MONDAY was a difficult day for Liz Truss. She sent Penny Mordaunt into the House of Commons to answer questions about the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng and the appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mordaunt fluffed her lines and, regardless of where Truss was at the time, denying that she was hiding under a table made it sound like that is exactly what she was doing.
It is without doubt that the Conservative Party and the British government are in disarray but it has been quite the change of fortune for Jeremy Hunt. He was eliminated from the first round of the Tory leadership contest in July having only managed to garner 18 votes from his fellow MPs and now he is controlling the purse strings.
Given that the two finalists in the leadership contest were a woman and a non-white man, there was a brief flicker of the progressive about the Conservative Party. During that contest, I did think that the party would be able to put up with a woman in charge more easily than they would a person of colour because it did not seem to be competence that was the deciding factor.
Perhaps there were too many who still hanker back for the glory days of Thatcher and hoped Truss could morph into some manner of successor.
And it could, of course, be co-incidence that the ousted Kwasi Kwarteng, a close ally of Truss, happens to be black. The man barely had time to order new business cards before he was sacked.
Truss has been rendered a lame duck prime minister because she has been forced to back down on the financial measures that were the platform on which she stood in the leadership contest.
The result of this is that the Waspy men are back at the helm of the Conservative Party – which was exactly what the desired outcome of the leadership contest was in the first place. Hunt as the money man is now calling the shots and the first shots fired were to undo the overwhelming majority of financial measures announced in the mini-budget. It seems like Liz Truss is prime minister in name only.
Much has been made of the fact that her survival may well depend on how well she performs at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions in Westminster, but unfortunately for me, that takes place after my deadline for this column. In fairness, though, I expect it to be so cringe-worthy that I’ll be watching from behind a cushion while feeling absolutely scundered for her.
I may eat my words on this but I don’t think her performance at PMQs will make a blind bit of difference as to whether Truss stays or goes in the short term. The rules of the 1922 Committee as they stand mean that she can stay for up to a year without a no-confidence motion being brought. She could, of course, resign but this would simply leave another prolonged period with her in a caretaker position, much as Boris Johnson was. The party won’t want that.
Given the state of the opinion polls which show such a significant lead for Labour, a general election is not on the cards for the Conservatives right at this moment in time. They have been mortally wounded by their own actions and they really don’t appear to give a damn about the working class and poor middle class facing into a winter of crisis.
Everything is being blamed on the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine, as if Brexit hasn’t added to Britain’s woes at all.
It is more likely than not that the party will come to an arrangement with Liz Truss to keep her in the role so that they are not forced by the opposition into calling a general election. She will stumble along and she may possibly perform better because she won’t have the pressure of leading the party into a general election.
Stalling an election for six or eight months might allow the party to regain some of the ground lost in the polls, but they won’t regain all that appears to have been lost to them. That period of time will be used for the great and the good of the Conservative Party front bench in seats that no longer appear to be safe to feather their own nests. Lots of investment banks and lobbying firms could see themselves with a glut of new vice presidents.
The sad reality is that the whole pantomime starting with Brexit and right up to the Johnson resignation, Tory leadership contest and a mini-budget for the rich was all supposed to be about the ERG finally taking control of Britain after years of manipulating the odds in their favour. The financial markets were having none of it though. And it is the poorest who now bear the brunt of their arrogant entitlement.
Maybe hiding under a table until the worst passes isn’t a bad idea, after all.
