Much like the Tories, Liz Truss avoids the real truth about her premiership: she was to blame
Both Boris Johnson and Truss hold others culpable for their dramatic downfalls. Both are misguided to erase their own personal involvement in the end of their periods in office.
Before she became Prime Minister in September 2022, Liz Truss had served in seven government departments over a decade, in four of which she was Secretary of State. It would be difficult to deny there was a trend there somewhere: someone does not remain in Cabinet and continue serving in government under successive Conservative leaders — three, to be precise — merely because they are too difficult to depose or because they are terrible. So it is inevitable that David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all saw something in her — if they didn’t, then she wouldn’t have served in some of the highest offices. I wonder how they feel now, and whether they are as curious (also bewildered) as I am about Truss and her present political instincts.
I write this in the wake of the publication of Truss’s new book, Ten Years to Save the West. It is not a political memoir as such, at least not in the conventional sense, and usually because such accounts are written several years after the author in question has departed from the political scene. For example, it took Gordon Brown seven years to publish his memoir; for Cameron it was three. But 18 months have passed since Truss departed Downing Street. Maybe this is because she wishes to stay relevant; but also perhaps as a result of the time span of her period in office (less than 50 days), which, though short, was nevertheless particularly explosive.
Instead, this is more an account of what Truss believes has gone wrong with Britain — and the world — over both a recent period but also several decades; from our economic institutions to the media, she argues there is a worldview shared by many people in positions of high power such as those in, say, the Treasury, the Bank of England, and the Foreign Office. (More on this later.) It is this criticism of institutions, which are naturally and instinctively Left-wing, according to the former Prime Minister, that forms (at least partly) the basis and core theme of her book. So let’s tackle this argument head-on, not for the first time on these pages.
In her book but also in interviews and other forums, Truss asserts that there were many things at fault during her time in office which brought her premiership to a juddering halt. She also clarifies that she is not exonerating herself of culpability; she says she could have done things differently, admitting her media slickness is not perfect. But her formed view of what went wrong and who should be held culpable can be summarised by something she wrote last year in The Sunday Telegraph. In a 4,000-word account, where she recalled her premiership and her reflections on it, Truss wrote: “I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support.” Her view has unsurprisingly not changed.
For me, there are many things so bizarre but also infuriating about the Truss project, one of which is the complete lack of self-awareness and contrition from both the former Prime Minister herself and Kwasi Kwarteng, her Chancellor. They admit not that policies enacted in that fateful mini-Budget of September 23, 2022, were wrong. That would be a step too far. What they only seem to regret were two things: first, that it was all delivered so rapidly and so fast, and perhaps — perhaps! — they should have been more rigorous with their plans; and second, their communication could have been improved to convey their ambitions to the electorate more clearly.
Throughout the 2022 leadership contest which brought her to power, Truss sought to compare herself with Mrs Thatcher, not least in her ambitious tax-cutting agenda, but also subtly in her attempts to replicate her outfits. Indeed, so many of her backers supported her for that reason: because she would be radical on the economy and would bring the ambition to Whitehall. But the foundations were simply not laid, and the key Thatcher principle which Conservatives used to evoke — sound money — went completely out of the window. Indeed, so reckless was it that the windows were blown off and the house was burnt down by both the former Prime Minister and Chancellor.
As she does now, Truss attacks the so-called groupthink within key institutions. She rails against orthodoxy, which, she believes, is to blame for the lack of dynamism and prosperity within the British economy. In her first few days in office, Truss sacked the Treasury’s well-respected Permanent Secretary, Sir Tom Scholar, someone who was admired by and served under both Conservative and Labour governments. His expertise at the Treasury might have proved valuable and of merit to the Truss administration had he remained; I suppose we will never know.
If she really wants to know what’s hit the British economy, try 14 years’ worth of shoddy economic growth and living standards. Post-2010 austerity pursued ruthlessly came at a price of shared levels of prosperity, which, in turn, pushed up the level of regional inequalities in our country. The NHS speaks of a similar story: the Tories have led from the front in slowly stifling the NHS reform Britain needs in order to reduce waiting lists, increase patient satisfaction, and truly deliver a health service of which we all can be proud. No one else but they have presided over record levels of waiting lists for patients, and even Rishi Sunak admits he has failed on his key pledge to reduce them.
The truth is that the former Prime Minister is rather similar to her party’s performance and current state under the Sunak leadership: attempting to blame everything else on existing woes, they resort to breathtaking tactics in the search for recognition and attention. But Truss’s record, that of gross economic incompetence and fiscal recklessness, and the Tories’ 14-year stint in power, which is notoriously thin with achievements, are both united by the culpability placed on others for the mistakes made by themselves.
Allies of the Prime Minister will undoubtedly hold culpable the Truss project, should defeat to occur on polling day, whilst acolytes of the former Prime Minister will regard the Sunak administration as having failed to articulate a vision to which the country could relate. Both would be correct in any instance but this misses the point: this is about the Tories as a party too, one which has seen them drive Britain into a doom-loop of rampant poverty, low growth, poor living standards, and a general sense of decline. But as the general election approaches, the internal Tory forces are out ready for battle. Unfortunately, we, the electorate, need to prepare for this warfare to begin. Or, perhaps, because it never truly stopped, we ought to prepare for its continuation.