Truss is finished, but the chance for change remains

Churchill once remarked that he often had to eat his own words. When he did, he found them to be a very good diet.

A few weeks ago, back when it was glad, confident, morning, I tentatively welcomed a new chapter in our nation’s history and the prospects of the Conservative Party. And while I do not regret backing Truss, I regret her failure to repay the trust so many of us placed in her.

It is a matter of profound regret and disappointment that I observe once again, backbone, resilience and commitment are found wanting. For what? On what altar has the sole regenerative opportunity been sacrificed?

The Prime Minister’s inability to sell a fundamentally correct, apposite and proper vision. The Prime Minister’s infantile performance in the face of inevitable onslaught.

Compromise and the ability to react flexibly as contexts change is not only essential to the successful politician but can be a laudable quality; for one cannot simply blindly charge onwards oblivious to the realities of the world around us.

There is no honour, however, in abandoning principles at the first headwind. As a result of the governments’, and yes - each is implicated except those who have resigned, utter failure to have the courage of their convictions, the UK will be poorer, less fair and the Conservative Party, a factionalist, limping, self-defeating fatigued army.

What possible inditement is this on the prospects of meaningful change and reform? If the UK is to salvage any prospect of breaking free from the shackles of persistently low productivity, statism and insatiable demand on public expenditure, then taxes have got to be cut, the supply side of the economy revolutionised, resistance to reform, change and progress overwhelmed, and a longer-term vision embedded into government. These are ambitious and challenging aims, but eminently possible and certainly necessary. The alternative has failed, will continue to fail and we will rue the day these sounder aims were rejected.

All this required, and still does, cuts to public expenditure. That is, reducing the amount of others people’s money that is spent on providing government services. Instead Truss, the drunkard returning to his bottle, clung to Johnsonian cakeism and refused to admit the need for spending cuts.

From voucher systems of funding education, reforming the NHS toward a social insurance model, refining the Energy Price guarantee, cutting the civil service, ripping up the Barnett formula and working with external bodies to identify meaningful efficiencies, there is ample scope to wield the knife. After all, we were supposed to be emerging from pandemic sized spending and not cementing a new norm.

Given the political context, even a windfall tax on energy firms would have been an easy political win and stomachable for pragmatic right-wingers. With the right communication strategy, selling cuts in tandem with taxing energy firms, in return for everybody keeping more of their own money, and faster growth with higher living standards would have been both possible and compellingly successful.

The task of formulating a positive, ambitious and persuasive Conservative vision will now, however, almost certainly fall to a new generation of Conservatives, untainted by the last 12 years of government and with a closer appreciation of core principles and real possibilities. I’d bet we have a few within the KCLCA and its counterparts.

Liz Truss promised change. Liz Truss has strangled the chance for change she once represented. The government of the country has descended into farce, chaos and disarray. This is all unacceptable in the first degree. Is there, nonetheless, a way out, a means of somehow rescuing the situation?

It is increasingly difficult to see how the Prime Minister can continue in anything other than name. She has seldom few redeeming features left and if she were to lead us into the next election, would lead the party to an abysmal defeat.

The prospect of another leadership election the like of which most of us endured over the summer will also feel nearly everybody with dread. Ministers are right when they say this is not a plausible nor sensible option. Somehow these two facts have to be reconciled. The Parliamentary party, perhaps guided by the 1922 Committee need to be able to identify two candidates that can be chosen by Tory MPs alone.

It may be that a Sunak-Mordaunt ticket is now the least worst option facing the party. Yes, such an administration would fail to enact the meaningful reform so desperately needed, but at least would have some semblance of pragmatic, competent government that can begin to restore the credibility of the Conservative Party. It’ll be far from ideal but in many ways, will be the ‘right’ way on which to leave the office.

What a depressing epitaph for the Conservative Party of 2022. 

My call, then, is to the Conservatives of tomorrow. On our shoulders, the recovery will fall. Learning the lessons of this sorry saga is just the beginning.