Courting Ruin

What's the lay of the land like three weeks in? Already upset and rumours of upset are making their way into the press about Liz Truss. Just a quick run down from this week. We've had the Telegraph fantasising about what might have been had Ben Wallace not lost his bottle. The Mirror reports on noses put out of joint after two whips refused to debase themselves before Truss's cult of the non-personality. The Telegraph (again) talks of open revolt on the government benches if the pound sinks to parity with the dollar, or dives below it. And Tory MPs complain about the disloyal mood among parliamentarians. It's not only Ken Clarke saying Truss's schemes won't work. The patron saint of remainia and imagined Tory decency is only saying words that are common currency on the parliamentary estate.

Truss also has another feather in her cap. No Prime Minister taking office in mid-term without immediately turning around their party's fortunes in the polls has gone on to win a general election. She has the unique distinction of being the first in such a position. Truss and her outriders are masochistically leaning into this. Having stripped the Tories of all pretence that her government is anything other than an instrument of the ruling class, Truss is staking her premiership on whether her natural voter coalition and Conservative-leaning swing voters are gullible enough to buy it. Levering more money into the already bulging pockets of the rich is entirely reliant on the ideological legacies of past governments for its justification - it assumes the past neoliberal commonsense continues to frame such questions. That the mass purchase is still there. Having peddled the view that enriching the wealthy is correct and proper economics, it says a great deal about the exhaustion of Toryism that Truss isn't playing the legitimation game beyond the already accomplished. Why dig further when Thatcher, Blair and co. have already done the spadework?

Just saying what her government is doing is necessary for economic growth won't work, politically speaking. When Dave embarked on his ruinous programme of cuts 12 years ago, he did so with the same commonsense behind him. And also the unanimity of the Tory party, their press operation, broadcast journalism, and the acceptance and meek support by Labour. Oppositional voices were almost entirely sidelined, and therefore the Tories were able to mobilise just enough support to keep them on track and win a majority in 2015. The situation could not be more different for Truss. The cost of living crisis is seeing even the better off counting the pennies. There is widespread anger toward the energy companies for their profiteering. The background presence of socialist ideas and sympathies is the lasting consequence of the Corbyn interlude. Labour movement mobilisations and victorious strike action is on the up, and significant layers of journalistic, professional, and political opinion oppose the naked class project of Trussonomics. And, as we can see, there are jitters on the Tory benches: pump primed by a summer of denunciation by Rish! Sunak. Can Truss rely on a diet of scapegoating and mass sadism? It's seems rather doubtful.

There is nowhere else for her to go. Having declared a protectorate around fossil fuel profits, the eye watering borrowing costs of her energy price freeze and tax cuts for the wealthy leave no room for anything else. For Tory MPs nervously eyeing the polls and despairing that Boris Johnson's levelling up wheeze has been abandoned, it won't be long before the mood turns even more sour. Especially when the unforced errors crop up, along with the whiff of corruption, supposedly confined to the Johnson era, catches in the press's nostrils. It's rare for a Prime Minister to begin their tenure with as pressing a set of problems, and even rarer for one to actively make matters worse within their first few weeks in the job.

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