State of Play #10: Unparalleled Failure
The destruction of yet another Prime Minister continues a state of UK political crisis
And so we begin again.
Playbook:
“THE RECORD TO BEAT: Truss would need to last until the new year to avoid becoming the shortest-serving U.K. prime minister in history. If she leaves office on January 4 she will have completed 120 days in No. 10, beating George Canning (who died in office).”
Well, she failed. And failed miserably. Never in the history of Prime Ministers have we witnessed one so abjectly weak that they cannot survive even two months. The historian Dominic Sandbrook boldly, and rightly, argued just 3 weeks into Truss’s tenure that she was the worst PM ever. He was subsequently proved right.
Continuing in the vein of TPI’s last analysis of a PM’s downfall (SOP#7), the same framework will be used to judge Truss's downfall. Policy failure, scandal or coup are the three key factors which bring down the Prime Ministers. Johnson was brought down, as political historian Anthony Seldon elegantly stated: “by an unprecedented cocktail of all three”. With Truss, however, it was just one: policy failure.
At least Truss will be on top of something…
Policy Failure or Truss Failure?
When an economic policy like the mini-budget (SOP#9) is so intertwined with a PM’s premiership, it’s impossible to disentangle the individual from the idea. This, clearly, was the failure of Truss herself. As TPI previously noted: it was foolish for Truss to go so hard and so fast to pass such radical supply side reforms and tax cuts. Weakening the treasury and undermining the link with the Bank of England / markets beforehand made the event suicidal. Due to Truss’s proximity to the idea it was impossible to escape the bind of blame for the resultant market crash.
The firing of Kwasi Kwarteng was a cowardly attempt at scapegoating. The subsequent surrender to Jeremy Hunt sealed Truss’s fate. Her fundamental issue was that she blew a £60bn+ hole in the budget, from which no recovery was possible. If she had been Rishi Sunak, Hunt’s form of market induced austerity, to ensure stability, would have been judged as a roaring success. However, the Prime Minister was in fact Liz Truss. And as she found, there is no point in Liz Truss if she is pretending to be Rishi Sunak; especially with the added negatives of blowing up the Tories’ fiscal credibility and plunging her party to extinction-level polling. But alas, Truss had sacrificed her and her Chancellor on the altar of the free market.
A good question to ask, (see SOP#8), is why didn’t Truss tone down her ideological fervour after winning the Crown? What happened to the idea of pivoting away from unsustainable borrowing to cut taxes and, instead, a focus on the cost-of-living? Her team so blatantly briefed in the papers, like this FT quote, that the ship would be steadied after her victory:
“After the teams are in place, Truss plans to govern in two broad phases. The initial focus will be surviving her first 100 days in office up to Christmas as the cost of living crisis mounts. “The only story in town is going to be supporting people through the difficult times, basic things like heating, eating, employment and transport,” one figure close to Truss said.
Another campaign insider said: “We have to end this idea that Britain is broken, and tangibly improve people’s lives. If we can show people that the government is on their side, everyone will be in a better place come the new year.”
The second phase would begin in early 2023, with the new prime minister switching to delivering on her longer term agenda of reform.
It should not be a surprise that when Truss contradicted the perceived wisdom (and her own briefing), the markets flipped out and destroyed her policy and government. It seems Truss and her team forgot their own plan of patience. Instead, over-excited by the levers of power, they decided to pull everything in a naive attempt to establish their authority and achieve a neoliberal eutopia. In fairness, Truss’s own ideology of supply-side reform was possibly the right (or part of the right) question to be asking about the stagnant UK economy. Business rate reform, planning / onshore wind reform and cutting taxes for working people. All sound policy, which would inevitably aid growth. But when combined with the rest of the mini-budget, Truss’s vision resulted in a speedy splurge of un-targeted spending and political suicide. During a cost-of-living crisis you cannot feasibly boost banker’s bonuses and abolish the 45p tax rate, while cutting benefits or public sector pay (with inflation).
This equation, in a liberal democracy, doesn't exist without a mandate.
Similarly, Truss’s appointment, and then firing, of Home Secretary Suella Braverman illustrated a general lack of strategy and foresight. If Truss truly desired to boost immigration (for growth), she should have not appointed a hard-right ERG minister who would obviously block this reform. Yes, Truss appointed Braverman in return for support in the leadership. But a PM is at their most powerful when picking their first cabinet – an event a PM can never repeat, and usually regrets! She essentially built ticking-time bombs into her cabinet for powers sake. Truss had the political capital to bring in the rebels of the Tory ‘centre / left’ (I.E the Sunakites / One-nation set). Not only would they have given market credibility, many are also quite effective ministers (cough cough: Gove!).
Truss’s No.10 team, although mostly unexamined, were inefficient. Part of the buck must stop at the Chief of Staff Mark fullbrook. Involved in numerous lobbying and corruption scandals, Fullbrook was brilliant at uniting MPs behind Truss, as he did for Johnson, in the leadership campaign. But he was not fit for government, neither was his past. His approval of the firing of the Treasury’s Permanent Secretary Tom Scholar and allowing the Mini-budget is unforgivable. The same can be said for No.10 SpAd Jason Stein (ex Prince Andrew Advisor), allegedly briefing that Sajid Javid was “shit” to the Sunday Times, hence his suspension.
In addition, the No.10 communications operation was just objectively terrible throughout the premiership. Possibly explained by the fact that the comms director (Adam Jones) was on holiday for most of the last two weeks, with Stein (the “shit” briefer, as he is now known) temporarily in charge. Due to poor comms: U-turns were proclaimed, then cancelled, Ministers, such as Mordaunt, were openly briefing against the PM and the idea of collective responsibility became extinct. But the worst was yet to come.
The farce in Truss’s team continued when the Chief and deputy Chief Whips attempted to install discipline by exclaiming a ‘confidence motion’ (risky business) on an unpopular vote to lift the ban on fracking. However, the whips began to lose control of the rebel numbers and resigned in embarrassment, DURING the vote. In the ensuing mess, Truss failed to even vote on a confidence motion in herself…. (yes really). Remarkably, there were even accusations of physical abuse and bullying in the lobbies. The whips then, strangely, proceeded to ‘unresign’ at around 1:30 am in the morning. But by the morning, Truss knew the game was up. Truss’s team and cabinet displayed a common theme of amateurish distraction and inexperience in high-government. A laughable mess if it wasn’t so real; the actual government of the United Kingdom.
One can’t help but think of Dominic Cummings' golden rule of politics:
“the government doesn’t control the government, doesn’t want to, doesn’t understand how to, couldn’t even if it wanted, but this cannot be discussed in polite Westminster society.”
Whether you agree with Cummings or not, Truss built her team and thus must fall by their failures too.
Structural Failure
The only absolve for Truss is the age-old constant: the Tory party. Stephen Bush contends that Truss wasn’t the issue, instead the nasty symptom of a party that has become ungovernable:
“This is the big problem: the Conservative party isn’t bitterly divided and unable to reliably pull together parliamentary majorities because it is led by Truss. It is led by Truss because it is bitterly divided. Its rows over tax and spend have not been quelled by the market panic caused by Trussonomics and its adherents will be a challenge for the next Conservative leader, whoever they may be.”
The party has been elected on a somewhat left-wing economic 2019 mandate, but saddled with a death-lock of pledges not to raise taxes nor borrow while also ensuring debt is flat or falling (See here). That pledge has been broken by both Johnson and Truss. And while the Red wall crumbled, it did so at the cost of the party itself. Truss, Sunak and Johnson have promised all MPs that the Tory party can be anything to anyone depending on their beliefs. Under Johnson, the king of cakism, this was successful due to his immense charisma and sheer courage to hold such contradictory positions. Under Truss (and probably Sunak too), this is impossible. They lack the ability, but also the bold vision to take the Tory party to the promised lands of One-nation intervention, while keeping the reins on spending and cutting taxes (or promising to). Two divergent, possibly uncontrollable, forces.
In government, a party must make tough choices and cohere around them. It seems the Tory party have had enough of such choices, and as a result, governing. The parliamentary party resembles more a think tank on Tufton Street or a Conservative University society rather than a governing party. If the fundamental division isn’t resolved under the new leader we could be witnessing the beginning of a split in the party that seems to have lost its purpose. The purpose of the Conservatives was to attain power, but the last six years, and churn of four Prime Ministers, has proven that power for power's sake has been quite unsatisfactory, especially for exhausted MPs. What are the real ends of this ancient party? Maybe, just maybe, a structural change is due.
Conclusion: Truss in History
Historically, Truss will be ranked as the (or one of the) worst Prime Minister(s) – even lower than the classic policy failure example of Anthony Eden and Suez in 1956. However, even Eden lasted for over a year. Theresa May is possibly a good comparison: a PM who fell because of their key policy failing. But, May didn’t inherit a 70-seat working majority, nor a party that had resolved Brexit. Even with May’s inherent weaknesses as leader, she was skilled enough to battle out three years (even after a dire election), while making some progress on the Brexit question. May’s real historical contribution, however, was her first cracks in the Red Wall (2017): edging the Tories closer to Johnsonian Conservatism with her ‘burning injustices’.
Reaching back into the depths of history, Prime Minister Goderich (1827) is the most similar to Truss. Third on the list of shortest PMs, surviving just 144 days, Goderich was completely incapable of holding together the Whig and Tory coalition of his government, much like Liz Truss’s inability to hold the different wings of the Tory party together.
Scandal and coup were evidently not the causes of Truss’s demise. The responsibility is squarely with Truss and her policy failure. But this also extends to a failure to build a competent team, or forge a stable path for the government in a time of crisis and instability. Truss was a PM incapable of governing, instead she invested whatever intellectual ability she had in ambition and aesthetics. However, the extent of Truss’s failure will only become clear after the tenure of the next PM is up. The deeper question in the next chapter of UK politics is: have the Tory party really become structurally ungovernable? Or was this just a Truss-fuelled malaise?
For now, the human hand grenade has exploded. We have little idea of who will pick up the pieces.