PM is now the only one left to take blame for mishaps
MAKE no mistake about it – the UK Government is in full crisis mode.
Liz Truss’s feeble attempt to shift the blame for her government’s disastrous mini-budget has left her now solely in the firing line.
In sacking Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor just five weeks after grasping the keys to Downing Street, Mr Truss has lost her biggest ally, and potentially failed to do anything to calm the financial markets that reacted with disgust to the mini-budget.
The Prime Minister has been forced into two humiliating U-turns on the mini-budget, the only key policy she has been able to bring forward since entering Downing Street.
Markets operate on confidence and if there remains no faith in Ms Truss from the City of London then nothing short of a full-scale climbdown of the Government’s mini-budget is likely save the
Prime Minister’s skin.
Politics can be unpredictable. One day Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng are in “lockstep” over the strategy, the next day he is being hauled back from America to be sacked for the growth plan signed off by both of them.
There appears to be a fairly alarming culture problem within the Tory party at Westminster.
Ms Truss was plonked in No 10 after MPS reached the end of their tether with Boris Johnson’s deceit and bluster – but in leaving Downing Street, Mr Johnson brazenly refused to apologise or take any shred of responsibility for what had gone wrong.
If Ms Truss was meant to instil a more trustworthy and honest brand of the Conservatives, we are yet to see it.
Ms Truss was backed by Tory members, but in the leadership contest, she did not win the backing of MPS – with the parliamentary party opting for Rishi Sunak.
Even before yesterday’s chaotic drama, Tory MPS were said to plotting to replace her with Mr Sunak and Penny Mordaunt – while some reports suggested a few Conservative MPS would be happy if a General Election was called.
Yesterday’s sacking of Mr Kwarteng will have done little to reassure some of Ms Truss’s backbenchers that she is the right person to take the Tories forward – the party is trailing Labour by some 30 points in the polls.
So throwing her former chancellor and biggest ally under a bus will do little to quash the growing anger and frustration within the parliamentary Conservative Party, mulling over a Government that has been in post for less than six weeks.
The economic car-crash over the last three weeks has been a gift to Labour, now soaring in the polls, and the SNP, which has been able to point at the lack of economic sustainability as part of the Union.
If the markets need confidence that the Government has to get a handle on the economy in order to take Ms Truss’s strategy seriously, but we don’t appear to have reached this point yet.
The sacking of Mr Kwarteng and the second huge U-turn on his mini-budget give a perception of chaos – summed up by Mr Truss’s letter to her former chancellor being signed off by Mr Kwarteng himself.
If Ms Truss is insistent she will remain Prime Minister to ensure “economic stability”, actions will have to follow that give any truth to this because she is now the only one left in the firing line, and she has run out of people to blame.
Yesterday, Ms Truss admitted things were “difficult” but remained adamant “we will get through this storm”.
But things are far from resolved. The Prime Minister has now been left all alone to weather the torrential downpour she can still expect from party allies who will demand results.