Liz Truss may not make an exciting or popular Tory leader, but she may have one thing going for her. She may be lucky. A mere 12% of voters expect her to be a good prime minister. But, just as Tony Blair was eased into Downing Street by his handling of the death of Diana (his “people’s princess”), so the death of the Queen could help Truss steady and establish herself.
As the nation enters a period of mourning – grossly oversold by the BBC – Westminster’s current political hysteria should calm. Truss’s crony cabinet can settle in. The Treasury can tend its wounds, while the media turns its attention to King Charles and the future of the monarchy.
Truss already has ground to make up. Her cabinet appointments defied all advice about appeasing her enemies and accommodating different strands in her party. An acrimonious leadership campaign and a close victory over Rishi Sunak clearly demanded some effort at soothing wounds. Truss did the opposite, sacking the few able ministers to survive Boris Johnson’s mayhem, such as George Eustice, Grant Shapps and Greg Clark. Instead, she chose a cabinet defined purely by loyalty to her. Its gender and ethnic diversity was the only thing remarkable about it. With only a minority of her parliamentary party voting for her as leader, she has ensured eagerness for revenge when things start going wrong.
This will come harder, since Truss is no master of the parliamentary stage. A sentence from Johnson could have his backbenchers baying with delight. Truss’s response to questions from Keir Starmer at her first prime minister’s questions had the virtue of directness, but her answers seemed wooden and dull. She could not summon up one memorable phrase in her initial message on the Queen’s passing. She does not do rhetoric, only cliche – “from thick and thin” she said, in a brisk and cursory speech at Downing Street. She might have been reading out a shopping list.
It’s only an opinion … and there’s more … much of which i agree with.
Apparently, RoboTruss is off to the US next week - I expect that her “performance” will be less than impressive.
For goodness sake give the woman a chance, I sometimes think some folks are desperate to see her fail just because she’s the PM of the wrong party, or do I seem just a teeny bit cynical…
Give the woman a chance? She blows with the wind according to what she deems most advantageous for her. She was Lib Dems, now Tory, was a Remainer, now a Brexiteer, agreed with abolishing the Monarchy, now she’s all over the King like a rash…you tell me one positive thing that she has done for you?
My concern is we are paying Truss and the government large wages and they seem to be doing dam all in the way of work. Boris resigned in early July after months of time wasted discussing parties and poor behaviour. Then weeks of inactivity with the leader elections and summer recess, now there is a long period of mourning for the Queen and Truss swinging on the coat tails of the new King by visiting a number of countries then will come the recess for party conferences and soon after that Christmas.
Are any of the government going to do some meaningful work any time soon…
Futher ruining our reputation.
They’ll check in to us via Twitter or something then go back to their “important” work
