I this review must begin with a declaration of interest. As a former Conservative MP who was expelled from the party in 2019 for standing as an Independent, I had never campaigned against a Conservative candidate, apart from that election. However, in June this year I took the decision to support independent James Bagge (another former Conservative) who stood against Liz Truss in South West Norfolk. His intervention as a former member of her Conservative Association helped overturn one of the largest Conservative majorities in the country – securing over 6,000 votes. My reason for doing so was that I thought it was wrong that a former Prime Minister who had done so much damage, albeit inadvertently, to our country’s economic situation and reputation should stand again. As was clear during the campaign and its outcome on the ground, this was also the view of her constituents.
Anthony Seldon, now with the help of Jonathan Meakin, is the leading authority on our current prime ministers and the challenges they face in office. So it was natural that he would want to look at Truss after Johnson's 10-year hiatus last year. The problem is that 49 days is a poor book, and so is any account of the steps that got her there. Truss's personal background and earlier political career are covered quickly, in about 12 pages out of 330. Seldon identifies her core beliefs as free-market liberalism with a deep distrust of entrenched self-interest. He considers her to be self-taught. He says: “Truss climbed the ministerial ladder. But she never felt particularly successful on those rungs, nor was she to win many admirers for her pirouettes when she reached the top.”
As a former colleague, I think this sums up well how she was viewed within the parliamentary party under Cameron and May. Whether it was her speech at the party conference about the “disgrace” of importing apples, pears and cheese, or her failure as Lord Chancellor to defend the judiciary when they were attacked in the media as “enemies of the people”, she was neither seen as a political heavyweight nor taken seriously by most Conservative MPs. Seldon is more forgiving of her time as Foreign Secretary, during which he believes she showed considerable acumen in building a reputation as an international campaigner for freedom. But this was accompanied by an almost obsessive complacency that made every trip abroad a photo opportunity.
Seldon has therefore chosen to turn her brief time in office into a textbook on how not to govern, a kind of inversion of Machiavelli's The Prince. In previous works he has outlined a series of steps that he believes are crucial to a prime minister's success. He compares her performance against each of these requirements and finds in each case that it leaves much to be desired. On the need to “secure the power base”, for example, he shows how her campaign for the party leadership, although skilful, was based on an appeal to party members still mourning the loss of Boris Johnson and attracted to his support, as well as on her own promises of tax cuts. This left those MPs who had had the courage to vote for Johnson's removal on overwhelmingly good grounds “sceptical, cynical and even angry” – a poor start to a term in which she had yet to build up her support.
Seldon rightly believes Truss had a bold plan for governing but it was never realistic. Her decisions were the product of “self-reinforcing groupthink, as confidence and daring led to arrogance and ultimately hubris.” She filled her cabinet with a small group of supporters. One member of her team tells Seldon that she said, “I've defeated my enemies, I've defeated the damn establishment. I'm not going to bother building bridges.” Yet for all that bravado, she seemed an anonymous figure when major events like the death of Queen Elizabeth gave her the opportunity to showcase herself as a stateswoman. Seldon notes that as a staunch Atlanticist, she completely botched relations with President Joe Biden, leading to what he called the most humiliating rebuff of a prime minister by a president in modern history, when he openly described her economic policies to journalists as mistakes.
Truss's downfall was the result of the major political failure of her mini-budget, the resulting loss of any reputation for economic competence, a humiliating U-turn when she had to appoint Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer and abandon her growth plans, and the resulting loss of confidence – if you can call it that – among her MPs. Seldon writes very well about it. He has researched extensively and the commentary is peppered with dialogue and quotes which, he assures us, have been checked for accuracy and make for compelling reading. His verdict is harsh. “Britain has seen a succession of Prime Ministers who have underperformed… Johnson, the subject of the previous book in the series, and now Truss, far surpassed them all in their wilful inability to live up to the demands of prudent and responsible administration that the job entails.”
As I write, news reaches me of Truss's lecture in Beccles, Suffolk, where the promotion of her book Ten Years to Save the West was interrupted by the unfurling of a poster with a squinting head of lettuce and the headline “I ruined the economy.” Other politicians might have used an incident like this to their advantage. She simply walked away and said, “This is not funny.” To Seldon's requirements of prime ministers I would add the need for a self-deprecating sense of humor.
after newsletter campaign
