I completely understand the argument that it would be insane - contempt for the way we do democracy - for a political party to change its leader TWICE after a general election. It is why till recently I assumed Liz Truss would surely lead her party into the next…
election. But. Liz Truss has today - via her new chancellor - renounced the core of her leadership manifesto. And in the preceding few weeks, she damaged the British economy and wrecked her party’s reputation for fiscal competence. If you recall, Cameron resigned…
having been told by a slim majority of voters that he was wrong to have backed staying in the EU. By contrast opinion polls indicate that an overwhelming number of voters disapprove of Truss’s economic policies and of Truss’s leadership. You could argue that Black Wednesday…
in 1992 was as humiliating for John Major as Frightful Friday has been for Truss. And Major remained PM till thrown out by voters in 1997. But Major had actually won an election, and against the odds. Truss has no such popular mandate. She is the appointee of a…
few tens of thousand Tory members. When Johnson was struggling to stay as PM, he could and did say he had been the people’s choice - and although that did not save him, Truss can’t even resort to that argument. So the only question for Tory MPs is whether there is…
any path to redemption for them under her stewardship. Today I asked Jeremy Hunt why Truss should keep her job when she sacked Kwarteng for having lost the confidence of markets and having seen a similar confidence deficit for her, with bond prices falling…
sharply after she announced her change of fiscal course. Hunt simply replied he would be winning back that vital market confidence. But that was to dodge the question whether she could be turned from liability to asset. I am struggling to find a Tory MP with a compelling…
narrative for how she goes from zero to hero, even those who say they want her to stay. These are the market fundamentals of Tory politics. And most Tories would argue that trying to buck the market for more than a few days is the shortest route to debtors’ prison
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