The best thing about Prime Minister Truss is that this means the next general election will be sooner
English original of article published today in Italian by La Stampa
So, while Italy waits to see whether the elections in three weeks’ time will lead to its first female prime minister, Britain now has its third, following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, all from the right-wing Conservative Party. Elizabeth Truss, who prefers to be known as Liz, starts the job with one big advantage as far as many British voters are concerned: she is not Boris Johnson. Otherwise, she faces a steep uphill challenge.
The lengthy process by which the Conservative Party has chosen her as its new leader, and hence as the new prime minister, has done her no favours. Their party election, in which just 160,000 members were eligible to vote, has taken two months to come to a conclusion, the same amount of time that is being devoted to the whole Italian general election.
Throughout this summer, Britain has in effect had no government, since Boris Johnson stayed as caretaker prime minister but spent most of the time on holiday and refused to take any action even as the worst energy and cost-of-living crisis in a generation started to sweep over the country like a wave.
This does mean that Prime Minister Truss now has the benefit of a clean beginning. But in the effort to get herself elected, she has arguably had to talk far too much, making all sorts of promises that look costly and, in some cases, impractical, as well as insulting many of Britain’s closest allies, most notably France. One of her own former cabinet colleagues, Michael Gove, described her declared plans as being “a holiday from reality.”
Now, reality is about to confront her. She will no doubt have to shrug off all sorts of accusations about broken promises. That will probably not be too difficult: the British public and the UK’s international partners are now the audiences that matter, not the party members.
Certainly, it would be a mistake to underestimate her. In the six ministerial posts she has occupied in her ten-year political career, she has built up a reputation for being a tough, resolute and sometimes rather opinionated politician. In none of them can she point to any great record of achievement: after all, she has not done any of her jobs for more than two years. Her record is one of energy and dedication rather than significant progress.
That, however, is rather better than could be said about Boris Johnson. In his 20-year political career, culminating in his three years and six weeks as Prime Minister, Johnson showed essentially just one real skill, a skill most associated in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi: he is a super-salesman, and he sells himself with jokes and a smile.
His undoing, however, came from that same skill: he thought that he could sell his way out of any trouble through blatant dishonesty. His repeated dishonesty was at first seen as amusing by his party colleagues, but it proved to be an incompetent sort of dishonesty because his lies tended to be exposed very quickly. Moreover, alongside that dishonesty he showed no great interest in the detailed and often hard business of governing, and instead was chaotic and often incompetent.
Prime Minister Truss will do smiles, but not jokes. She echoes Johnson’s use of optimism as a political tool, but is never going to entertain a room or the nation while doing so. In governing, so far she has proven both more interested and more diligent than Johnson was. She is certainly not chaotic, nor has she yet been accused convincingly of incompetence.
The first big question will be whether, in the formation of her new cabinet, she shows herself to be more interested in rewarding loyalty than talent. Whatever qualities Prime Minister Truss now reveals, she is no Margaret Thatcher in terms of either political convictions or intellectual coherence about policy. So she is going to have to be good at delegating power and prominence to talented colleagues, while of course giving them a clear strategic direction. If her cabinet proves to be more about rewarding party factions than building a capable team, its prospects will be poor.
The task is huge. Like all governments in Europe, Britain’s needs to convince the public that it recognises the scale of the energy emergency facing the country and that it can quickly put together a coherent plan to confront that emergency while still giving forthright support to Ukraine. Boris Johnson has been a very good supporter of Ukraine in military terms, but has been hopeless at getting a grip on the emergency.
Whether Liz Truss will now really get a grip must be in doubt, but her government is still likely to be better at this than Johnson’s. Whatever happens, however, the best news is probably that instead of waiting until 2024 to call Britain’s next general election, a new prime minister is likely to grab the first opportunity to call a snap election once the economic situation looks at all improved. So this new Truss government may last only for about a year, at which point all the voters, and not just 160,000 Tory members, will get to decide what’s next.