THE FULL STORY: Liz Truss resigns as prime minister

The five causes of her downfall explained

NEWS ANALYSIS | THE INDEPENDENT | As Liz Truss stepped away from the lectern outside No.10 Downing Street after resigning as leader of her party, it probably occurred to her that her time as prime minister will have been only as long as the leadership campaign that got her there.

When Boris Johnson walked away from No.10 there was a sense in the United Kingdom that the time had come for stability, competence and the benefits of a boring politician who could steady the ship of state. Truss’s sea legs have proved remarkably shaky. She has pulled off arguably the biggest coup in British political history by making Johnson’s tenure look boring by comparison.

Truss began as prime minister in September, proposing a radical agenda that she claimed was designed to kick start economic growth. But she had to row back on those plans almost immediately after the polar opposite happened. Her proposals triggered an immediate economic meltdown from which she never recovered.

The shortness of her tenure does at least make it relatively easy to sum up where it all went wrong. I suggest there were five key elements at play in her rise and fall.

Poor politics

Truss practised poor politics from the very beginning of her tenure. She refused to appoint anyone into government that had not supported her campaign, leaving her with a limited pool of talent. Her stance that you were either a friend or an enemy (and enemies were out) gave her a reputation for revenge. Not a good start. She entered Downing Street flanked by two classmates also elected that year: Kwasi Kwarteng, her new chancellor, and Thérèse Coffey, her new deputy PM and health secretary.

Prior to Truss’ sudden elevation to foreign secretary less than a year ago, none of the three had ever held more than a middle-ranking Cabinet job. They now found themselves the most powerful trio in the country. There was an obvious lack of talent in her cabinet and after less than two months in office, Truss had to fire her chancellor and home secretary – the two most senior positions in government below the PM.

Poor party process

But the cracks were emerging even before Truss took office as a direct result of the way the Conservative party elects its leaders. Truss ended up in the final round of the contest as much by default as anything else and did not enjoy the enthusiastic support of her parliamentary party. In order to win the leadership election, she sold herself to the rank and file of party members by offering them tax policies that were tailored entirely to their needs rather than reflecting the needs or priorities of the wider country.

She adopted an awkward Thatcherite persona in presentational terms. Thatcherism is a form of British conservative ideology named after Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher. The term has been used to describe the principles of the British government under Thatcher from the 1979 general election to her resignation in 1990, and continuing into the Conservative governments under John Major and David Cameron. Proponents of Thatcherism are referred to as Thatcherites.

Thatcherism represents a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry and close regulation of the British economy. Under Thatcher, there was one major exception to Thatcherite changes: the National Health Service (NHS), which was widely popular with the British public.

The exact terms of what makes up Thatcherism, as well as its specific legacy in British history over the past decades, are controversial. Ideologically, Thatcherism has been described by Nigel Lawson, Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989, as a political platform emphasising free markets with restrained government spending and tax cuts, coupled with British nationalism both at home and abroad.

Truss also adopted a “red meat” strategy in policy terms. “Red meat” is rhetoric on an issue used to inflame supporters. It is often associated with populist ideas and campaigns. The phrase was first seen in 1911 in the movie industry, describing movies that were sensationalised. It shifted into a political term in the 1940s.

Today, red meat is almost always associated with right-wing populist speech. Things that get crowds riled up and angry — such as the “Lock Her Up” chants during the 2016 U.S. presidential election — are good examples of red meat. The overall effect was a new prime minister who was badly misaligned with both the public and her parliamentary party.

Poor policy

The level of misalignment was clear from the minute Truss’s self-mutilating mini-budget was announced. Truss entered office with the less-than-ideal backdrop of a cost of living crisis and war in Ukraine. The economic turmoil her government has waged was already creating more problems for her.

Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng laid out their plan for growth, outlining tax cuts and policies that led to the pound falling against virtually all the world’s currencies, and was likely to fuel the cost of living crisis, according to the IMF.

Her actions generated discomfort and even dissent within Conservative ranks and Kwarteng faced questions about the legitimacy of the mini-budget and of a radical change of course that didn’t have a mandate from the electorate.

Reports emerged of letters of no confidence submitted to the influential 1922 committee amid fears that the Conservatives had lost their economic credibility and opponents felt that alternatives to Truss existed.

Removing barriers on bankers bonuses and reducing business taxes was never going to land well in the middle of a cost of living crisis. The optics were all wrong, as any first-year politics student would know.

Poor presentation

Politics is, at the end of the day, a people business. You need to be able to communicate, resonate, connect and empathise. Research suggests voters evaluate the traits and characteristics of a politicians along two superordinate dimensions: one concerning instrumental traits related to job performance such as competence and intelligence, and another concerning more socio-emotional or interpersonal traits such as empathy and warmth.

Leadership/competence traits, which form the more “performance-based” dimension, are distinguished from integrity/empathy traits, which are the “interpersonal character” dimension.  A distinction is also made between “task-oriented” traits that have a professional component and “socio-emotional” traits that are personal or character-oriented.

Rhetoric that is empathetic and emotionally understanding likely influences evaluations along the socio-emotional dimension. That is, highly empathetic messages from a politician should indicate that he/she possesses socio-emotional traits like warmth, compassion, and sensitivity.

The most important form of intelligence for a prime minister is not therefore intellectual (we have experts) or financial (they have advisers) but emotional. The simple fact is that Truss never seemed to be able to relate or relax. The interview responses were always too mechanical, the body language too cardboard.

Poor positioning

If the troubles of Truss reveal one thing it is most probably the dangers of the British constitution. It remains a power-hoarding constitution where an incredibly small number of people can make massive decisions with very little, if any, scrutiny. Her sidelining of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility being a case in point.

“Poor, poor, poor” might well provide a fitting epitaph for Truss’s time in office but I cannot help but wonder if her experience is symptomatic of a far bigger issue. Is it too easy to blame Truss? If anything the last month has exposed a vacuum at the centre of British politics about ambition, imagination and vision. There really isn’t any.

In a post-Brexit context, filling this vacuum has to be the core concern of whomever next decides to accept the keys to No.10.

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This article is based on one by Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield. It contains additional explanations not attributable to him.