Our patriotic PM actually BELIEVES in Britain. If only the same could be said of her critics
Believe the naysayers, and you’ll convince yourself that Britain is doomed. We face soaring inflation, a looming recession, impending blackouts: a new and terrible winter of discontent.
Yet based on her speech yesterday, our new Prime Minister seems remarkably undaunted — even upbeat. liz Truss is not only a Conservative, then, but a patriot too. She believes in Britain — and she believes that we have a better future.
if only the same could be said of her critics.
Pragmatism
like many, i shall miss Boris Johnson’s eloquence, dynamism and leadership — never better displayed than in his magnanimous farewell speech yesterday.
And though Truss will never compete with Boris as an orator, i am genuinely excited to see how she will tackle not only the immediate energy crisis, but the task of piloting Britain through the stormy weather ahead.
The early signs are promising. There are three things that immediately strike you about liz Truss.
First, she says what she thinks. it doesn’t matter whether she’s talking to a schoolchild or to a head of state — there is no sugar-coating, none of Boris’s bonhomie or people-pleasing.
Second, she always argues from first principles. every policy proposal that crosses her desk will have to pass rigorous tests. Does it increase the tax burden? Will it impose more red tape? Would it generate growth?
Third, she is less interested in popularity than in delivering. Her own poll ratings have never reached spectacular heights — but she doesn’t care. What matters to her is the final result.
As a woman who reached Oxford from a comprehensive, she is the ultimate meritocrat. She has chosen Kwasi Kwarteng to run the Treasury not because he went to eton, but because he is the right man for the job.
That pragmatism, allied to her famous determination, is inspiring. lots of people have underestimated her: more fool them.
She is formidable once she is confident that she has found the right solution to a given problem. look at the way she outmanoeuvred her rivals in the leadership contest.
Rishi Sunak started out as favourite — the sleek financial whizz-kid and the darling of the establishment — while Truss appeared awkward in her first Tv appearance.
Yet she was quick to learn from her mistakes — and swiftly swept past Sunak in the polls to secure a comfortable lead.
if you look at Truss’s career, you’ll see she has spent a lot of time learning from her mistakes and coming out stronger. To take just one example, she turned her youthful past as a lib Dem to her advantage. Today she is a true Tory, but she had to get there by her own steam.
Her instincts are still liberal, but she now appreciates the importance of family, nation and tradition. As a freedomloving Conservative, she seems to want to echo her two greatest recent predecessors as Tory leader: Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson.
Experienced
Similarly, Truss began as a Remainer, but after the referendum she accepted the will of the British people. This ability to adapt is one of her greatest virtues, whatever her enemies may say.
Who in Westminster could claim never to have changed their opinion on a policy? The difference is that Truss has always been unashamed to learn from the past.
Although some have unkindly suggested she ‘rose without trace’, Truss is in reality probably the most experienced, battle-hardened minister in Government.
She has been a Cabinet minister since 2014 — and has taken her time to reach the top of Disraeli’s ‘greasy pole’.
As Foreign Secretary, Truss demonstrated her remarkable work ethic in securing a convincing roster of postBrexit trade deals, with what seemed like effortless flair.
She was also quick to understand the threat posed by vladimir Putin. As early as last April, she set out a strategy of ‘containing’ Russian aggression. i predicted at the time that she would be our next PM.
This boldness has proved something of a rarity in the Western world. even after the invasion of Ukraine, French and German leaders are too timorous to stand up to Russia so forthrightly.
like Boris, whom she hailed this week as admired ‘from Kyiv to Carlisle’, liz Truss can be safely trusted to stand up for Ukraine, then — and resist the siren voices of appeasement from Paris and Berlin.
So what of her domestic intray? i admit it is a daunting
prospect. Yet i also believe that Truss will avoid the temptation to zig-zag from one issue to the next — a tendency to which Boris, for all his talents, often fell prey.
Boris’s premiership was hobbled by a lack of management skills. His downfall was caused not by the great issues of the day (on all of which, i believe, he made the right call) but by petty office politics.
it is safe to say that scandals such as Partygate are unlikely to derail the new Truss administration.
She has gathered a talented team around her, though — perhaps because she is less keen to please than Boris is — she won’t let overmighty courtiers like Dominic Cummings hog the limelight.
instead, our new PM will keep her characteristic steely focus on the challenges her government faces.
Her first priority — she has said as much — is to bring the energy crisis under control this autumn. in the medium term, she must also deliver on her promises of lower taxes and a smaller state before the next election — now only a couple of years off.
Can she achieve this? There is an irony that this passionate free marketeer seems set to splash out an eye-watering £100 billion- odd of taxpayer cash to cap our energy bills.
Yet Trussonomics aren’t piein-the- sky. The Government has borrowed greater sums before. The bill for the pandemic is more than triple that amount. Other countries such as Germany are borrowing on a large scale for similar reasons.
Overall, i believe that Truss is firmly convinced that the role of government is not to tax and spend — but to grow the size of the economy.
Future
Once the immediate crisis has passed, unlike the Opposition she will genuinely want to reduce the crippling fiscal burden — the highest it has been in most of our lifetimes — as soon as possible.
She has already stated her intention to reverse Sunak’s hated increases to corporation tax and national insurance. This should be only the start.
Unlike the snobs of left and Right, Truss cares about costconscious customers and business- owners — and she believes that a government that lets people keep more of their own money is a government that wins elections.
Our new Prime Minister is anything but a ‘little englander’ — but she is quintessentially english. Though she passionately believes in fair play, she also senses that ‘fair’ means equal opportunities, not equal outcomes.
To those who think Britain’s best days are behind us, or even that the future looks hopeless, liz Truss has a clear message: give me the tools and i will finish the job that Boris started. let us hope she achieves this.