29th August 2022
We are about to have a new Prime Minister.
The candidate most likely to become the new premier is Elizabeth Truss, about whom many of you will have Very Strong Opinions – though it still may be Rishi Sunak, about whom many of you will also have Very Strong Opinions.
They will replace Boris Johnson, about whom all of you will have Very Strong Opinions Indeed.
Of course, from a liberal and progressive perspective there are reasons to be concerned, if not fearful, about the new Prime Minister.
But.
As hard as it will be, it is I think useful to always give a new Prime Minister a blank slate.
(Even if some of the candidates’ harshest critics will accuse the candidates themselves of being blank slates.)
Here I would make two observations.
First, it is not unusual for a politician obtaining power to say and do things that are calculated so that the politician obtains power.
Such things may – or may not be – reflective of what they do once they have secured the power they seek.
Second, never underestimate any politician who “makes it” – who gets to the top of Disraeli’s greasy pole.
You may – perhaps rightly – regard them as a vacant dimwit.
Yet they are a vacant dimwit who got to be Prime Minister, against hundreds of other ambitious (and ruthless) politicians.
Deriding them for a lack of intelligence or insight does not, by itself, explain how they got to be Prime Minister while hundreds of other politicians did not.
Of course: past performance (or lack of performance) can be a fair guide to future performance.
But the unique nature of the job of Prime Minister is such previous ministerial and non-ministerial roles are not a perfect guide.
For what it is worth, I also adopt this approach to new Lord Chancellors.
Again that is a unique role – where previous jobs may not be a perfect guide.
Sometimes one can be pleasantly surprised: Michael Gove, for example, was shaping up to be a good Lord Chancellor, and not just because he was not Chris Grayling.
While other Lords Chancellors were hopeless, even if one strained to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Ones like, well, Elizabeth Truss.
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I largely agree, but with one fairly large caveat.
The energy crisis is not only a future problem, the fear of what is to come is doing damage here and now. So I am holding it against the candidates that they did not agree a joint policy at the start of the summer for the sake of the national interest – and instead have allowed stress and anxiety to hang over people and to drive good businesses to the wall.
Your point is well made. There are many people who are extremely fearful about the coming “storm” and have been offered no reassurance whatsoever. The candidates have failed the country by failing to explain a credible plan on how to deal with this frightening issue.
I totally agree. We have no idea as to who is or is not likely to weather the storm.
In a future blog perhaps you could cover why it is Lords Chancellors in the plural, but Attorneys-General?
Idiosyncratic playfulness.
“Lord CHANCELLORS” (note, NOT “Lords Chancellors”), ATTORNEYS General”: in each case, the word describing the actual position or post is pluralised.
I applaud you for being broad minded. However, if one considers past performance, what is the probability that Liz Truss will be a disaster? Generous odds would be 80 per cent I think. “Hope for the best and plan for the worst” is a useful concept, also the reality that Cameron, May, and Johnson have each been disasters in their way, and why should Liz Truss, a long term occupant of the same stable be any different?
How long would you give the incumbent? A week? a month? Until winter really sets in?
Birkenhead was generally regarded as a light weight when appointed – the Times was an exception.
Liz Truss should never have been made Lord Chancellor. But she does not lack intelligence – she successfully fought for a place at Merton College Oxford which gave the young F E Smith a fellowship and she obtained a first.
So your advice makes excellent sense
As we’ve seen from many of those in recent & current cabinet posts, qualifications don’t necessarily equate to intelligence. Irrespective of a clean slate or the personality easing themselves into Johnson’s seat (there’s a thought), I suspect we’re in for a bumpy ride.
There seem to be so many challenges facing the government that are unusually imminent/urgent that I’d have thought that, just for once, it would be sensible to direct our energies to coming up with solutions rather than criticising the causes. The same party’s been in power for a decade, blame isn’t the issue.
It’s not sensible to think that a new Prime Minister can address the needs of the NHS, the energy price issue, rivers full of sewage, years of little or no pay rises in public and private sectors, increasing inflation, the fallout of Brexit, developments in Russia/Ukraine and the likely economic problems in China (and that’s an “including but not limited to list”).
And they’re all urgent and the previous incumbents have either done nothing to address the problems that’s made any difference, or simply done nothing.
And while there’s a temptation amongst many people (which I share) to hope the new PM fails so a new government can come to power, the failure will kill or damage too many people in the meantime. The likely complete failure of the NHS isn’t just a political nightmare.
Labour’s solution to the energy crisis looked like a decent and potentially workable plan. Let’s have a series of solutions looking for a sponsor rather than merely restating the problem and assigning blame.
Reasons to be fearful, part 3, as Ian Dury never sang😊
I think, but I’m not at all sure, that the plural of Lord Chancellor is Lords Chancellor and not Lords Chancellors.
Whilst I certainly understand the principle you espouse here, I can’t quite bring myself to agree completely.
Like Tall Person, I have caveats…
The first is that they MUST be held accountable for delivering anything and everything they commit to during the contest. Chances are the only viable remedy for broken promises will be “The Order of the Spanish Archer” (el bow) come the next election. So be it.
The second is that they MUST take swift, decisive action to bring down the cost of energy, even if, in the short term, that means eliminating VAT on gas and electricity and setting a price cap at no more than say 120% of last year’s average price.
They could fund this by taxing the profits of the big multinationals that use devices like “licensing fees” to off-shore profits. Enact a law that says internet-based transactions are taxed at “the location of the click” and stop this accursed sleight-of-hand performed by (Facebook/Google/Amazon/Starbucks/etc.).
And I’m not some loony lefty, but if the energy companies don’t get with the program, nationalise them. Enough of their games, too.
Beautifully crafted, better even than usual
The problem is that the attributes required to scale the ‘greasy pole’ are not necessarily those that make a good PM. Let’s see where we are in six weeks. Your take on Gove as Lord Chancellor made me laugh out loud. Beautifully put.
Hello,
After following you for some time, at last a blog I disagree with.
It is surely wrong to give either candidate a clean slate.
That is exactly trick this government has been playing this last 12 years: pretending that every iteration is a new thing, completely different from the last version.
But it isn’t true. They are all connected. And they all pile policy failure upon policy failure. A continuum of uselessness.
And everything points to their both being awful.
Looking forward to your next blog
Admirably open-minded, but likely to worsen the disappointment, I fear.
Is this post not “idiosyncratic playfulness”?
My response is no, neither a clean slate nor a benefit of doubt, she carries too much baggage, nearly as much as Marley’s ghost.
I have encountered a number of greasy pole climbers and cannot say that they didn’t fail my expectations.
So, did BJ turn out a better PM than you expected?
I like these points: food for thought. One always has (or should have) a nagging doubt that, in one’s appalled reactions at the success of someone one may regard as a dimwit or a blackguard, one might be guilty of peer pressure or hysteria. But again, it’s galling to have given the benefit of the doubt, only to discover to discover that it was undeserved and should not have been given, and that one was right in the first place. On the whole I’d rather be found guilty of excessive scepticism than excessive credulity when it comes to those who have power.
“Deriding them for a lack of intelligence or insight does not, by itself, explain how they got to be Prime Minister while hundreds of other politicians did not.”
True. But can we assume that ET’s own agency is principally what got her there? Nobody gets to the top of the greasy pole without backers.
A generous argument, indeed. Of course Liz Truss is not a vacant dimwit: she got into Oxford, with the aid of a good school, and graduated in due course. She has functional intelligence at that level. But my fear is that she lacks a moral compass. She adopts positions that I think her intelligence should tell her are inconsistent with reality (and with positions she has previously adopted), but she thinks they will aid her climb to power. I expect her to be just as shameless when she is in power. The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.
Her ‘I am PM’ slate may be clean but her personal ‘I am not much good’ slate is still with her.
Then to borrow a comment from elsewhere – the problems are so great she will ignore them, say ‘world beating’ a lot and go on long holidays and fact finding tours.
Happy is he who expects little….
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
For many years before he was elevated to the office of Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson repeatedly showed us who he was. Did he become less feckless, less lazy, more honest or less self serving when he became PM?
I’m pretty sure Mary Elizabeth Truss, or indeed Rishi Sunak if it comes to it, has shown us who they are.
Would you say the same of all politicians?
Well, as they say, “power reveals”.
Are most politicians lazy, feckless, dishonest and self-serving? No, but by the time you can become PM you have already ‘revealed’ who you are. By the time de Pfeffel was elevated to PM it was abundantly clear who and what he was. I think the same is true for Truss or Sunak who have both held senior potions of power and can be judged by what they have said and more importantly what they have done with that power.
I would add that you can also judge a politician by the company they keep, and in Truss’s case it’s the usual suspects of the 55 Tufton street Astro-turf lobby network and the ERG. She also co-authored a book along with 3 other Tory’s who will, I suspect, form the backbone of here first cabinet, which is worth a read.
Of all people
And reply to Rupert Wilkinson. I too think both candidates have more or less shown their true colours so far.
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers/cover-1578
I detect Birmingham / Black Country drollery. Very good.
You are being too kind Mr Green. Johnson’s character and abilities were all too clear for those who wanted to look before his elevation to Prime Minister. The Labour Party then did their level best to keep him in office. That the Conservative Party should contrive to deliver Truss, whose limitations of character and capabilities are already known, to the office of Prime Minister is beyond belief and beyond shameful. As if we do not have enough problems. My only hope is that she has wit enough to bury Johnson once and for ever, deep, deep in the catacombs of Westminster, as he will be straining every synapse, every flash of impulse of that narcissitic brain to do to her what he did to May.
If an incoming Prime Minister had been appointed to that permission as a result of a General Election, then they might to some extent be deserving of a “clean slate”, although I would argue that they must by necessity be held to account for delivery of their manifesto pledges.
This is not the case here, irrespective of the ultimate victor.
Both of the remaining candidates are former members of Boris Johnson’s government and therefore carry their share of responsibility (through their participation in cabinet) for the current state of the nation.
During the period of time that the Conservative Party have been contemplating their collective navel and selecting their new leader, HM Opposition have not wasted the opportunity to invite them to call a General Election and allow the nation to select a new Prime Minister. As the Conservative majority declined that invitation, it would be at the very minimum somewhat inappropriate for the new Prime Minister to be given that clean slate.
Having said this, whilst there may be some truth in the belief that “what’s past is prologue”, what matters most is not what the eventual winner has done in the past, but what they do going forward.
There needs to be a 90-day plan, with clear, unambiguous and measurable deliverables. For example, one simple but contentious measure the government could take to help the nation through the approaching winter would be to temporarily suspend VAT on domestic gas and electricity. They could set rigorous targets for providers – who are making *insane* profits – such as limiting them to exceptionally low levels of suspended services through the winter.. and then penalising them rigorously if they fail. They could introduce a “graduated tax” on profits and dividends.
Above all, both candidates need to confirm to the nation that they have concrete, immediately actionable plans to launch the moment the decision is made. The current hiatus is making a bad situation worse – and needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later.