Truss ‘wrong, wrong, wrong’ as Tory leader
PARTY FACES ELECTORAL THREAT AMID ‘ANTI-GROWTH COALITION’ RIDICULE
TO QUOTE the prime minister herself, Liz Truss is “wrong, wrong, wrong”.
Whatever her ambitions and that of her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, about boosting the economy, they have endangered pension funds, which is very serious indeed, and also pushed up mortgage rates so that many young people have no hope whatsoever now of owning their own home.
Tory MPs have to decide whether they should remove her because with Truss as their leader, even those with large majorities will probably lose their seats at the next general election. Anything could happen in the next two years, of course.
Truss will hope that the economy recovers, inflation goes down, gas supplies stabilise and the war in Ukraine comes to an end.
However, in the event that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin uses a nuclear bomb of some kind, there will be a global crisis of such unprecedented proportions that no one will want to remove the prime minister.
But removing Truss will lead to a backlash from the Tory party members who chose her over Rishi Sunak, as well as from the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, which both backed her in the leadership contest. Their line is that the party should get behind Truss.
There is no good choice for Tory MPs. They face electoral extinction under Truss, but trying to remove her will also split the party.
One report claimed that “a number of exministers are planning to replace her” with Rishi as a caretaker prime minister, though the former chancellor is staying well away from any such plot.
Perhaps worst of all for Truss, she has become a figure of fun. She is being widely derided for her speech at the recent Tory party conference in Birmingham when she attacked the “anti-growth coalition”.
“I will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back,” she declared.
“Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP… The militant unions, the vested interests dressed up as think-tanks... The talking heads, the Brexit deniers and Extinction Rebellion and some of the people we had in the hall earlier. The fact is they prefer protesting to doing.
“They prefer talking on Twitter to taking tough decisions. They taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo. From broadcast to podcast, they peddle the same old answers. It’s always more taxes, more regulation and more meddling.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong. We see the antigrowth coalition at work across the country.”
The Financial Times did a dispassionate analysis of her month in office and concluded: “Liz Truss has had a terrible start as prime minister, to judge from opinion polls that have recorded huge leads for Labour over the Conservatives since she entered Downing Street.
“Labour has secured leads of 30 percentage points or more in four polls since chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’ involving £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts.
“But Truss’s position is worse than the headline voting intention data suggests – there appears to be little public appetite for the policies she is pursuing to achieve higher economic growth, as well as a lack of trust in her delivering the agenda.”
If Truss chooses to step down for the good of the country and the party, that would be another matter. Realistically speaking, the Tory party is stuck with her. As things stand now, it looks doomed. Even Conservative MPs in safe seats should polish their CVs.