It’s a sign of how bad things are for the new prime minister that only her third Prime Minister’s Questions is being billed as a potentially defining moment in her short premiership.
MPs tell me that how Liz Truss performs at the dispatch box against Sir Keir Starmer at their weekly joust will be an acid test for the prime minister put on notice by her party.
Having dodged questions on Friday when she reversed key planks of her economic plan, and then left it to her new chancellor complete the mini-Budget and two-year energy support plan reversal, this PMQs will be a moment of reckoning.
Many of her party doubt she can meet the moment and think a poor performance will again reignite calls for her go. But if a bad performance is further destabilising, a good performance will now do little to change the fortunes for Ms Truss beyond the immediate moment.
It wouldn’t surprise me if she has a nervous breakdown - she’s clearly not built for the position. What on earth was she thinking when she thought she could be prime minister??
She is certainly not cut out to be the PM. Which makes one wonder - why did she step up for the role and why was she so very heavily supported (by her party membership, by certain newspapers, by some MPs, by a group of think tanks)?
Its seems likely that Truss herself is so unaware, so lacking in insight, so gullible and so blindly ambitious that when some people said she should stand, she stood. Then once on the candidate bandwagon, with behind the scene supporters and advisors, her ambition pushed her through to the leadership role. But it was notable that her advisors, towards the end, where keeping her out of the limelight as even then it was obvious she was a liability to herself. But given that - who was not thinking ‘why Liz’?
Here’s my suspicion: there is a group of advisors, sponsors, and MPs who wanted to get their dramatic neo-liberal policies. But they wanted a fall guy to front them in case they landed badly. Step forward not so bright Liz.
I am surprised that anybody wants the job at the moment because, whoever gets the PM position, the opposing party will do their best to get rid of them!
We need a strong person who has a strong plan on how to get through these difficult times and there appears to be very few!
It is time that political parties worked together to help the country, rather than creating childish complaints about the other party in the hope of getting an election, because that won’t help anybody!
The Tory membership wanted Penny Mordaunt and then the MPs whittled it down to just two so they had to choose between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
This article shows all the different voting stages of the MPs and as can be seen Penny was always ahead of Liz Truss right up until the last one where she got eliminated so it was between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. I think the MP’s would have done better to take note of what the members were saying and we might now be in a completely different place. And remember it’s the members who have to do all the door knocking.
In the very first round, it was Rishi - 88, Penny - 67 and Liz Truss - 50.
The one before last it was Rishi 118, Penny 92 and Liz 86.
And it wasn’t until the last it became, Rishi 137, Liz Truss 113 and Penny 105.
Its interesting to be reminded of who was eliminated in each round - as presumably the MPs who voted for them needed to find their next best candidate. So 27 of the 59 MPs voting for Kemi Badenoch switched their vote to Truss, whilst Mordaunt only gained 13 votes. That’s what did it for Mordaunt. One wonders who these MPs were that looked at Truss and thought “well, she is almost as good as Badenoch”.
Looking earlier in the MP voting rounds is it not startling that Hunt only lasted the very first round and polled a measly 18 votes, the least of all candidates. So that was how the tory party rated him back in July.
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As an aside, I wonder if Hugh Edwards will be getting his black suit and tie out today, to cover the passing of LT’s final death throws as PM.
Coffey ought to use her role as health minister to lay a white handkerchief over LT’s face, to see her breathing finally fade into nothingness.
PMQs is often dismissed a pointless pantomime, but one function it performs well is to serve as a barometer of political authority. A PM or opposition leader who crumbles at the dispatch box is not going to survive for long (being hopeless at PMQs was a major factor behind the Tories’ decision to dump Iain Duncan Smith as their leader in 2003) and that is why today’s session will be a make-or-break one for Liz Truss.
It is only her third PMQs since becoming prime minister, but it will be the first time she has faced the Commons since sacking her chancellor (for implementing policies including one she reportedly forced him to announce despite his reservations), dumping almost all the measures in her mini-budget, and abandoning the two-year energy price guarantee that, until Monday, was the one policy she was still claiming credit for. The word “humiliating” is overused in political reporting, but it is barely adequate to describe quite how damaging the events of the past week have been to Truss’s reputation.
Until last week, events and LT’s vanity have insulated the PM from the results of her incompetence. Her non-appearance in the House followed by a lacklustre visit to the Commons last week indicated that the insulation has been breached. Sir Keir Starmer may not be inclined towards, or capable of, “going for the jugular” but, mayhap, other MPs may - the result will not be pretty.
Quite. It’s totally unfair to expect the PM to answer questions about her government’s policies. They should ask her what she’s having for tea, where she gets her outfits, who does her hair and what she’s planning for Christmas. No wonder she gets all flustered, defensive and abusive when they ask her things about her job.
If you show any weakness in the house they are like a pack of dogs. How quickly support ebbs away, nobody want to be associated with her now. I’ve seen this in the factory where I worked, someone is egged on to be the spokesperson and then nobody backs them up when it comes to the crunch.
