Is it enough to save her? Jeremy Hunt’s rescue package for Britain’s battered economy was announced today, but its subplot is a rescue package for a battered prime minister. The fate of the economy hangs on the markets and may take weeks to resolve. The fate of the prime minister, her economic policy devastated to the point of ridicule by Hunt, could be a matter of days. Rarely has a chancellor of the exchequer so utterly rubbished his boss. Can Liz Truss survive?
There is one subject on which all MPs are experts; that is their re-election. The future of the nation, the economy and their party may matter, but their jobs matter more. A growing number of Tory MPs face instant unemployment in two years’ time, thanks to Truss – a leader forced on them two months ago by party members, against their preference for Rishi Sunak. Their judgment has been more than vindicated by Truss’s performance in office. The polls suggest that dozens of them are doomed.
Commentators like to suggest that MPs might ponder whether they should welcome defeat at the next election and “regroup”. That is not how MPs see things. Even if defeat beckons, they want to do everything they can to minimise the damage and save their seats. The sole question is whether a change of leader – even one so recently in office – would help.
The result is that the Tory party rivals the late-era Roman empire in its cult of assassination. Time and again, assassination has proved a game-saver. The party is still in power after 12 turbulent years under four leaders. One more decapitation could hardly make things worse. Possible replacements currently include Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Ben Wallace and the new chancellor, whose ruthless rubbishing today of Truss’s recent mini-budget has been swift and sure. Michael Gove and the party’s longstanding favourite, the recently toppled Boris Johnson, are also in the running. MPs might think any of these would be an improvement on Truss.
At this point there is an issue of process. A new leadership election, coupled with rewriting the rules to exclude a vote of party members, could plunge the Tories into ever deeper polling woes. It would be a serious rebuff by MPs to their grassroots membership, many of whom might tear up their cards and go home. Opposition parties would exult in glee.
The question, then, is whether it would still be worth it. An argument emerging from the more cautious of Truss’s supporters warns against any new trauma. They accept that Hunt, despite coming bottom of the eight candidates for leadership among MPs in the summer, would be her most plausible replacement. But he is now signed up to the success – or failure – of his new and hardly popular economic package, with Truss clinging desperately to his side. Appointing him as chancellor has been her one shrewd decision in office. He is now trapped in her shadow and can hardly campaign against her. Besides, goes the argument, political opinion polls are nowadays notoriously fickle. Theresa May’s lead of 23 points before the 2017 election evaporated overnight. Labour’s current lead of 20-30 points could yet disintegrate. It is still all to play for.
But this is desperate talk. Whatever assets Hunt might bring to Truss’s government, he would bring more obviously to his own. He may be unexciting, un-ideological and a remainer, but these are just the qualities a floating voter might crave just now. If Hunt’s economic policy is to chart Britain’s austerity-strewn path through recession to recovery, at the very least his party would find it more plausible if it were led by him, and not the toxic figure of Truss.
The other candidates each have strengths and weaknesses. Sunak is most plausible. He was clearly rejected by the party, but he has been vindicated by the catastrophe of Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. He would seem a safe pair of hands and undoubtedly the ablest of a poor bunch. Wallace would be popular, but possibly only with party loyalists. Mordaunt is inexperienced; Gove, though a party veteran, has perhaps made too many enemies. To bring back Johnson would seem an act of desperation.
The real question is whether Tory MPs have the guts to stick to their tried and tested policy of assassination. It would lead to a nasty few months, but the chaotic interregnum of 2022 would, like so much in politics, soon be consigned to the history books. But the brute reality is that the Tory party made a bad mistake in selecting Truss as its leader. The devil is not always preferable to the deep blue sea. There is no better time to correct a bad mistake than now.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
