If Truss makes it to the top job, she’ll need a different tune to unite the party
We are almost there. Only a week now remains of what has seemed an endless battle for the leadership of the Conservative Party. The result will be announced on the fifth of September and the winner will then become prime minister and begin to form an administration.
At the moment, the received wisdom is that Liz Truss is substantially ahead of Rishi Sunak—indeed, with perhaps as many as two-thirds of the votes having been cast, it is possible she has technically already won.
It was Mario Cuomo who said that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. The phrase has some resonance for this election: there will need to be a stark shift in tone once the new prime minister takes office. It has been a dismal, uninspiring and nasty contest, and if it has been poetry it has been crude doggerel. Sunak and Truss have sniped at each other and made allegations of inadequacy and bad faith. Save the occasional empty slogan, there has been no vision, and certainly no attempt to look to the high ground.
Internal elections are always difficult. They represent the contenders’ most heartfelt ambitions and they necessarily require the airing of dirty linen in public. Any competition requires you to inflate your own capabilities and do down those of your opponents, but there is a choice between the major and minor keys. Unfortunately both Sunak and Truss have been drawn to the black notes.
The Conservative Party is struggling. There is ill feeling at the – absolutely necessary – unseating of Boris Johnson, and there are unresolved ideological tensions between radical free-marketeers and extravagant public spenders. The need to appeal to the new Tory voters of the Red Wall is balanced by creeping fear that the traditional heartland is in revolt. These divisions are taking an ugly shape, and there are frequent accusations of not being a “real” Conservative – as if there were a checklist of doctrine.
Let us suppose that it is Liz Truss who kisses the Queen’s hands next week and moves into Downing Street. The first job is cabinet-making, and this is a challenge: while there are supporters to be rewarded, she must also show to the party that she is inclusive and open to new ideas. Kwasi Kwarteng seems nailed on as chancellor, and Truss’s close friend Thérèse Coffey is likely to be chief whip or cabinet office minister. Suelle Braverman, easily the worst attorney-general in a generation, is talked about as the next home secretary.
Truss must do better than this. Rishi Sunak might well decline to serve under his rival, but earlier contenders Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat need to be brought in to indicate generosity of spirit as well as an acceptance of the ideological spectrum. Most obviously, Penny Mordaunt, who won the support of a third of MPs and was only beaten by a whisker into third place, must surely be offered a senior post, with foreign secretary or deputy prime minister being the easiest fits.
Truss will need to extend her hand beyond the parliamentary party too. Her agenda is clear, if unsophisticated: tax cuts, a smaller state, a hawkish foreign policy and the occasional kick in the shins for our European neighbours.
That pleases the Conservative electorate – but it is no way to govern.
The new prime minister will need to reassure business that her intention to cut the burden of taxation is balanced by an ability to tackle runaway inflation and an acknowledgement that public borrowing is not a magic bullet. Energy customers need to know that a deregulatory instinct will not expose them to rapaciously unaffordable bills as the weather turns colder. And her famous boosterism of British industry must not present a crudely xenophobic face to foreign investment.
None of this should be hard. Prime ministers usually feel an instinct to embrace rather than exclude, though perhaps Lady Thatcher’s invocation of St Francis of Assisi was a bit over the top. But if Liz Truss is our next prime minister, she must realise that next week is a watershed: the acrimony must stop, the slogans must be put away and she must focus on the job of leading not just her party but the nation.