out. She is no longer remotely in control.
My complaint is not against Mr Hunt, whose grim announcements on air and in the Commons calmed the markets, as they were intended to. The pound rallied, and the rate which the Government is forced to pay when it borrows billions of pounds fell appreciably.
No, he was only doing what he had to. He was clearing up the mess made by Miss Truss and Mr Kwarteng. But the process has only just begun. Shards of broken glass and lumps of debris remain to be swept away over many months to come.
It needn’t have been like this. As I wrote a few days after Mr Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget, most of what he and the PM wished to achieve could have been accomplished with care and patience, and the application of basic political skills.
When Liz Truss became Prime Minister six weeks ago, the markets expected tax cuts — in particular, the cancelling of the planned rise in Corporation Tax next April and the reversal of the increase in National Insurance. She had repeatedly said during the Tory leadership contest that she would implement these changes if elected.
Markets got the jitters because Mr Kwarteng threw in an unexpected tax cut from 45p to 40p for the highest earners, even though the projected cost was a fairly modest £2 billion. They were driven to full-blown panic a couple of days after the mini-Budget when he declared that he wanted to go on cutting taxes.
Mr Kwarteng’s rash decision not to ask the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to provide figures showing the effect of his cuts on the economy also caused the markets to lose their nerve. And who can blame them?
The single urgent aspect to the mini-Budget was the energy price guarantee (scaled back yesterday by Mr Hunt, so that it will only be effective until next April) which offered vital reassurance to anxious consumers before the winter.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng exits a car on Downing Street in London
Everything else could have waited — and then been introduced prudently and gradually over many months. Seldom, if ever, in modern British politics has so much needless damage been inflicted by a Chancellor and a Prime Minister.
Both of them behaved like political novices in their headlong rush to get everything done instantly. Growth was the correct priority, but the sense of extreme urgency invoked by Truss and Kwarteng was wholly misconceived.
One enduring mystery is how such an intelligent man as Mr Kwarteng, who is well versed in British political history, could have made such an ass of himself. He has paid the price by losing his job, and it is hard to imagine that he has any future in top-flight politics.
Yet the co-author of these calamitously introduced policies clings on. According to some reports, the Prime Minister pushed a doubtful Mr Kwarteng into announcing the cut in the top rate of income tax for high earners against his better judgment.
It doesn’t really matter whether she did or she didn’t. The point is that the mini-Budget, and subsequent announcements, were just as much her doing as they were Mr Kwarteng’s. They were bound together.
How can Liz Truss imagine in her wildest dreams that she can stay on? She has lost credibility with the voters, whose disdain for her is evident in a series of astonishing opinion polls which foresee the Tories being reduced to a rump of a few dozen MPs at the next election.
Britain’s Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt is shown answering the Urgent Questions (UQ) session on behalf of Liz Truss (unseen) at the House of Commons
Her own MPs can barely believe what is happening. Even serving ministers are queuing up to tell reporters off-the-record that the game is over. Her stay of execution seems chiefly to be due to the inability — so far — of plotters to agree on who should take over.
Yet until last night on BBC1’s News at Ten, Miss Truss hadn’t publicly uttered a word of apology. I doubt it will make much difference at this stage, but at least her show of contrition reminds us that she is a human being.
Yesterday afternoon, she sent her rival Penny Mordaunt to face a grilling in the Commons, apparently because she didn’t have the courage to do so herself. I can’t imagine Margaret Thatcher — on whom Liz Truss has preposterously modelled herself — failing to confront her accusers in any circumstances.
Events yesterday didn’t merely underline that Miss Truss is no longer a functioning Prime Minister. Her remaining in office after throwing overboard her old friend and co-conspirator, Kwasi Kwarteng, conveys a taint of dishonour.
We all know that politicians twist the truth and are often self-serving. We may not expect them to behave well. But there is nonetheless a code of honour and decency which the better among them abide by in the final reckoning. Not, so far, Liz Truss.
Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, reacts during the Urgent Questions session
Admittedly, the last thing people probably want is another Tory PM foisted on them. But however tiresome that prospect may be, it is better that gross incompetence should be recognised, and the guilty punished.
Some of the Prime Minister’s allies are threatening a ‘doomsday scenario’ of an immediate General Election, which is in her gift. In effect, they are saying that if she is pushed out, she will pull the house down with her, since as things stand the Tories would struggle to win more than a handful of seats.
Such threats are unworthy. I can’t believe that Miss Truss would want to consign her party to electoral oblivion. Then she really would be remembered in the blackest annals of political history.
As it is, she can still step down with some honour and give a new leader the opportunity, however far-fetched it may seem, to re-establish the Tories’ reputation for economic competence which she and Mr Kwarteng have wantonly destroyed. Another PM might conceivably see off the danger that Keir Starmer and Labour represent.
Liz Truss had many of the right ideas. The pity is that she and her ill-starred Chancellor lacked the good judgment and political sense to bring them about. A low tax economy is now only a distant dream, and our country has become the laughing stock of the world.
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