The market knows best
At the Lyttelton market on Saturday morning, two people separately urged me to write about Liz Truss. I asked why. Because, said one, the story’s got everything. He was right. It’s got vanity, hubris, and pig-headed folly. And it’s funny.
Towards the end of her brief tenure, Liz Truss failed to appear in the House of Commons to answer questions. One of her colleagues stood up to speak on her behalf. ‘‘The prime minister is not hiding under her desk,’’ she said. Immediately everyone knew the prime minister was hiding under her desk. And who could have blamed her?
The skies had fallen in. In just six weeks she had become the object of both scorn and ridicule.
She’d started as she would go on. She flew to Balmoral Castle to meet the Queen. Two days later the Queen was dead. Truss couldn’t be held entirely responsible, but it boded ill.
She’d taken over at a difficult time. Prices were rising, the climate was changing and there was a war in Ukraine that threatened everything. People were feeling poor and scared. They felt that tomorrow would be worse than today. Truss set about soothing their worries by cutting taxes for the very rich.
Even the very rich disapproved. The pound fell. The money markets panicked. Depression loomed. Truss insisted she’d never reverse course. In the next breath she reversed course. And she sacked the man who’d set the course with her.
It was The Economist magazine that first compared her to a lettuce. Which would last longer, they wondered, Truss in office or a lettuce on the supermarket shelf? We soon found out, and it wasn’t even close.
The ignominy was total. ‘‘I’m a fighter not a quitter,’’ declared Truss. That same afternoon she quit. When she emerged from Number 10 to do the quitting her husband came out one pace behind her and then shuffled to one side to be out of shot.
The public were unconvinced by her because she sounded unconvinced by herself. Her speeches were so obviously rehearsed. She had none of the qualities of leadership except the one they all have: ambition.
It is wrong to mock misfortune, but this was not misfortune. Every step she took, she took deliberately. She had planned to become prime minister. She had planned to enact these policies. If anyone ever advised her to the contrary, she paid no attention.
And thus we return to the perpetual paradox of power: only people who want it seek it. But it should never be given to people who want it.
She saw herself as Margaret Thatcher. Her predecessor saw himself as Winston Churchill. Consciously or not, Boris
Johnson even adopted Churchill’s hunched posture. Brexit was his Second World War. Once it was done so was he. After that Johnson’s only plan was to stay in office, because the point of having power is having power. He was eventually ousted for hypocrisy and lies.
He’s still an MP, of course, and one so dedicated to his constituents that when Truss was wilting and the country in crisis he was lying on a beach in the West Indies. But the moment Truss fell he caught a whiff of possibility. It was like the smell of roast meat to a dog. Within hours, he was on a plane home, dropping everything in the cause of self-interest. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.
What can the people do about it? Nothing much. Only sigh, laugh, shake their heads and go to market, just as they’ve always done.