One of the axioms of communication is that nobody ever had a communication problem who didn’t have a real problem. Liz Truss and her diminishing band of supporters have been trying to argue that her political problems are really just flaws in presentation but they are kidding themselves. The mood of the Conservative Party, as its delegates gather in Birmingham for their annual conference, is grim. Ms Truss has a serious problem and so does the party she leads. Her problem is that many of her MPs already want her gone. Their problem is that their habit of ditching leaders is starting to look ridiculous.
There is no doubting the economic scale of what has happened — an immediate run on the pound followed by a £65bn emergency intervention by the Bank of England because pension funds did not have enough cash after interest rates rose sharply. Close to 1,000 mortgage products have been withdrawn from the market but, in her weekend interview round, the Prime Minister was still insisting that cutting the top rate of income tax would accelerate economic growth.
There is, in fact, no clear relationship between the top rates of tax and national economic growth, which is more about productivity and skills. The Truss premiership, less than a month in, has managed a political catastrophe the like of which we have not seen since polling began. In the nine opinion polls conducted between September 27 and 30, all done after September 23 mini-Budget, Labour has an average lead of 23 points. That amounts to a swing of seven per cent against the Government in a week. When she was prime minister in 2017, Theresa May declared that “nothing has changed” — and the incredulity cost her four per cent. Kwasi Kwarteng now has to be ranked as the finest negative political genius of modern times.
This is why the Government has announced that it will not, after all, proceed with cutting the top rate of tax. It is a humiliation for the Chancellor, who really ought to be put out of his misery. Last night Mr Kwarteng briefed journalists that his conference speech would demand that “we must stay the course. I am confident that our plan is the right one”. After Michael Gove and Grant Shapps followed Julian Smith and Maria Caulfield in signalling that the proposed cut was not likely to win a vote in the House of Commons, it became clear that the Chancellor could only stay the course for a matter of hours.
Instead, he will tell the conference floor, rather laughably in the circumstances, that he has “an iron-clad commitment to fiscal discipline”. It might not be enough to save him and the Prime Minister is already in peril. Dissident MPs are discussing whether the party rules can be changed to allow them to choose a new leader, without the unhelpful intervention of members they do not trust to get it right. Twice in succession now, the Tory members have chosen the person — Boris Johnson and Ms Truss — who told them what they wanted to hear, rather than the political home truth. Both times it has been a fiasco in pretty short order.
Yet there are two problems with any plan to get rid of Ms Truss. The first is the identity of the successor. If there were an obvious leader among them, then that person would already be Prime Minister. The second problem is that, just 12 years into Conservative rule, we are already on the fourth Prime Minister. No party can keep doing this. There comes a point when the patience of the public for chaotic government is exhausted. Changing the leader yet again just won’t work.
Perhaps it might mitigate the defeat that would follow. The Conservatives are finished, for the moment, as a serious party of power. The only course of action for Ms Truss now is to ask the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish forecasts quickly and then proceed with more sensible announcements, all properly costed, on childcare, immigration and housing.
Over the weekend the How The Light Gets In philosophy festival took place in the sunshine at Kenwood House in Hampstead. Not so long ago I recall chairing a panel at the festival. Ms Truss was sitting at the back and Mr Kwarteng was speaking. The subject was “The Decline of the West” — I had no idea at the time that the pair of them had such plans to accelerate it.
They will have to be stopped somehow. But so will the Conservative Party. Eventually, taking us for fools is going to matter.
