By Mohamed Jalloh
Liz Truss has risen from the obscurity and loneliness of being an opposition councillor on a Labour-dominated local authority, to the biggest job of them all.
The foreign secretary beats former Chancellor Rishi Sunak in a ballot of Conservative members – winning by about 21,000 votes, about 54% of the conservative vote.
For Liz Truss, that ambition becomes reality this month. She served on Greenwich Council, in south-east London, and fought an unwinnable parliamentary seat in the 2001 general election.
At the 2005 general election, she came a distant second in a Labour-leaning marginal. Yet ahead of the 2010 general election, she had become the Conservative candidate for a safe Tory seat, South West Norfolk.
But all hell broke loose when an affair she had had with then Conservative MP Mark Field was exposed.
Political Survivor
Liz Truss has proven, as she has done repeatedly that she is a political survivor. She emerged from that skirmish to become a Conservative MP, and now rises to be prime minister having been a minister for a decade.
One long-standing former Greenwich councilor recalled that back in her town hall days Liz Truss was notably quiet during full council meetings, but got stuck into her committee work.
She has talked about it quite pointedly – telling the Conservative Home website that being on the council’s planning committee amounted to “hours of my life I will never get back”.
But these apprenticeships for high office are admired by her supporters, and helped her relate to the voluntary party in a way Rishi Sunak simply couldn’t.
Rishi Sunak her defeated opponent, was never a councilor and landed the plum Conservative seat of Richmond, in the Yorkshire Dales, without having to try to persuade the unpersuadable in seats glued to their Labour loyalties.
Perhaps their contrasting CVs go some way to explaining their very different approaches to the campaign: Liz Truss relishing the scrap, Rishi Sunak appearing more hesitant at times – and at others more uncomfortable – to get stuck into the noisier, sometimes grubbier side of politics.
But Liz Truss is confronted by the gargantuan task of government.
Things will feel different. They are bound to – Boris Johnson was the very definition of a stoic performing prime minister. But she inherits the same challenges he was confronted by.
Governing when millions are confronted by unpayable bills, during a war in Europe and in the aftermath of a pandemic.
Governing a party that’s already been in power for 12 years.
Followers of British politics will expect to see Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly – but these appointments won’t be announced until tomorrow, when Ms Truss formally takes office.
Then there will be Prime Minister’s Question Time, on Wednesday 7th September 2022.
The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s team is well aware of not making the same mistake – as they saw it – as Rishi Sunak did in his BBC debate with Liz Truss in late July, when he was accused of “mansplaining”.
They are hopeful that Sir Keir’s experience of taking on Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long Bailey, during the Labour leadership contest, proves he can be effective in debate without being accused of patronizing.
We can expect an announcement from the new government on help with energy bills within days, likely on Thursday 8th September 2022.
There will be very little if any honeymoon period for Liz Truss, as the country clamours for answers to huge questions the caretaker government of Boris Johnson in recent months felt unempowered to take on.
Liz Truss has a lot in her plate to deal with. There is inflation, Ukraine, energy security, the NHS with winter approaching, the contrails of Brexit and…a general election that isn’t far away.
The Conservatives have consistently been some way behind Labour in the polls all year. And there has to be an election by January 2025 at the latest.
Politics is being reset, but it will continue to be competitive, noisy and unpredictable.
While many things change, some never do.
Below are the manifesto plans of Liz Truss.
- Says she will reverse the recent rise in National Insurance, which came into effect in April, and hold an emergency budget.
- Pledges not to bring in any new taxes and to scrap a planned rise in corporation tax – set to increase from 19% to 25% in 2023.
- Would suspend what is known as the “green levy” – part of your energy bill that pays for social and green projects.
- Says she will pay for the cuts by spreading the UK’s “Covid-19 debt” over a longer period.
- Promises to change taxes to make it easier for people to stay at home to care for children or elderly relatives.
- Wants to create new “low-tax and low-regulation zones” across the country to create hubs for innovation and enterprise.
- Says she won’t cut public spending unless there is a way to do so that won’t lead to future problems.
Would bring target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defense forward to 2026 and introduce a new target of 3% by 2030.