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Here's lookin' at you, Keir (Photo by Ian Forsyth - Pool/Getty Images)
The Labour Party are enjoying the Tory Party leadership campaign. First, 52 Conservative MPs resigned and defenestrated Boris Johnson, the party’s most charismatic and electorally successful leader since Margaret Thatcher. Then, the eight candidates to become the new leader attacked and ran down the record of the Conservative government that they had supported and served in at the highest level.
Finally, Liz Truss seems set to become the next Prime Minister. Labour can’t believe their luck. But if Labour think Liz Truss will be a walkover, they should think again. When the dust clears, they will be facing a formidable opponent.
For a start, Labour already have a longstanding women problem. The Conservative Party have had two women leaders, both of whom have become Prime Minister. Labour has a great record of powerful female ministers from Jennie Lee to Barbara Castle, but the highest position held by women in the party has been Deputy Leader. And even though both female deputies — Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman — became acting party leaders neither of them became PM.
But while Labour needs to learn to take women seriously, they should take Liz Truss very seriously indeed. One of her overlooked strengths is that she has been on a political journey. Changing your mind is often thought of as a weakness in politicians, whereas in reality an unchanging commitment to ideology is one of their most eccentric habits. In normal life, we change our minds frequently and without fuss. As economist Paul Samuelson said, in a line so good it is often attributed to Keynes: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” In itself, changing their mind humanises a politician — a particular asset in a time of popular revolt against out-of-touch elites.
But, more than that, making a political journey shows character. Three of the most significant politicians of the Blair era — John Reid, Alan Milburn, and David Blunkett — were great New Labour reformers who had started on the hard Left. Their politics had been tempered and strengthened by their journey. Liz Truss was brought up on the Left and attended anti-nuclear peace camps with her mother. She then became a Liberal Democrat activist, famously demanding an end to the monarchy to Paddy Ashdown’s discomfort. And when a Tory Cabinet minister she backed Remain not Leave, though she is now a passionate Brexiteer. Those surprised that Tory party members overwhelmingly see a former Remainer as the best defender of Brexit need to remember their New Testament: “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” The redemption narrative is one of our most powerful stories: she who once was blind, but now can see.
The fact Liz Truss has been on a political journey also makes her a powerful communicator. Some of the most persuasive arguments in politics are based on empathy rather than angry disagreement. Liz Truss knows why voters find progressive policies attractive, which can strengthen the persuasive power of her arguments for people to change their views. And her speaking style is clear and simple. The listener readily understands what she thinks and believes. Her opponents who too readily dismiss her as simplistic are missing the point. Politics is not a mathematical equation — a ten-point plan won’t beat a five-point plan 10-5. The messages and policies that win are those that connect with the heart as much as the head.
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SubscribeAn interesting, astute piece.
I’m one of the ‘floaters’ who sank Labour after a lifetime’s loyalty, sick of being insulted as naive, a little Englander, …even a racist, by comfy bourgoisie.
I thoroughly despise Starmer for his part in the Rotherham scandal, and latterly his architect’s role in EUro Ref II stink, and Benn act.
That stink has faded a tad, but it still clings. His recent statements regarding Labour’s position on Brexit have attempted to apply balm to that fiery inflammation, but he’s left it too late. If he’s only just seen the need, he’s either too dim, or worse, duplicitous – who can say what is worse?
Unfortunately, the natural home of collectivist tendency discourse, the Graun, is still full of tearful ‘Europeans’ decrying ‘scum’ like me in articles, while the comments section among the ‘fellow travellers’ is a vomitorium of bile.
I’m politically homeless, so it looks like Truss will be getting my vote as the least worse option.
And that makes me sad, …Ho Hum.
Your exactly the kind of voter John McTernan has fond dreams about, the reason being you are both Tories
New Labour lost 6 million votes and almost bankrupted the Labour party, the only thing we agree on is Starmer ‘make Brexit work’ is not to be trusted
He is the lowest form of anti semite, making vexatious claims of AS against Jewish members is the worst kind of racism
I voted Labour Brexit to protect Jobs and Standards, JC would have honoured the referendum, what we have now thanks to Starmer and McTernan is the worst Tory government in history instead of the best Socialist Labour government since 1945
Thanks Lads, for nothing, which is precisely what you both stand for
Infamy, infamy…
ROFL – dream on!
Thanks Hugh. Please educate me tho about Starmer’s part in the Rotherham scandal- what did he do ? I’d be grateful to know and then I will educate others. My friends are all very keen on him but I don’t trust him..
In a celebrated exchange between Sherlock Holmes and Watson (in Silver Blaze) Holmes refers to ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night.’ Watson says, ‘The dog did nothing in the night’ to which Holmes replies, ‘That was the curious incident.’
Starmer, as DPP seems to have done nothing about Rotherham. That was the curious incident.
That is completely absurd!
Where is the evidence that he knew about the grooming scandal?
In any prosecutor’s office the decision not to prosecute is taken very seriously. (Steaming ahead with the case to see what happens is the soft option.) While Starmer was DPP numerous decisions not to prosecute, for the worst of reasons, were being taken year in and year out, in Rotherham and elsewhere. The case against Starmer comes to this: that if he did not know what was happening he was not on top of the job.
Yes, but where is the evidence?
You are saying the lack of evidence is the evidence!
No, I am simply saying, it happened on his watch – when he should have been watching.
A CPS official wrote a book about it! How about doing some research?
ROFL – so he was just absolutely useless and had no idea what was going on in the UK and no Police Force ever communicated with him or his underlings? Not exactly an ideal CV for the next PM. In fact, IF that is the case, he’s even more useless than Boris.
Bizarrely all that *Believe the victim* idiocy was happening while he was at the Prosecution service. So Cliff Richard and loads of others had their lives ruined on the word of people like the grotesque Carl Beech, himself a lying paedophile with metal problems obvious after a half minute watch.
I don’t have a hell of a lot of time for Paul Gambaccini , he probably wouldn’t have a hell of a lot for me, but he thinks Keir Starmer is a weak person blown any which way by fashionable ideologies…and we can’t both be wrong.
Well , obviously we could both be wrong…but we aren’t.
Ditto with Savile.
Do your research!!!
Look up Anne Cryer, Jeremy. She was the only Labour Party MP who tried to help these poor girls. She was ostracised by the rest of the Party for her trouble.
IF he didn’t then the Manchester Police Farce are even worse than we thought.
Are you serious !!!???
errr…a former CPS executive wrote a book about it!
That’s very deep. A non-event is also an event. Inaction is an active choice.
look it up on the interweb?!
It’s what he didn’t do Rosy i.e. prosecute the evil scum that have systematically abused our most vulnerable young women (girls mostly at the time).
He is the want to be leader (who didn’t bark in the night).
I think you’ll find it wasn’t ‘What he did’ but ‘What he didn’t’ that is the issue. Curious how a JC supporter has the same thoughts on Starmer as does Tommy Robinson 😉
That must have been the period pre Andrew Norfolk in ‘The Times’ when talk of the racist sexual abuse of white working-class girls was regarded as a purely BNP hate-filled fantasy. No need for anyone important to waste time looking into that.
Their influence is out of all proportion to their circulation.
How do you measure that?
A theatre exit filled with fluid to aid digestion
lol
‘vomitorium’ – Latin, as taught by my Latin Master ( Ironically a Mr Blair) @ UGS.
No bourgoisie should be comfortable… there is all that ‘ Hearl Grey tea to make, all those neighbours to impress, all those traffic preserves ( not jams) to be caught up in on the way to Guildford or Seveneoakes, all those minor public schools to look at for Jayson, Courtenay and Tiger Jade……
You are a coal miner?
No but I bet that I have drunk with them in more of their pubs than you ever have? Give me a coal miner, or shipyard worker, over an accountant or ‘ slister’ any and every day of time…
No, he is an Italian.
Irish Italian!!!
Oh dear!
IF you are politically homeless, forget Truss and any LibLabCons – vote Reform. IF all Brexiteers voted for the Reform Party then, based on the referendum results, they’d achieve the largest landslide in over a century. There being 410 constituencies with a Brexit majority (Which I suspect has increased since Brexit). Remainers are concentrated in the other 200 or so.
It isn’t all sweetness and light. The Reform party unfortunately believes in PR – which isn’t my cup of tea, I prefer FPTP because it can deliver landslides and I’m more in favour of kicking out dross which PR won’t do. I still remember with fondness John Major’s wipe out.
My one regret is that Blair saw his coming so jumped ship and handed over to Brown, which put that off. Pity.
Then there was the Boris win last time. It was OK BUT had Farage motived Brexiteers with that information AND said the UK was at a junction and we should NOT take the well trodden route, rather than back down to let Boris in, we might now not be in as bad a situation as we are.
We’d still be in a bad one because Net Zero, Brown’s ‘saving of the world’ with QE/Low interest rates meeting Covid lockdown (tho’ maybe reform wouldn’t have been so stupid to lock down?) means a major financial crisis is inevitable. In fact IF the EU fails, and it is far more fragile than any Europhile will confess, then though we’ll have escaped being involved directly , the consequences will be global.
No party is going to save us from the dire consequences coming, BUT I’m sure Reform can mitigate them more than any GreenLibLabCon Government can.
Finally, the best thing about this, should it occur, 410 of the current House of Commons will be collecting their very, very generous severance pay.
The Tories’ fate at the next General Election will be all about delivery. Boris promised a lot, but delivered little. Yes, I know he “got Brexit done” (sort of) and the Covid vaccine programme, but most of the 2019 manifesto is gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. Labour will be in trouble if Liz Truss is as keen as she seems to get things done and delivers her agenda.
1) Boris promised to reform social care. He did that by taxing people. Truss supports the reform but not the financing. How is she going to circle the square financially? The program is only going to get more and more expensive.
2) Levelling Up. Germany (the best example we have) spent about 66bn a year (over 30 years); UK GOV has promised c.6 in total. How is the GOV going to pay for it?
She made a start by promising to take 12 bn of the money handed to the useless NHS and squandered on non medical staff and giving to local councils. The protest from the NHS was duly publicised. The first good idea I heard from either candidate.
These were the manifesto promises:
Hard to judge how well they have done so far due to Covid coming along and then Boris getting sunk by eating a piece of non-work related cake.
No 6 is probably why we’ll never be able to achieve any of the others. Welcome to the new Green world, no gas, no electricity, and massive inflation. Back to the dark ages. And it will come well before 2050 unless the idiots who are in charge scrap Net Zero and the Green levies and carbon taxes and put a stop to any subsidy of windmills and solar panels. IF they are what they claim, they’ll take over anyway without subsidies. (They aren’t – the late Prof Lovelock had some views on them but they weren’t as widely publicised as his since recanted ‘Climate Alarmism’)
https://www.withouthotair.com/synopsis10.pdf – a very interesting work, with 5 possible combinations of energy sources to make the UK energy sufficient, but he shows up the fallacy that we can survive on windmills and solar panels.
Don’t forget 51% of the population are female, and many will vote for Truss because she knows what a woman is. Labour has haemorrhaged women members since cervixgate and in a General Election they would vote for the Tories even lifelong Labour voters like myself.
Don’t vote Tory, vote Reform, IF nothing else if we all did it will clear out around 400 current MPs. With what is coming in terms of financial crises, it won’t matter a jot who is in parliament. Unless of course they are rabid supporters on Net Zero. If they are we are stuffed anyway.
Good piece. I agree, her journey is valid and valuable.
She knows the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. I think her deepest antipathy of the Left is her fear of authoritarianism, so many on the far Left see themselves only as the vanguard not subject to control. That and the unfair advantages in education that money and class can buy. You can tell these things still rattle her. but it was when she was the first person in power to dare call out against gender self ID and it’s risks to women, that I first took serious notice of her.
She has a very assorted bunch supporting her which again is perhaps a strength? Wasn’t it Harold Wilson who said a Party had to have a left wing and a right wing to be able to fly? What we don’t need is a self satisfied public schoolboy in love with wealth and status. Yawn. High IQ and rational common sense are often at odds.
I’m relieved she’s not frightened of changing her mind. But it will be extraordinarily tough for anyone and scapegoats will be sought. I hope she fares well. At least we might be spared some patronising bullshit.
As Charlie Munger says “Common sense is very uncommon”.
Not the Charlie Munger who with Warren Buffett has chosen to prop up a crumbling and imploding non-life reinsurance industry with the loss of billions of dollars?
There is a reason that the stereotype of a Professor is a bumbling idiot outside of his field. I met a surprising number of Professors who you would’t trust to succeed as a Lollipop man or woman.
And how refreshing it was to read this article, in contrast to the disgraceful snobbery in the Unherd article last week which sought to denigrate her IQ. Perhaps today’s article was commissioned in reaction to the drubbing meted out in the Comments section.
snobbery?… free expression of opinion perhaps? Musn’t upset the rigid pinkie ‘ hearl grey brigade!
Truss is a dull opportunist with neither an original, nor a sincerely-held, thought in her head. How predictable that, in 2022, she is benefitting from all the chippy people who hate anyone “too clever”. Nowadays, intelligence is a handicap, unless, like Johnson, you know how to hide it. But an intelligent person who pretends to be dull-witted will come un-stuck. Someone like Truss, who genuinely seems clueless, has a big advantage.
Actually Liz Truss is a rare frontline politician who is interested in ideas.Those ideas may be borrowed but there are often contrarian.Rishi in contrast just seems to follow whatever fashionable opinion is.
If Liz can found a wise deputy leader who can filter out the good ideas from the bad ideas she could create a badly needed innovative govt.
LOL
Sure, let’s take social care. She agrees with current plan but doesn’t agree with the NI tax to pay for it.
How is she going to pay for it?
The current plan doesn’t actually provide any funds for social care for at least three years. It was just a con to funnel more money into the black hole of the NHS instead.
Maybe she will understand that the NHS is the vehicle to deliver Health Care free at the point of delivery, and so scrap it and produce a more modern vehicle that doesn’t act as a money pit.
Perhaps one that doesn’t employ so many that only Chinese Government organisations (including the People’s Liberation Army) and the Pentagon employ more, and there are only 5 or of them. The NHS is 6th largest employer on the planet when i last looked. We should be the healthiest country on the planet at that rate.
Mind you if ever we mobilised the NHS for war ….
Come to think of it, no. Their sole role is to keep us healthy yet we had to sacrifice thousands of elderly to save it during the pandemic. On the evidence, that failed too.
Their function is not to keep us healthy – it is to suck tax money from the workers to feed the greed of the pharmaceutical monolith.
Keeping us healthy is fairly straightforward:
Fresh unprocessed food – fresh air – sunshine and exercise.
Johnson’s “super-power” seemed to be his ability to bring out the very worst in his opponents. Be careful Liz Truss isn’t doing something similar.
She managed to get to Oxford and is a good nathematician. Where is Sunak’s cleverness shown?
As long as she still believes Maths has nothing to do with race, and that 2+2=4 then that is an improvement on most of her opponents. I also presume she knows what a woman is. I hope so, around half of the voting population are women.
Intelligence? Hmm, how do you define that? SAGE was full of Professors and the Educated. Prof Ferguson did more damage too the breed. Mind you one day he may be right, so far that’s about 3 pandemics that are going to kill us all that his model has predicted. I wonder how good all the Climate Change models are?
Education and Intelligence are increasingly appearing to be at odds with each other. Education today seems intent on ‘Educating away’ any intelligence and rational thinking completely.
My other favourite scourge of the Establishment was the letter to the Queen from the LSE explaining why “No one saw the 2007/08 crash coming”
Apparently some did, but ‘Hubris’ ‘Overconfidence’ etc even affect the Great and Good. The list of signatories was spectacular, all those Phd’s and Professors of Economics.
Perhaps the embarrassment at being so incompetent is why not one of the 4 links I had to that letter now works, all return 404, page not found. So I can’t point you to reading it.
However, here is one link that a certain Professor must cringe at being named on
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-to-enter-recession-with-500000-uk-jobs-lost-if-it-left-eu-new-treasury-analysis-shows
Though to be fair The Prof does say
“While there are inevitably many uncertainties – including the prospective trading regime with the EU – this comprehensive analysis by HM Treasury, which employs best-practice techniques, provides reasonable estimates of the likely size of the short-term impact of a vote to leave on the UK economy.”
Personally, I’d have thought his historical legacy would have been better looking IF he admitted that examining and interpreting via Chicken Entrails may have been more accurate.
If Labour are wasting their time “enjoying” the Tory party leadership campaign, I’d put good money on them losing again. Still too much gesture politics and too little serious stuff.
Even now after Johnson is gone (just about), they are still needlessly pushing some sort of impeachment/punishment agenda against him. I suspect that is seriously misreading the public mood and that for most people Johnson has now had the punishment he rightly deserved. Leave well alone – or risk a backlash of [underserved] sympathy for him.
But that does not appear to be the Starmer way. He comes across with a rather sanctimonious belief in the purity and correctness of his own views (whatever his views actually are, this at least comes through). I suspect this will not go down well with the general public come the next general election and that he will probably suffer the same fate as Sunak against a deeply flawed Liz Truss. In part because she is flawed and not ashamed to admit it.
I am fully aware how the electoral system works in UK but Tories only got 43% of the vote. 57% of the vote went to parties that can be described as anti-tory. Plenty of people voted against Corbyn, well Stammer is a lot of things but he is not Corbyn.
After 15 years in power (come the next election) with all the problems coming down the road (inflation, NHS waiting list, cost of living etc.) it will be hard IMHO to ask the country “vote Tory, we will fix it”. Tories lost byelections because (if analysis are to be believed) a anti-Tory coalition is forming in the country.
As the adage goes “opposition doesn’t win elections, govs lose them”.
But I could very well be wrong.
Labour have never won power without Scotland. This is their problem.
Can they win against snp in Scotland?
Wrong. All Blair’s victories were big enough to do without Scottish seats
Scotland accounts for less than 10% of parliamentary seats (59 out of 650). In 1997 and 2001 Labour won enough seats in England and Wales to form a government (although they also won seats in Scotland)
And everything you say is quite true … but the opposition still have to at least be credible.
Starmer isn’t Corbyn. I agree. But it’s going to be a huge problem that he actively campaigned for Corbyn to be PM in 2019. A lot of senior Labour MPs and ex-ministers absolutely refused to serve under Corbyn.
Is some ways Corbyn actually had more appeal than Starmer (remember 2017) in that he hadn’t compromised on absolutely everything and people actually had some confidence that he believed what he said and wouldn’t keep changing.
I just don’t see how you can market yourself as a “man of principle” and yet not appear to have any principles that you can stick to. If we have to suffer a Labour/LibDem/SNP coalition (again, I think England will vote as a majority against this once again), you do at least need a proven leader to run it. Is Starmer that person ?
Again, people don’t have to vote Labor. They just have to vote anti-Tory. Also don’t project your views on others. People find Starmer boring, they don’t find him dangerous.
Where did I “project my views on others” ? Please show me. Then I can do something to improve ! Otherwise I can’t help you here. I thought I was just stating my own opinions.
A differing viewpoint, or opinion, call it what you will. But if you deem Peter B’s ‘opinion’ unpalatable then you can always disengage from the discourse and find your ‘safe space. By the way, are you an American commenting on the fact that people don’t have to vote ‘Labor’?
And I think Jeremy never took the BLM knee – and he certainly knows what a woman is.
What we really need is the reversal of the Great Reform Acts and the reduction of the voting franchise… but allowing all women to still vote….Britain’s decline started post the Great Reform Acts…
The ‘anti-Tory coalition’ is probably a myth, BUT IF that coalition isn’t a myth, and it can be publicly proven as to what is to take place, there is an opposing coalition that has evidence enough that it can’t be beaten.
It produced the EU election landslide for The Brexit Party, and, thanks to Farage backing down, the 80 seat landslide for Boris.
Brexiteers can decide the next Government. Whichever party Brexiteers voted for, provided they voted as a group, would win approximately 410 of the 600+ seats in the Commons.
Personally, I’d hope they all vote for the offspring of the Brexit Party, The Reform Party. If nothing else watching the LibLabCons try and explain how they were decimated in the next election would alone be worth the risk.
PS The world is heading for a depression, and it is little to do with Mr Putin, he simply saw his opportunity when Net Zero’s consequences caused the gas price spike pre Xmas. Add that to the QE/Low interest rate regime meeting the black swan lockdown inflation event and the world is stuffed anyway. The best any party in the UK can do is try to mitigate what is coming by scrapping anything to do with Net Zero. Getting oil companies back to supplying fossil fuels AND in the short term, trying to persuade the EU that the only hope to avoid an even more massive economic catastrophe is to tell Ukraine to make peace and get Putin to start filling both Nordstream pipelines.
They need to scrap HS2 – stop funding foreign wars/ overseas aid – cut the egregious nonsensical subsidies for NetZero – and go after the lunatics who completely made a dogs dinner of the response to the Chines flu – and all the chummy rip off scamsters.
More interesting is in that impeachment process, he will be found Guilty even IF he unwittingly deceived. Guilty until proven guilty then?
I notice Nadia Whittome has just issued a spittle flecked diatribe at transphobes who will be expelled from the Labour Party. Just the right tone to get women back into their ranks.
Ahhh but will they let them re-enter by the back door after shoving them out the front one just like they have done with a lot of the expelled antisemites?
Nah, they like anti-semites, they hate transphobes. 😉
That’s because they don’t know what a woman is.
As an active member of the Conservative party, I am put off by Liz Truss’ belligerence, her appearance of putting on an act (Rishi Sunak looks genuine) and her emphasis on ‘change’: Conservatives aim to conserve all that’s good; change has to happen, but it’s not our raison d’être.
I’m not a floating voter, but I’m willing to judge policies and opinions on their merits, and I find Liz Truss too committed to a package of ideas designed to appeal to what she believes is the largest number of Conservative members. This does not appeal to my independent mind, and I wouldn’t expect it to appeal to floating voters or the nation as a whole – nor to leaders of other countries.
Yes but she is asking Tory activist to vote.
“Rishi Sunak looks genuine”? Really? Not to me he doesn’t. Very like Tony Bliar in my opinion.
“Conservatives aim to conserve all that is good”
Hmm, either conservatives and my family and I, do not agree on what is good, or conservatives have failed miserably at that.
The Truss agenda is straightforward. But what is missing is a promise to dump the ECHR and stop illegal immigration. And a pause on net zero.
Liz Truss told Conservatives MPs she was “prepared” to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights if reforms aimed at reducing the influence of judges in Strasbourg are not successful.
Quoting ‘The Independent’.
An interesting, astute piece.
I’m one of the floaters who were instrumental in the sinking of the Corbyn project and the furtherance of Brexit. This, after a lifetime of loyally supporting the notion of a Broad Church. Starmer is a man I despise, a strong word, but accurate. His part in the Rotherham scandal, his architectural input in the stink that was EUro ref II, and laterly taking the knee in deference to a Marxist tribe, all are factors.
He has made soothing sounds regarding a viewpoint that he states have changed 180 degrees on Brexit, but he is either too dim to realise he is rather late to that party, or he is simply being duplicitous. Which answer shows him in the best light?
The scars of being labelled ‘uneducated’, xenophobic, or particularly….racist run deep. Even if Sir Kneel has had a Damascene conversion, the natural home of Fabian discourse still nurses a rage among its (mostly) comfy bourgeoisie scribes, but the comment section is a veritable vomitorium of bile directed at ‘scum’ with opinions such as mine.
There is no pew available in this Broad Church for my brethren – it looks like Truss will be my least worse option. But Labour doesn’t care, not when they can muddy the waters with distractions like the already electorally dismissed PR.
As the adage goes “opposition don’t win elections, govs lose them”
Can you expand on that – serious sources not the Daily Mail.
“…Ho Hum….when will they ever learn that ‘Purity over Power‘, is no power at all?…”
Hopefully they’ll never learn it. They haven’t so far…
the last floating voter that I came across was finally flushed away after I had used a wire coathanger ….
An interesting article. When my father returned home from the 1939-45 war, the talk was all of a brave new world. His response was typical of many when he said: “We don’t want a new world. We want the old one, with improvements.”
‘When you’re explaining, you’re losing’ is a pernicious argument. The best politicians are those who respect the electorate and, for that reason, strive to explain their policies. Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair come to mind,. The worst are those whose pitch is, ‘I am Labour/Tory/Lib Dem/Green therefore I’m right and you should vote for me.’
I had Truss down as a bit of a lightweight, but Mr. McTernan’s article is persuasive and I might change my mind. QED.
From the Spectator:
Yet the very tone of the campaign so far is giving Truss’s people confidence. Sunak may be able to point to wider electoral appeal but he has so far offered little to excite the grassroots. ‘Liz trails on electability and likeability, but remember we elected Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. Our members have their own priorities – they don’t really care as much about the big picture,’ argues a senior MP. ‘Voters’ emotion will trump their logic.’
The Truss message is one of optimism, even if its realism has been questioned. ‘They [Team Sunak] are running a pretty negative campaign,’ says a Truss backer. ‘If people think there is an imaginary river, you don’t tell them there isn’t, you build them an imaginary bridge.’ This is why Truss has been quick to accuse Sunak of peddling Project Fear – despite the fact she was on the other side of it during the Remain campaign.
Surely no one can be as electorally unappealing as IDS or Theresa May ? Or can they ? I guess we’re going to find out in the 2024 (or earlier) snoozefest (TM B. Johnson) this next election looks like being.
Where are all the honourable and clever politicians hiding. Are we to get a stream of useless idiots who follow the agenda of remote, clandestine and foreign cults, hell bent on taking down the west with a big bang, just to please the USA elites evil plans during its demise.
How about a 6 month period of martial law under a few Oxbridge graduate former Foot Guard and SAS generals? Mark Carleton-Smith, for example? Far better qualified in leadership, decision making, command and control than the putrescent alternative of Truss and her ilk?
John McTernan is a very smart, worldly man. He must must know very well that Starmer cannot provide any kind of “vision of hope”. The public don’t trust him, and he doesn’t have charisma. McTernan also must have some sense of the extent of the systematic lies that the public have been fed over the last couple of years and more; and that many people in public life are going to be required to “change their mind” in order to protect their careers and reputations. He must know that describing anyone as “now a Brexiteer” is about as meaningful as describing them as “now a Tariff Reformer”.
Most importantly he must know that, at a time in which many in the world are going to understand for the first time what the “limits to growth” really feel like in real life, leadership is about so much more than offering a “project” that “positions” a party as a faux-populist front for a deeply divided, frustrated, distrustful and angry public. That might have worked once upon a time in the late 1990s, but you can’t fool people with the same trick twice. The game is almost up, the world is closing in, and a whiff of war and civil strife is in the air. He likely knows well that real leadership is now about connecting with people and telling them a painful set of truths; that we need a statesman like Churchill in 1940, not a salesman like Blair in 1997. The glaring absence any such a figure in any party should give everyone a huge cause for concern.
McTernan also probably knows full well that this isn’t a time for progressive politics: the public can see that progressivism as we now know it in the UK has degenerated into a reality-denying, boundary-destroying, self-deceiving disorderly force, bankrupt in more than one sense of the word. It needs to be throughly and decisively defeated and discredited before its fury at its self-immolation is unleashed on the public in the form of ever more destructive and futile authoritarian attempts to stop the house that it built on sand from falling down. The globalist vultures are circling, and the communists in the east are on the long march again.
What a sorry, sad state of affairs.
An excellent post – my thoughts but better articulated.
Personally I would be interested to see a Liz Truss, Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch power house, they are all very sensibly anti-woke and seem to see through the unfeasibly fast and duplicitous ‘green energy’ fashion.
Agree. I hope she gives them good cabinet positions.
Sad as it seems, the next GE could be decided on whether Starmer knows the definition of a woman. Plus a mention of Rotherham with a hint of Saville thrown in. All little minefields left by Boris.
UK political volatility can be “channelled by strong and intelligent leadership”. But also, anything that needs to be explained is for losers, simplistic one-line quiddities beat truth that takes three sentences, and it’s a virtue to have had massive policy reversals and be famously simplistic.
Ah, an advisor to Tony Blair… “here’s how to win, and ensure there is no point to winning”.
In the case of Liz Truss its “these are my principles and if you don’t like them, I have others.
hear hear… including being a marital cheat
For Ukraine’s and by extension our sakes, I hope Truss is the next PM.
It astounds me that political journalists can write ” .. the party’s most charismatic and electorally successful leader since Margaret Thatcher” .. against Corbyn he was bound to win .. Corbyn, a marxist, UK hating, proven anti semite
And Nigel Farage gave him a free pass.
Sunak was a disaster as Chancellor, (Help to Buy, free McDonalds, extending furlough when unnecessary, not controlling Covid fraud, couldn’t use his Treasury mole to control SAGE, ignored inflation in 2021). I cant see the cleverness, brilliance, etc. he is certainly not original, and maybe fools his allies who feel safe with his failed policies and his cliches, a la Blair
I accept that one can change one’s political views but changing from Liberal Democrat to Conservative could be a career move. Ms. Truss would have been unlikely to have got far as a LibDem candidate or even, if elected, as a LibDem MP..
I was appalled to read in this article that she wanted an end to Monarchy. The press would, no doubt, applaud this but, to my mind, it shows a lack of character to change her mind on this issue. If she has changed it!
Also, I would suggest that if one is committed to a cause, then one does not have to read a speech at the Despatch Box – that could have been compiled by a speechwriter. If you are committed to a cause, then you speak with conviction and authority with only a note giving reminders. .
Interest payments on our ever-increasing huge national debt are on the up, so promising to reduce taxes while maintaining public spending is not just foolish, but is an example of the usual electoral promises made to gain power but swiftly forgotten.
Who is Prime Minister affects everyone in the country, so if the tiny percentage of Tories who have a vote decide to overturn the decision made by MPs, then there should be a vote of no confidence in that decision lodged with the Chairman of the 22 Committee – and voted upon – before she is sworn in.
Meanwhile our government continues in limbo until this undemocratic process is completed..
Sorry, but how is this process “undemocratic” ? The Conservative party had a very strong mandate to govern for a full term in 2019. The Lib Dem Fixed Term Parliament Act (only revoked by the Conservatives) would have made any new election impossible. And why would you expect the Conservative leadership process to be anything other than it is ?
Anyone who campaigned for Johnson to go knew full well that this would be the outcome – i.e. the Conservative party would follow it’s own rules to select a new leader.
What else could or should they do here ?
It’s almost like the critics want to have their cake (get rid of Johnson) and also eat it (decide by what rules a political party of which they are not members should select its leader). Cakeism at its finest I say !
I am not questioning the Conservative’s right to govern until the next General Election, but the election of a Prime Minister by a tiny percentage of Conservative voters.
I believe the decision to allow the Tory members in the constituencies to decide rather than the MPs who were elected to govern, is peculiar, to say the least.. Probably taken at a Party Conference without due discussion and consideration and we are stuck with it.
I do have some sympathy with your frustration. The percentage of people who are going to be fully satisfied with both the process and outcome is likely to be in single digits (i.e. < 10%). But since a quick result is generally demanded here (probably the least worst option), a quick and dirty process is probably required. Please don’t assume I’m entirely happy either !
However, what the Conservative members are actually voting for is the leader of their party. And that seems entirely reasonable. They are effectively the “shareholders” or “owners” of the party and not just the MPs. It is then by convention that this person is Prime Minister. But I’m not certain that needs to be the case.
It was changed in 1997 by then-leader William Hague, ‘so what happened to Mrs Thatcher could never happen again.’ I remember reading at the time.
“Pausing the green levy would reduce prices. Now, there are good arguments against each of these policies, but they are superficially strong one-liners”
Actually, there ae no good arguments against them.
I remember Margaret Becket making it clear that she was party leader, not acting leader. I think Harman the same.
Gosh, I forgot how good The Project was, how good Blair was.
So good I always felt he needed a minister for unintended consequences as almost every “initiative” ended in disaster from energy policy to devolution.
I would be inclined to pay attention to everything Mr. McTeernan says.
I’m no politics wonk, but I could tell, even from the free rags in London during the New Labour era that John was Campbell’s fixer
I personally think a Thatcher tribute act will be the biggest bonus Labour could ask for. If you want to lose control of the recently acquired red wall seats, electing a leader who imitates the PM that lost them for a generation in the first place seems a good way to go about it
Only she never actually lost an election or, indeed, the Leadership contest!
What does that have to do with the Red Wall seats?
I am beginning to believe the unpalatable truth, that the only way to vote is to not vote. Mass delegitimisation of the mainstream parties is a dangerous game, but these are frankly the incipient stages of dangerous times and it will be impossible to find any long-term solutions without a people driven shake-up of the system.
But I suspect, I am quite alone in these thoughts.
Good analysis, which rings true. Public anger that sprang from the Global Financial Crisis hasn’t abated and it’s all younger people have known. People are lashing out at things politicians can’t control: left, right and centre. This is as fruitless as making life changing decisions based on emotion.
If we behave like toddlers, we should expect to get a nanny.
What does this mean under some of the posts?
‘Last edited 54 minutes ago by msinformationatthebbc’
The instititions of state are so thoroughly penetrated by the middle-class Labour-voting class that no actual Conservative, or even simply conservative, government can hope to succeed without, to borrow a phrase, wholesale swamp-draining. Cummings was to be the swamp drainer, yet the swamp did for him and he in turn for Boris. What hope for Truss then? Perhaps, like Thatcher, regarded at the outset as the ‘leaderene’, she will prove in time to be ‘The Leader’, but she doesn’t have much time, or indeed any discernable police ‘force’ to counter the ‘enemy within’ that will surely take to the streets at the behest of the ‘swamp’ at some point to thwart her.
2 months later and quite a bit has changed… (including Liz Truss’s policies)
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It says so much about the petit bourgeois ToyliTory party of today…. ” Lets pass up a man of extraordinary achievement, who does not need the salary, nor the status, who is self made, extraordinarily intellectually and financially qualified, whom the rest of Europe and the world, would view with respect and envy, who would cement relationships with our future most valuable ally, India…… for one of our own”….. To add insult to injury, they have the temerity to suggest that Sunak ” cannot be trusted” yet Truss publicly displayed her dishonesty and selfishness with prima facie proof with her affair with another MP?
And you don’t think he showed dishonesty by framing tax rules which assisted his father-in-law’s business? As for an affair, that is a private matter which is none of my business – or yours!
Trying to find wheat in that chaff is futile. Let’s be honest.
The one positive about her, I surmise, is that she could never have been selected by West Norfolk had she had any woke inkling? Having said that, and knowing one or two of the big landowners there, who are very powerful, they probably consider modern MPs to rank lower than their other major bete noir, solicitors, who are quite rightly considered as jumped up clerks, and so Truss, as very much from ” behind the green baize door” is a quasi servant.
Perhaps you can persuade Henry Bellingham to stand? Eton, Cambridge, Guards (1year) Mason etc. He would off course have to stand down from the HoL.
Bellingham? Please NO!
Good man!