Could Liz Truss's speech be a turning point, asks DANIEL JOHNSON

2022-10-06

Less awkward, a bold vision. Could Liz Truss’s speech be a turning point, asks DANIEL JOHNSON

Say what you like about Liz Truss: The woman has courage. The past couple of weeks have been the worst that most Conservatives can remember.

Battered within days of becoming Prime Minister by a perfect storm of hostile markets, merciless media and apocalyptic polls, she was forced to U-turn by envious rivals and contumacious colleagues.

Yet she came out fighting yesterday with a barnstorming conference speech in Birmingham that confounded expectations, undaunted by an ordeal that would have crushed most.

Interrupted by noisy protesters waving Greenpeace banners, Miss Truss turned her tormenters to her advantage.

There, inside the hall, was a manifestation of the ‘anti-growth coalition’ against whom the thrust of her speech was directed. Here were the ‘enemies of enterprise’, the ‘voices of decline’, whom the PM has vowed to challenge and defeat.

Say what you like about Liz Truss: The woman has courage. The past couple of weeks have been the worst that most Conservatives can remember

She skewered the anti-growth parties – Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP – along with the union militants and Brexit deniers, who ‘taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo’.

Miss Truss has no pretensions as an orator. Compared to the Johnsonian philippics on which the Tory faithful had feasted until recently, her speech was plain fare indeed. If he lavished them with caviar and champagne, she gave them Marmite sandwiches and tap water.

But she can do something that was beyond even Boris, prodigiously talented as he is. She looks, sounds and thinks like an ordinary person.

Though some may quibble, Liz Truss could justly claim to be the first Prime Minister to have gone to an ordinary comprehensive school. This is relevant because a lot of metropolitan establishment hostility to her is pure snobbery. She told us about the very ordinary experience of getting her first payslip and being shocked by how big a slice of it had been taken by the taxman. She doesn’t see protesters and pickets as heroic.

The heroes are the ordinary people who are prevented from going about their business. ‘I’m on their side,’ she declared.

Interrupted by noisy protesters waving Greenpeace banners, Miss Truss turned her tormenters to her advantage

She was at pains to show that, though her own life story has been one of extraordinary success, she understands why ordinary people are so worried.

Miss Truss may not be charismatic, but she is clear about her priorities: ‘Growth, growth and growth.’ Despite the roughest of rides in recent days, her conference speech showed her looking less awkward and sounding more confident. Could this be a turning point?

The truth is that her ideas, though simple, are sound. Only a low tax, high growth economy will deliver us from the death spiral embraced by woke extremists who hate our country and its history.

Even abolishing the 45p top tax rate was actually the right thing to do.

The vast majority of those who pay this punitive rate are not the super-rich, but senior doctors and other professionals, or entrepreneurs and executives. These are people we need to incentivise, not penalise. The problem isn’t the ideas – it’s the politics.

It was imperative to reverse Rishi Sunak’s dire legacy of rising inflation, penal taxation and impending recession. But the plan to get Britain back on track has been derailed by a combination of naivety and ineptitude.

The grand strategy set out by Liz Truss and her ‘dynamic Chancellor’, Kwasi Kwarteng, less than a fortnight ago was sprung on a country still reeling from the loss of our beloved Queen. Nor had the global markets been primed to expect such a bold package of measures, which at first sight seemed not merely radical but reckless. With hindsight, it is clear that too little attention was paid to the ‘optics’ of borrowing at the same time as cutting taxes – however necessary those cuts may have been.

The ensuing stampede by market traders jolted everything from the pound to interest rates and pension funds. Now that the panic has subsided, sterling has speedily recovered, though lenders are said to be gleefully charging a ‘Kwarteng premium’ on mortgage interest rates.

But it will take months, at least, for the PM and her ministers to regain the trust of a badly rattled public, assuming they can avoid further hostages to fortune.

An entire mythology is already being peddled by Labour politicians. They claim that the Bank of England squandered £65billion of taxpayers’ money to prevent pension funds from going bust. In fact, the Bank has spent just £4billion buying government debt (‘gilts’) and is unlikely to make a loss.

An even harder task for Liz Truss than regaining the trust of the voters and the markets will be reasserting her authority over her own party. Some Tories were in Birmingham solely to write her off to anybody who would listen.

She cannot ignore powerful figures on the backbenches such as Michael Gove or Priti Patel, nor popular Cabinet rivals such as Penny Mordaunt or Suella Braverman. Yet this cacophony of voices competing for attention threatens to drown out the leadership.

The imperative is to unite around the PM and her growth agenda. Only if the economy is growing rapidly will we be able to afford not just a functioning NHS but also the intangible, unquantifiable things that make life worth living.

Conservatives care about these things, from conserving wildlife to helping the vulnerable and restoring the regions. Without growth, however, these and many other noble causes will be starved of resources.

Liz Truss has earned the right to be allowed to do her job. If she can deliver, the country may forgive and forget. I wish I could be so sure about her party.

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