The rapturous standing ovation at the end of Liz Truss’s conference speech looked straight out of a future Netflix documentary from the cults strand. Outside the sect’s meeting hall, the party is polling an average of 25 (TWENTY-FIVE) points behind Labour. Inside, the people were clapping like they’d just heard a really charismatic argument about why it’s important to marry teenage girls, shun dissenting family members, and build gun turrets round their compound.
Truss’s government is now too weak to implement its maddest plans and too ideological to implement its most sensible. Last night it emerged that the government has blocked a public information campaign to help people save money on energy – and, by extension, to conserve usage in the face of suggestions that rolling blackouts could be in the post for this winter.
Apparently Truss regarded it as too nannying, despite it having been drawn up by her own business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg (a 53-year-old who admittedly still has a nanny). One cabinet minister reportedly said “the public is smarter than you think”. Unfortunately, Liz Truss isn’t. If we do reach the blackout scenario, the failure to plan or use foresight will be blamed on Vladimir Putin.
The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years. In dog years, that’s 304 (and arguably feels longer) – yet you’ll have noticed how every single thing is still someone else’s fault. The government is obsessed with people having to take responsibility for their own lives, but takes none for its own mistakes. Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and the other authors of Britannia Unchained deplore the feckless, the useless and the undeserving.
Yet throwing that absolute hot mess of a party conference this week while the country is sliding deeper into its various interlocking crises is surely the last word in fecklessness, uselessness and being undeserving. The salaries of every single person involved in what we saw in Birmingham should be withheld, like a benefit, until they’re at least housebroken. How do you return to functional government after that? It’s like the end of Deliverance, except instead of the characters giving each other haunted looks and saying “I don’t think I’ll see you for a while”, they’ve had to say: “Let’s … run a country in crisis together?”
You’ll have seen a lot of in-group analysis of Truss’s speech and its esoteric meanings, but what most normal people would have seen if a random clip drifted their way was the PM whining her little heart out. For someone who has always been gratingly keen for everyone to see her as a ray of sunshine, Truss is starting to present as a real Negative Nigel. Honestly, Liz, just stop moaning! Get on your bike and be the prime minister. If all you can do is complain about stuff, then resign and find more appropriate employment – eg hygiene inspector or newspaper columnist.
The other thing anyone normal will have clocked is that we’ve entered the realms of pure gibberish, where pies can be grown and a bunch of witless catchphrases are a placeholder for effective ideas. There’s a problem when the only time you see people using your big catchphrase is when they’re making a joke and it’s fitted with sarcastic air quotes. John Major had this with “back to basics”, which was at least a simple phrase. Expect the clunkfest that is “anti-growth coalition” to go the same way.
Anyway: the anti-growth coalition. This is a shadowy group bent on scuppering our heroine. It includes, but is not limited to: TV pundits, Extinction Rebellion, markets, unions, possibly Jamie Oliver, all other political parties, thinktanks, people who voted remain, podcasters, Twitter users, people who “taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio”… the list goes on and on. Liz Truss appears to hate more elements of Britain than the hard left. Worryingly, this was the most popular bit of her speech in the hall.
It’s all very well for politicians to find elegant ways of defining themselves against things in the interests of showing voters who they are. But imagine standing on stage and barking out an actual list of your enemies. It’s a bit Ernst Röhm, isn’t it? And that’s before you get to the eye-catching inclusion of the descriptor “north London”. Does this phrase, interpreted as a dog whistle in the past, no longer mean what it has been seen to before – or are Truss’s speechwriters so devoid of historical and cultural hinterland that they don’t even know what they’ve picked up off the floor and put in her mouth?
In the meantime, you can tell how desperate the gambit is from the fact that Iain Duncan Smith decided it gave the Tories something to unite against. Great to hear advice from him on how to win over the British public. Were Holly and Phil not available?
Yet the anti-growth coalition is the government’s favourite new conspiracy theory, the mindblowing catch-all cabal which somehow explains it all. Redpilled prime minister Liz Truss is like that relative who no longer trusts what the government says about anything, and prefers to “do her own research”. The trouble is – and I’m sorry if this is one of the many things she doesn’t like to hear – TRUSS IS THE ACTUAL GOVERNMENT. Creating some mad conspiracy to explain your shortcomings really is the last refuge of the loon. On this form, Liz is very close to claiming that paedophiles are using BBC taxis to transport children to remoaner pound-shorters. Watch out for signs of radicalisation, then – we’ve officially entered the era of L-Anon.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde is published by Guardian Faber (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
