I recently asked a Tory grandee what they had learned from living through five Conservative leadership elections. The reply: “Always focus on the electorate in front of you.” The point being that in a contest where only the party membership has a say, it’s best not to get distracted and start to look at wooing the wider public. Instead, keep your eyes on the prize.
It’s a lesson Liz Truss appears to have taken to heart. As the Conservative leadership contest rattles on for another fortnight, most MPs have concluded the race is all but over. Barring a spectacular polling error, the foreign secretary will be the next prime minister. The path that has taken her there has involved a rigid focus on winning over the membership – estimated at about 160,000.
Where Rishi Sunak has at times appeared to be running a general election campaign – with multiple media outings from BBC Radio 2 on Monday to an appearance each day for the rest of the week – Truss has been more focused on the 0.3% of the adult British population who have a say – keeping a low media profile and declining the offer of an interview with Andrew Neil. As one member of her campaign team put it after she cleared the parliamentary stage of the contest: “It’s not about the radio war now.”
While there is little official data on the membership, what is available suggests they are more likely to be male, leave voters and middle class. In order to win over this group, her pitch has been heavy on red meat. As well as promises of tax cuts on arrival, Truss has made sure to play to the base at the various hustings – praising Boris Johnson, telling a captive audience that she would simply “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon and suggesting that GB News is an improvement on the BBC, as the broadcaster “actually” gets its facts right.
The problem with the two different electorates is they don’t always align – and in two weeks’ time, Truss will have to please both. As Conservative MPs ponder what a Truss government would look like, there are creeping concerns among MPs on the left of the party that the agenda that’s taken her to pole position in the race could have the opposite effect with the swing voters the party needs to get on board.
Recent polling points to trouble ahead. While Truss’s promises to reverse the national insurance increase and ditch the scheduled corporation tax rise have landed well with the grassroots, a YouGov poll for the Times earlier this month found that two-thirds of voters believed the government would be wrong to prioritise tax cuts over tackling the cost of living. In comments that her team have lightly rolled back from, she told the Financial Times that her preferred approach to the economy is to do things “in a Conservative way of lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts”.
While the Tory MP John Redwood – who is tipped for a ministerial post in her government – suggested that Keir Starmer’s proposed plan to simply freeze the energy price cap would not work and risked following the model in Venezuela, Conservative voters tend to take a different view. A poll for the Times found that three-quarters of Tory voters back Labour’s plan.
Today’s Tory coalition, too, is more than open to higher spending. Boris Johnson won the 2019 election on a higher spend agenda than his predecessors. In an interview with the Spectator during that leadership contest, he distanced himself from the austerity of the Cameron-Osborne years, suggesting that “austerity was just not the right way forward for the UK”. On top of this, the pandemic has been taken by both voters and some MPs as evidence the government can step in when it wants to.
It means Truss will immediately come under pressure to offer more comprehensive help – which goes beyond tax cuts. Her Tory critics are already amping up their attacks, with Sunak’s camp arguing the state of the public finances means she must choose between her beloved tax cuts and help for those who need it. Michael Gove has accused her of taking a holiday from reality.
It’s a trade-off Truss will not want to make. She is an instinctive politician who opposes high taxation as a guiding principle. She believes that low tax is a key policy for the Conservative party and critical to its electoral message. “It’s non-negotiable,” says an aide. When Sunak convinced Johnson to bring in a windfall tax – a Labour idea – both Truss and her likely pick for chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, were strongly opposed.
It means that when it comes to weathering the cost of living crisis, the new government could have fewer levers to pull than its predecessor. While members of Truss’s team say there is an acknowledgment that more needs to be done, MPs backing Sunak fear it will fall short. “I worry that they will dig their heels in and say no, only to be forced into doing more a few months later,” says a former minister.
Of course, Truss could surprise everyone. One of the reasons her campaign has gained momentum as Sunak’s has struggled is that she is political. She has long viewed the so-called red wall as crucial to the party’s future and was one of the first to argue this during the Theresa May years.
She also wouldn’t be the first leader to tell a party membership what they want to hear only to change tack once in power. Just look how Starmer pivoted away from both the Jeremy Corbyn photo opps and many of the pledges he made on the campaign trail once becoming Labour leader.
But given her natural political instincts, it’s unlikely she’ll be a shapeshifter of such proportions. Instead, her appointment will probably spell a return to Conservative values on the economy. The question is whether the electorate she now needs to focus on is ready for it.
Katy Balls is the Spectator’s deputy political editor
