After 100 days, we will know if our new PM has what it takes
Every incoming prime minister believes the first 100 days in power will define their entire premiership. Liz Truss is no exception. If, as widely expected, she beats Rishi Sunak, she will travel to Balmoral for the Queen to invite her to become Britain’s 56th prime minister since the office was created in 1721.
She faces a multi-layered crisis of cost of living, with fuel prices and inflation surging out of control, and many homes and businesses facing a real prospect of financial ruin within months. The threat of widespread industrial action in the public sector on a level unseen since the 1980s is also very real, and it haunts her and her team. Finally, the national health service is at breaking point, with waiting lists already longer than ever, and that is before the surge in demand this winter from flu and the possibility of a new variant of Covid, and even norovirus.
Who on earth would want to be prime minister? Especially now?
The idea that the first 100 days will be all important can be traced back 90 years when Franklin Delano Roosevelt became US president and launched his active and wide-ranging New Deal to overcome the worst aspects of America’s depression, which had been sparked by the Wall Street crash in 1929. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” he famously told Americans in his inaugural address as president.
Incoming American presidents since have been very conscious of their first 100 days. John F Kennedy, who won in 1960, said in his own inaugural address that his programme for office “will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days.” Prime ministers in Britain have been equally mesmerised by the need to make the most of the first three months.
Many PMs become unstuck at this time. Margaret Thatcher ran headlong into economic woes, Gordon Brown into a terrorist event at Glasgow Airport, and Theresa May into a party unwilling to buy into her vision of Brexit. But if new prime ministers do not lay out a clear plan, they are all the more likely to become thrown off course when the pressure piles on.
It’s all down to the “three Ps”: People, Policy and Presentation. Truss has had all summer to think about it, and she certainly knows that getting the right people in the right positions will make or break her. There’s been plenty of talk about her being the most right-wing prime minister since Margaret Thatcher: but the three existential pressures she faces means that she will be having to react to them so will have little space to implement her own ideas. Finally, presentation is all important. We will find in within days whether Truss has Boris Johnson’s ability to communicate.
Her first 100 days will finish in early December and, by then, we will have a fairly clear idea whether she has the ability to steady the country, unify party and nation, and produce policies on the economy, cost of living and the NHS which command widespread support. Perhaps she would be wise though to heed the advice of John F Kennedy.
Not the least of her challenges will be the general election, which must come before February 2025. The Conservatives won the last four general elections in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019. But no party has won five times in a row. Indeed, her first 100 days will be some of the most important in Downing Street’s living memory.