The Coming Storm - Part One

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“While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark…naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion…and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes insignificant, useless, feeble.”

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

It now looks almost certain that Liz Truss will become Prime Minister in just over a week’s time. The two major UK pollsters that have surveyed Tory members have found leads for her over Rishi Sunak of 22% (Opinium) and 32% (YouGov). Unweighted polls of members by the Conservative Home website show similar. For Sunak to win now would require a not impossible but highly unlikely major polling miss. So I’m going to assume she will win. If she doesn’t then much of what follows would apply to Sunak too.

Her victory, should it come, will be the result not of any brilliance on her part but largely because a large chunk of the membership blame Sunak for deposing Boris Johnson. One of the odd factors of the race – which I didn’t anticipate – is that Johnson has become more popular again with the membership over the course of the summer, despite spending nearly all of it on holiday. In the Opinium poll the three top reasons members gave for choosing Truss were: “generally don’t like Sunak”; “most honest/trustworthy”; “she remained loyal to Johnson”.

Given her own members don’t seem overly enthusiastic about her it’s not surprising to see that the general public are not warming to her either. Another Opinium poll found her 8pts behind Starmer on a “best Prime Minister” question, slightly worse than either Sunak or even Johnson. Across all pollsters her ratings are currently falling. And the Tories continue to languish well behind Labour.

There is much speculation as to whether Truss will, nevertheless, get a poll bounce when she takes over. We have historically always seen some kind of bounce when a new leader starts in mid-term, of between three and six points. Even though Truss’s campaign has not resonated with the public there are still reasons to believe she might benefit from a similar bounce. For a start simply assuming the role of PM lends some gravitas. Then there is likely to be positive press coverage from friendly papers, and broadcast media will want to show they’re being fair in the early days. She will be able to make a flurry of announcements that contrasts with Johnson’s lack of initiative.

But it doesn’t really matter whether she gets an initial bounce or not. What’s important is whether she can deal with a series of interconnecting crises of a truly frightening scale. On this point her background isn’t promising. She’s been in the cabinet longer than anyone else but has no significant legislative achievements or record of delivering major projects. She’s clearly a survivor, canny, hardworking and resilient, and she’s not stupid, but there’s no indication of the kind of skills that could deal with what’s coming.

It's not clear that anyone else could either. The list of economic, social, and political challenges is so long that I’ve had to split it into two separate posts. This one will focus on her first month in charge, up to the Tory party conference at the start of October. The second will take a longer lens.