Birmingham/Liverpool: There’s the 80-20 joke doing the rounds of Conservative MPs that goes like this: Boris won us 80 seats but could have won us more, so Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ’s) plan is how to hold the 80 and add 20.
However, the fear is that Liz Truss has totally misunderstood the 80-20 strategy and is aiming to take the number of MPs to between 80 and 20.
In the dark: Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss.Credit:AP
That the joke was relayed to this masthead by a government MP underlines the internal and public crises surrounding Britain’s new prime minister and her re-election hopes. This is despite Borris Johnson delivering the party 365 seats – a majority of 80 seats and the highest since 1987 – just two years ago.
So disastrous has Truss’ first 30 days been in the job there is already talk she could face a challenge to her leadership by Christmas.
The 47-year-old was never the MPs choice to replace Johnson, but she managed to edge out leadership rival Rishi Sunak by a margin of fewer than 21,000 votes.
She took this endorsement, by a total 81,326 Tory party members in a country with an overall population of more than 67 million, to mean she had a mandate to introduce drastic changes to the Conservative Party platform that had got Johnson re-elected and won him previously Labour heartland seats.
Those gains have been wiped away with Labour now leading the Tories.
Truss’ biggest drama has come from her push to introduce her unpopular signature plan for £45 billion ($75 billion) worth of unfunded tax cuts, with the bulk of the public focus on how they would benefit top-income earners.
The announcement triggered the fall of the pound and a surge in the cost of the UK government’s debt. It came in for heavy criticism, including from within her own party, but she stood by it and insisted it was her poor communication skills that had led to a collapse in her polling numbers which in turn sparked mutiny among her MPs.
But on Monday she scrapped the tax policy in a humiliating U-turn, embarrassing the ministers and supporters, including the right-wing press, who had stood by her and been out publicly supporting her plan.
Contending with gatecrashers was seen as a small win for Liz Truss, so rocky was her start. Credit:AP
By Wednesday the bar had fallen so low for Truss, the fact she was able to deliver her 35-minute speech to the Conservative Party conference and deftly deal with gate-crashing Greenpeace, was seen as something of an achievement.
But after just one month in office, everything points to a woman on borrowed time.
In many ways, Truss’ elevation is similar to that of former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard. Both were successors of election-winning prime ministers who, despite their chaotic management, managed to hold an emotional connection with the public and party members.
Like Gillard, Truss is not a natural communicator. She comes across as wooden and robotic, and it’s possible that Truss’ foray into the cutting of the top tax rate will haunt her premiership, just as Gillard was never able to shake “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” broken pledge.
Parallels with former prime minister Julia Gillard’s legacy.
Whether Truss has irretrievably broken her bond with the public is something only time will tell, but just how much time does she have?
As soon as Gillard became prime minister, Kevin Rudd and his supporters were out undermining her every day, wearing down whatever support she gained.
This is already happening against Truss, and she has multiple rivals, some of whom are already plotting a leadership tilt, possibly by the end of the year.
Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers her keynote speech on the final day of the Conservative Party Conference.Credit:Getty
Her detractors believe a fourth leadership change in six years won’t make the Tory Party an object of ridicule and that the public will move on and forget about it in two weeks’ time. The gain of removing Truss will be worth it.
Others within the party disagree and think that a final throw of the dice by changing leaders yet again would make the party such a laughingstock that it would mean an election loss was inevitable.
Whichever prevails, for as long as Truss remains wounded and weak her rivals will scent blood.
Gillard had just one leadership rival in her cabinet with Rudd. Truss has many, many more to contend with.
Labour’s Keir Starmer: Is the next election his to lose?Credit:Getty
She governs alongside Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch as well as the Duchy of Lancaster Nadhim Zahawi – all four nominated for the party leadership when Johnson resigned.
Just two months ago they had a national platform during the leadership contest where they were telling party members they could do her job better.
They all belong to the Right of the party, the same group that endorsed Truss against Sunak.
Then there are a number of more moderate mischievous-makers like Michael Gove, and Grant Shapps, the minister Truss told was the most competent but who she sacked from the cabinet because he had not been in her tent. He has not given up his leadership ambitions despite failing to secure the support of enough MPs to make the first round in the last leadership bout.
Gove and Shapps’ interventions forced Truss’ to dump her tax cut plans, proving just how powerful they can be.
And then there is Johnson himself and the runner-up in the leadership ballot Sunak.
Truss’ main message during this week’s Tory conference was “I get it, I’m listening” – a phrase that was directed just as much at her colleagues as the greater public.
And just like with her colleagues – it is not entirely clear if that message is convincing the public.
If Truss can stave off her colleagues she has two years to win popular support, but it will be an uphill battle.
Questions have been raised about the experience of her team, including her choice as chief-of-staff, Mark Fullbrook, whose only electoral campaigning experience was overseeing a failed bid by Zac Goldsmith for London mayor.
Conservatives have questioned Truss’ decision to ditch Australian election strategist Isaac Levido as campaign director in favour of Fullbrook. Levido, described by one Tory MP as a “superstar” in 2019 oversaw Johnson’s landslide win and Scott Morrison’s successful campaign in Australia.
Currently, the Conservatives’ polling under Truss is so bad, some ministers expect to suffer big seat losses in two years’ time.
This means the next election is Labour leader Keir Starmer’s to lose.
Having spent two years purging the hard left from the opposition, he has declared Labour a government-in-waiting. At Labour’s conference in Liverpool this week a sea of suits replaced the previously t-shirt-wearing supporters of former leader Jeremy Corbyn. Donations are pouring into the opposition’s coffers.
But there is a danger of complacency here too. Labour has to undo the majorities Johnson won in 2019.
Unlike Australia, Britain does not have preferential voting but first-past-the-post meaning Starmer needs a 1997 Tony Blair-style landslide to win, including in Scotland where the SNP’s nationalist promise remains seductive.
So while the comparisons between Keir Starmer and Anthony Albanese are easy to make, given the droll style of both, the path to electoral victory is harder for Starmer.
And Labour has a track record of losing supposedly winnable UK elections as Heather Vernon, founder of public relations firm Woburn Partners, knows first-hand, having worked for the Ed Miliband-led opposition between 2015 and 2017.
“No matter what individual polls say about a Labour resurgence, shadow ministers and advisers are acutely aware that there is no room for complacency,” she said.
“Labour’s electoral record since 2010 stands at 4-0 to the Tories, there’s a mountain to climb to turn that around,” she said.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.
Most Viewed in World
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article