One of the remarkable things about last week’s disaster of a Conservative party conference was the extent to which MPs, advisers and other observers seemed to be coming round to the idea that Liz Truss wouldn’t lead the party into the next election. Replacing Truss seems unlikely – particularly given the recent circus of the last leadership contest. But even among those MPs who weren’t champing at the bit for her overthrow, there were very few who thought the idea ridiculous.
This is a dangerous state of affairs for the prime minister. It’s quite possible to maintain a grip on the Conservative party while being heartily detested by a section of it, at least for a while; both Boris Johnson and Margaret Thatcher, Our Lady of Iron, proved that. But when people’s thoughts start simply straying past you? That’s a bit different.
How has it come to this? The satanic state of the polls is the obvious starting point. It would be a tall order to expect Conservative MPs to put up with 30-point deficits even in service to a project they had pledged to support at an election – which in this case, they did not.
Beneath the dismay is a growing suspicion that there simply isn’t a viable Truss project at all. The core of the problem is simple: in order to calm the markets, Kwasi Kwarteng has pledged to balance his £43bn of unfunded tax cuts with cuts to public spending. Yet no politically viable path to cuts on that scale exists.
Where can these cuts be made? A smallish haircut to every departmental budget doesn’t get you there. What it does get you is lots of toxic little stories leaked to the press, such as a proposal to cut free Remembrance Day rail travel for ex-servicemen. This is exactly the sort of thing that is floated when government departments are asked to find savings without making cuts to their core services.
Gutting capital investment spending doesn’t get you there either, notwithstanding that Truss pledged on the campaign train to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail. No, the only way you save up to £40bn is by making huge cuts in the departments that spend the most, such as health, work and pensions, and education. Yet in her speech in Birmingham, Truss listed ambitious goals for the health secretary, her close ally Thérèse Coffey.
This means more pressure elsewhere. But a leader who doesn’t visibly command the loyalty of her parliamentary party can’t impose her will on departments, which is precisely why Truss is currently on the verge of another major U-turn on real-term benefits cuts. Which leaves education. We’ve not heard much about that so far. Kwarteng may expect MPs who have spent years fighting for a new national funding formula and better deals for their local schools to sign off on a big budget cut. I’d like to be in the room when he makes this request.
Put all this together and there’s a growing sense that there’s no winning move for the prime minister. She either backs down, goes down fighting in the Commons, or risks even greater market chaos if she won’t balance the books. Her efforts to reimpose her authority on the government, let alone the parliamentary party, will be impeded by the fact she has chosen to weaken the Downing Street operation. Experienced advisers have been let go, and outfits such as the policy unit and the legislation team have been dramatically slimmed down (the latter now consists of just one person).
On paper, one can sketch out a route back for Truss, sort of. It involves doing what she should have done in the first place: show more respect to the 2019 manifesto, focus on a small number of wins she can deliver by 2024, and try to win a mandate for a different approach at the next election.
But there’s little reason to believe it would work. Voters might not have made up their minds about the prime minister when she first took office, but they have now. Nor does a Truss premiership shorn of its free-market ambitions seem to have much to offer to either the party, the nation, or indeed the woman herself.
Perhaps the prime minister and chancellor really are six moves ahead, and the next few weeks will be a bravura display of skilful party management culminating in an ambitious but deliverable programme of economic reform. In reality, it seems more likely Truss will take her free-market case for “growth” down with her.
Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
