While Liz Truss’s official spokesperson insisted she was still “working from Downing Street” on Monday, in reality she has just one more real task left from what will be precisely 50 days as prime minister: departing from the role.
In a chronology now familiar to UK politics watchers, after chairing a farewell cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, the much used No 10 lectern will be brought outside for Truss to make a final, brief statement, at about 10.15am.
Then comes the trip to Buckingham Palace for the ceremonial formality of an audience with the King, at which she will resign as prime minister. She will be immediately followed by Rishi Sunak, who will then be driven to Downing Street. His words outside are expected at about 11.35am.
As Sunak disappears inside, pursued by the clicks of photographers’ cameras, the new prime minister will begin a flurry of activity, with civil service staff guiding a new team of political appointees through what is known as “onboarding”, involving everything from computer log-ins to security passes.
But what of Truss? She will leave the palace into the news vacuum of being a humble backbench MP, the first time she has been in this role for a decade.
The Commons is sitting, and Truss will have a lot of matters to sort, so the likelihood is that her official car will take her from the palace to parliament. And she will still have transport. While sacked cabinet ministers immediately lose the chauffeur-driven vehicle that comes with the job, former prime ministers are entitled to a government car in perpetuity, along with security.
One of the much noted difficulties that comes with being ousted as prime minister is the fact that you lose not only a job, but two homes – one of the flats above Downing Street and the country retreat of Chequers.
For some former PMs, this can be tricky. Boris Johnson’s most recent register of financial interests showed he accepted accommodation worth £3,500 for a month from Anthony Carole Bamford of the JCB digger firm, as he and wife, Carrie, are between south London homes.
Truss is fine on this front. Her house in Greenwich, south-east London – famously around the corner from Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor she sacked – is the de facto family home rather than the one in her Norfolk constituency, as her daughters attend school in the capital.
Truss’s aides refuse to say what she might do next, and it is likely she does not know herself. Aged just 47 and a former accountant, she could certainly make a living outside politics, even if not on the level of Johnson or even of Theresa May, who combines being a backbencher with earning £100,000-plus a time giving speeches to US corporations.
It seems most likely Truss will remain in parliament. There she will face what will perhaps be her most difficult task: carving out a role as a grandee, a former occupant of No 10, but one who was only there for seven weeks, almost all of which was defined by chaos and disaster. It is an unprecedented challenge, for an unprecedented prime-ministership.
