The Tories like to portray themselves as being on the side of hard-working British people.
It’s safe territory not just among the party membership but also – crucially – key to holding together their fragile post-2019 electoral coalition of the former Labour heartlands and the true blue south.
So it would be a reckless aspiring Tory leader who offers even glancing criticism of the great British worker. But Liz Truss’s extraordinary comments when she was No 2 at the Treasury appear to do just that.
It is no secret that London and the south-east have the highest productivity of any UK region by some way, according to official statistics. But you’d be hard pressed to find any economist who believes this is down to the “mindset” of workers in other parts of the country.
In reality, the plethora of big international businesses in the capital, booming financial and services industries, huge R&D spend and the best transport infrastructure in Britain are the principal reasons.
The fact that too many other parts of the country don’t have these in-built advantages was exactly what the government’s levelling up promises were supposed to address.
Truss is already on the back foot on tackling regional inequalities after her damaging U-turn on regional pay, which prompted the Labour party to call her “Levelling Down Liz”.
In response, Truss committed to continuing the levelling up agenda but in a “Conservative way” – which has been taken to mean a focus on tax cuts and deregulation, rather than high spending and investment.
Her rival, Rishi Sunak, has also come unstuck on levelling up – despite his promises to prioritise the issue and endorsements from a host of “red wall” Tory MPs – by admitting taking money from deprived urban areas in order to give it to wealthier parts of the country.
The productivity gap is not just a problem for the Conservative party. If Labour make it into power they will also need to urgently address Britain’s outlier status on regional inequality.
Truss’s comments from her time at the Treasury, revealed in a leaked recording to the Guardian, are in danger of undermining her already fragile commitment to levelling up.
They also open her up to charges of talking down the UK – a serious offence as far as some of her Tory colleagues are concerned – despite her best endeavours with union flags, “Global Britain” and belligerent attacks on Brussels and the Scottish government.
But her views are not particularly new. They echo a controversial passage in a book, Britannia Unchained, she co-authored with four other Tory MPs including Dominic Raab and Kwasi Kwarteng, her likely chancellor if she makes it to No 10.
“Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world,” they wrote. “We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor. Whereas Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music.”
Truss does, at least, appear to recognise while some Tory members may share her views, any hints she may be less than supportive of British workers might not go down too well with the broader public.
At the first televised head-to-head debate with Sunak she couldn’t distance herself from the book fast enough, blaming the chapter on Raab even though they’d taken a collective decision to write it.
But as the leaked recording confirms, not only did she have that view of British workers at the time but she also held it many years later. Some will draw the conclusion that she still does.
