IT IS a new dawn and the country is waking up, rubbing its eyes, trying to recall where it is and what those blurry shapes mean. The political summer was so long and drawn out – and so endlessly repetitive – that we fell into a deep, sun-soaked siesta, only the occasional warble breaking through the dreamscape.
It is the beginning of the age of Truss. Despite the prolonged leadership battle she has just endured, none of us has much idea, at this early hour of the morning, what that age will bring. For there are (at least) two Liz Trusses and no one yet knows which one is going to count.
The one on display this summer was designed to appeal only to the 170,000 members of the most exclusive voting club in British politics, the paid-up loyalists of the Tory tribe. Whilst all normal people will have dozed the summer off, this strange collective had a job to do, and most of them will have paid attention and will have tried to do their duty solemnly. The good news is, now that’s done, they can retreat to the shadows of organising raffles, moaning about the BBC, and tut-tutting at everything in general and nothing in particular.
This is a tribe that hates handouts, craves tax cuts, considers Keir Starmer to be a dreary irrelevance and Nicola Sturgeon to be a menace who should be caged and neutered. Liz Truss is of this tribe and knows her audience well. She might be an excruciating orator (those gut-wrenching pauses for applause; that vacant, grinning stare) but she is nothing like as stupid as she so painfully often looks. She has that first and most important political skill in spades – she can read the room. And she knew exactly what to say to her audience this summer to make them pick her and to dump her rival.
If this is the Liz Truss that walks into Downing Street this week, her administration will crash and burn. For now is the time for handouts; now is not the time for tax cuts; Labour is to be taken seriously, and the SNP needs no imprisoning – the Supreme Court will see to that, and politically the best thing a Truss government can do regarding the Union is nothing. Just leave it alone. Treat the First Minister and her government with respect, of course, but otherwise just leave them alone to make their own mistakes – after all, they need no encouragement on that front. More of that later.
I fear that the new Prime Minister will indeed seek to govern as she has campaigned but, as I have written about her before, I hope to God I’m wrong. And what gives me cautious hope that my fears may be misplaced is that, if you look at matters differently, another Liz Truss emerges. This, second, Liz Truss, which for the most part was rather carefully shrouded over the summer, is Liz the pragmatist.
I do not know her – I’ve never met her – but the thing I most like and admire about what I have read of her is that she is not frightened to change her mind. I love the fact that she used to be a monarchy-bashing member of the young Liberal Democrats (I would: I used to be a monarchy-bashing member of the Labour party, but that was a long time ago).
Some say that she has had five Cabinet jobs in the last eight years and has left each without a trace. I’m not sure that is true – lawyers in particular remember her dismal time as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice – but, if it were, I would regard it as an enormous compliment. For the best Tories are those who understand that government is stewardship and that the function of a Secretary of State is to do nothing save leave your Department in better shape than it was when you arrived. The point of the Tory party, after all, is simply to hold office, thereby ensuring that the other lot, who would take a wrecking ball to the economy given half a chance, are rooted to the Opposition benches where they can do no harm.
Such, at any rate, used to be the point of the Tory party, back in the day when it actually believed in conserving things, rather than breaking them.
If Liz Truss can steer the Tory party back to this Old Conservatism, so much the better. To do so, however, she will have to ditch the ideological Truss of the campaign trail and resurrect the pragmatic Truss that was kept under wraps this summer.
Her immediate priority, of course, must be to tackle the genuine crisis (a much overused word, but here there really is a crisis) as regards the cost of living. Energy bills are out of control and absolutely must be reined in. That is going to be ridiculously expensive and will need statist, interventionist measures. Market regulation and tax cuts will simply not do. But, as furlough exemplified, public emergencies require emergency measures, and the cost of living crisis is no exception. Pragmatism, not ideology, is what is needed here.
I hope she is so busy with and focused on addressing this problem that she pays no heed to the constitution, nor to the Union. The Tory party’s instinct that Nicola Sturgeon is a menace to all we hold dear is of course correct – she is – but the solution to that problem is not to take to the law to muzzle her. Next month the Supreme Court will hear argument about the lawfulness of any go-it-alone indyref2. Let the judges take care of all that – there is no need for any fiddling with the rules of referendums.
If Liz Truss really is the child of the Union she professes to be, she will leave the damn thing alone. Pragmatism, not hardline ideology, is what is needed here, too.
Adam Tomkins was a Conservative MSP for the Glasgow region from 2016 to 2021.
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