We need to talk about Liz. It’s been the best part of five months since Liz Truss was turfed out of office and she still hasn’t recovered from the shame. Imagine being considered an even bigger liability than Boris Johnson by the Tory party. Truss’s public performances have been limited to a single appearance in the Commons during which she made a short speech supporting Ukraine. She seemed to imagine she was uppermost in President Zelenskiy’s thoughts most days. It’s doubtful he has any idea who she is.
Liz also made a 4,000-word intervention – part confessional, part cry for help – in the Daily Telegraph. A howl of pain from someone desperate for relevance. Most of it was just an unintelligible rant. Its main purpose seemed to be as some kind of personal catharsis. The acting out of someone on hallucinogenics. It had no meaning in itself. The meaning was all in the process. Having purged the demons, she was ready to reintroduce herself to the world. But since then … Nothing. Nada.
We also need to talk about Kwasi. If anything the former chancellor has been even more elusive than Liz since his defenestration. One day Kwasi Kwarteng was king of the rightwing libertarians. The man who did economics without the boring bits. Who wants to bother with actually explaining how you’re going to fund tax cuts? The next he was a political outcast. Spiritually homeless. He hasn’t shown his face in the Commons, let alone ventured into print. Just a short, sweaty TV appearance on TalkTV that felt more like a police interview under caution. “I done nuffink. It was her wot made me do it.”
Kamikwasi has been spotted on the Jubilee underground line. No one knows exactly where he’s going or why he’s going there. He just sits alone, looking somewhat confused as the train heads towards the terminus. And then back the other way. Fellow travellers have been advised not to approach him. One colleague who did was met with a vacant stare and silence. It’s possible he even believes that he’s still chancellor and that the tube is his office. Look carefully among the rubbish on the floor and you might find his latest budget.
But surely the time is right for a comeback of sorts. After all, if not now then when? Jeremy Hunt has delivered his budget. Today must surely have been the day when Britannia could be finally unchained. When Truss and Kwarteng could be carried into the chamber on Dominic Raab’s shoulders to be greeted with adoration by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Simon Clarke. When the new economic vision could be presented and the old orthodoxies overturned.
Only there was no sight of either Liz or Kwasi when the budget debate resumed at lunchtime on Thursday. Neither was ready for redemption. Perhaps they never will. Maybe their time has been and gone. The Tories hastily retreating from their brief flirtation with Trussonomics. Happy to accept the inevitable managed decline of Conservative orthodoxy. Better to die slowly than to take the whole country down in one fireball.
Or maybe rehabilitation just takes more time. Like more than 15 years. Over at the Northern Ireland select committee, Tony Blair was facing questions about the peace process and the Windsor framework. Only calling them questions is to oversell the confrontation. Rather this was more of a love-in, where every word Blair uttered was treated as gospel. And if the questions did ever veer towards something remotely challenging, then the committee chair, Simon Hoare, did his best to calm things down. “I don’t think you need to take that one too seriously, old boy.”
It’s hard to know what Tony made of all this, as his face is frozen in a tortured rictus and his eyes constantly dart from side to side as if looking for danger. He doesn’t look a happy man. Rather someone who is merely relieved if the worst doesn’t happen. Who struggles to understand why the world has turned its back on him. Though not today. Today the fawning 90 minutes ended with several members of the public and two MPs on the committee, Mary Kelly Foy and Claire Hanna, asking for selfies. Liz and Kamikwasi would kill for that level of attention.
Back in the Commons, Truss and Kwarteng weren’t the only absentees from the budget debate. Only 10 Tory backbenchers thought it worthwhile to show their faces. Thought they had something to contribute. The rest had sloped off home. The budget just another milestone to be ticked off. Whether it made any difference to their constituents was irrelevant. All that mattered was that it hadn’t fallen apart on day one or been monstered in the rightwing press. There again, several papers greeted Kwasi’s budget with unrestrained ecstasy.
Labour’s Rachel Reeves is increasingly a class act. So perhaps some Tories had stayed away because they didn’t want their dreams shattered as the shadow chancellor took apart their fragile budget line by line. She started with a simple question. One that bears being asked repeatedly. Name one thing that works better now than it did 13 years ago. Silence from the Conservative ranks.
She then quoted the independent thinktank the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Few budgets survive their analysis; this one was no exception. The tax take was at its highest since the war. The pension giveaway for the super-rich would do nothing to get more older people back into work. Who would have guessed? The UK would have the worst growth in the G7 this year and next. All that Jeremy Hunt had been able to offer was that things would be marginally less shit than they otherwise might have been. Though that might be considered a huge win in Tory circles these days. For the rest of us, not so much.
Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, opened for the government. A thankless task. At least Jezza had the benefit of surprise. A day later and everyone knows the weaknesses in the budget, yet Stride had to repeat the same nonsense as if he truly believed in it. Maybe he does. Call it cognitive dissonance. He needs to believe or his world vision would fall apart. He would be exposed. Naked. So he just mumbled something about compassionate conservatism and helping the young and the less well off – amazingly he kept a straight face – and sat down as soon as possible.
Still, at least no one was really listening. And those that were would be more focused on the NHS pay deal. Back in January many of us were saying there would inevitably be a pay deal compromise between what the unions wanted and Rishi Sunak said was available. Surprise, surprise. That’s what happened. What a waste of time. What a waste of goodwill. Time and again the government takes us for fools.
