Jeremy Kinsman

October 20, 2022

The traditional Irish folk song, Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye, was appropriated by former JFK aides Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers to title a memoir of their hero, brought down by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

When Liz Truss was chosen as leader of the Conservative Party of the UK and became Prime Minister only 44 days ago, the British public hardly knew her.

Within weeks, they decided they already knew enough.

Truss’s radical libertarian “growth, growth, growth” economic agenda, which contained big tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations caused the markets to tank and the Conservative party’s standings in the polls to sink to unprecedented depths.

But Liz Truss was known to some — notably those who were rattled during her tenure as foreign secretary in Boris Johnson’s government by her addiction to publicity, including via awkward sound bites. From many accounts of insiders, she did not take advice.

Her ascent as a top candidate to replace Johnson, when his personal excesses and distortions became too much for the party to handle, was therefore troubling to those observers. But they bit their lips as the wider Conservative party membership, which hardly knew her at all, picked her as PM over the brainy but very wealthy, elitist, and arguably too young and untested Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

The British Conservative Party, per the spasms of populism affecting political parties everywhere (including Canada) had changed its rules. If the parliamentary caucus could not agree on a new leader by consensus, the choice from the top two candidates would be made by the party membership of 200,000. The members are older and more rural, wealthy, white, and pro-Brexit than the electorate at large.

Truss, who styled herself the second coming of Margaret Thatcher, was imposed via the members of the Conservative Party on the wider British public as a radical libertarian.

Ever since the fateful referendum on Brexit in June 2016, the Conservative parliamentary caucus had been as afflicted by the national division of opinion on the outcome as the public at large. The hapless Theresa May had tried as PM to steer the UK toward a “soft” Brexit that would sustain the terms of Britain’s access to the EU market, at 43 percent of exports, the UK’s largest by far, but hardline Brexiteers held out for a “hard” Brexit that emphasized the UK’s “freedom” from the EU. They ultimately pushed Theresa May out in favour of the more popular and more leader of the Brexiteers, the populist Johnson.

But the divisions never healed in the party. Johnson’s assembly of mainly Brexit supporters seemed short on competence at a time of stress from COVID, though the Treasury performance was rewarded by general support from the markets.

Alas, Truss, who styled herself the second coming of Margaret Thatcher, was imposed via the members of the Conservative Party on the wider British public as a radical libertarian. She nominated a fellow economic radical, Kwasi Kwarteng, as chancellor of the exchequer (the fourth in two years). Their disastrous joint mini-budget triggered a domestic financial crisis, higher mortgage costs for millions of citizens, and a run on sterling. Its unfunded tax cuts earned a stunning public rebuke from the IMF, and criticism from US President Biden. The rebuke from the UK public in new polling was even more punishing.

The PM sacked her chancellor and in turning away from her own policies, conferred authority to redress the economic fall-out on a new chancellor (the fifth in two years) moderate, experienced, Jeremy Hunt.

But it was too late. By the weekend, Truss’s personal approval rating had dropped to 9 percent. Labour’s lead under Keir Starmer stretched to over 30 points. Everyone in Britain had heard the descriptions of the government as a “clown car,” and the Conservative party’s journey over the last six years as a “soap opera.” The tweet today from Larry the Cat, “Chief Mouser of 10, Downing Street” saying “The King has asked me to become Prime Minister because this nonsense has gone on long enough” went viral.

As the as-yet unelected prime minister’s authority and electability tanked, the likelihood of the Conservatives retaining the seats in the North and among working class Brits they had won from Labour was about zero. The libertarian budget casting British futures to market forces, with Reagan-era Laffer curve tax breaks for the rich, and cuts to social services, horrified most voters as much as they did the bond markets. With inflation hitting 10 percent, the worried British long for stability from the chaos of the last six years of political melodrama.

Yet, the rules of the party guaranteed newly-elected leader Truss a year without a leadership challenge.

The chair of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, which judges leadership challenges, Sir Graham Brady, was bombarded with MPs’ letters asserting the necessity to change leaders immediately.

On October 19, Brady confronted the prime minister with a choice: persist in office, in which case a majority of MPs will likely vote to change the rules providing a safe year, and vote her out immediately, or alternatively, resign. Which she did in front of Number 10 the very next morning.

What now?

There will be nominations to replace Liz Truss by Monday. Those who get at least 100 letters of support from MPs can compete in a poll held almost immediately. If there is a clear winner, accepted by consensus, he or she will take office as Prime Minister. If a consensus is not available, the top two names will be put before the general Conservative Party membership to vote on electronically in a flash election in time to have a winner and new prime minister by October 28th, in one week.

How is that apt to work out? Who will win? What will be the aftermath?

Speculation is that Boris Johnson is pondering a comeback, counting on his reputation as a vote-getter with the public to persuade MPs he is most likely to save their jobs. But believing Johnson is a solution is a fantasy. The public is surely not longing for his return. His name in the contest may well mean it could be up to the party membership, whose memory of his tenure is fonder but it will not heal fissures in the parliamentary caucus.

They will likely choose an experienced person to calm the troubled waters, a moderate, with communications and persuasion skills, and a sound ear; all qualities Truss lacked.

But the whole episode has been humiliating for Britain, which has lost the confidence of more in the international community than the bond markets.

By those, standards, former Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt, who came third behind Sunak and Truss in the last round of the caucus voting in September, is probably the most broadly acceptable. Jeremy Hunt is staying out but his renewed appointment as chancellor will soothe the markets, and the public. Michael Gove is also staying out. Along with hard-line right-winger and just-resigned Home Secretary Suella Braverman, he would run up against a corps of opposition.

Only yesterday, Liz Truss told a raucous Parliament “I am a fighter, not a quitter,” But the whole episode has been humiliating for Britain, which has lost the confidence of more in the international community than the bond markets. By the way, the likelihood of a new Scottish assertion of sovereignty is increased, and the prospect of a choice in Northern Ireland to join the Irish Republic is accelerated.

The whole episode has also been a disaster for a ruling party that was headed for eclipse if there were a general election. Will a new mood of humility be available? Can a consensus leader help the party survive?

At a time when illiberal authoritarians like Putin point in derision to the chaos of democracies, who could today point to Britain as proof of democratic concept? The only good news is that the chance of change exists. But reputational scars will remain for years.

Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman is a former High Commissioner to the UK. One of Canada’s most experienced foreign affairs hands, he is now a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.