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Whose name did you see and hear repeated most throughout this election campaign? There is a decent chance – especially if you were following Labour’s attack lines – that it wasn’t Rishi Sunak’s. And it certainly wasn’t Sir Keir Starmer’s.
It’s likely the name you heard on repeat was that of a Tory backbencher, who not so long ago was prime minister of the United Kingdom.
At points it felt like Liz Truss was at the centre of this election: while the former PM largely kept to knocking on doors in her own constituency, her legacy was constantly brought up during the campaign, arguably even more so than Sunak’s.
Labour made sure of it. Truss’s 49 days in Downing Street has been Labour’s favourite talking point since autumn 2022. Claiming that Truss “crashed the economy” with her infamous mini-Budget was an easy attack line. The fact that the claim isn’t strictly true didn’t seem to matter too much. It takes a communications pro to explain the difference between market jitters and an economic crash in a short, media-style rebuttal. The attack was a perfect political trap.
Reminding voters of the Truss blip also resonated because mortgage rates remain relatively high. They were bound to rise regardless, thanks to the trend of interest rates going up worldwide. But the spike that occurred during Truss’s premiership had a very painful effect on many homeowners (and aspiring homeowners), whose payments rose significantly. The association between the mini-Budget and surging rates is engrained in voters’ minds.
Sunak opposed Truss
This might seem like an odd attack: to go after Sunak with Truss’s legacy. He was, after all, the politician who stood up to her plans for mass borrowing during the leadership race. Sunak found himself in No 10 precisely because he was the voice of opposition to Truss during that summer, warning that endless borrowing (for spending or for tax cuts) was unsustainable.
But he was unable to unite the party behind that position. This wasn’t helped by the fact that, while Sunak was picking up the pieces from the mini-Budget fallout, Truss was quickly jumping back into politics, drafting comment pieces and conducting countless interviews about her time in Downing Street.
She didn’t hesitate to blame every actor (civil servants, the Bank of England, the sidelined Office for Budget Responsibility) apart from herself. She was doing the media rounds, going on international tours, publishing a book, and launching a campaign group – all as part of a strategy to rewrite the 49 days in her favour.
One wonders if Thursday’s election results might have been slightly different – mainly for the former prime minister – if she had given slightly more time and nuance to her return to the political spotlight.
Truss’s vote share was certainly dented by Reform UK, which caused plenty of upset, denying Tories some opportunities for victory elsewhere in the country. But that is only part of the story in the South West Norfolk upset.
The swing from Tories to Labour in Truss’s seat is estimated to be the biggest in general election history. Truss’s insistence for the past 18 months that her mini-Budget, while imperfect, was the right course of action was finally put to the test by voters. Their verdict – the only one that really matters in politics – was a resounding rejection of her version of history.
There is no sugar-coating the Tory results. The party is battered – not annihilated, but certainly shaken to its ideological core. If there is any silver lining to be found, it’s that the 121 Tories who remain standing have an opportunity to rebuild from scratch.
Starting again at square one is going to be a long, tedious and thankless process. But it is the better option. Trying to build back when factions of the party still insist that what happened two years ago was serious (and conservative) economic policy – trying to borrow upwards of £100bn from the market to bring in price controls on energy bills – would have been a near impossible task.
The space and freedom to rebuild classically liberal pillars is critical for the Conservatives’ revival. If the party is actually serious about a low-tax offer, it’s going to have to stop pretending it can provide endless security. That was the fundamental problem with the mini-Budget: the promise of tens of billions of tax cuts, on top of a spending spree.
Still, the party will miss a unique skill that Truss brought to the table: the ability to talk about free-market ideas, not just with clarity, but with enthusiasm, vigour and unabashed pride for the results it produces globally.
If the Tory party can find the strength to get serious about its future prospects, it will be looking for a leader who is able to make this case, but also willing to talk about some of the trade-offs involved in that process. That will include addressing the spending side of the ledger.
Labour will miss Truss
The irony of these results is that there will be one political group that will immediately miss Truss: the Labour Party. The former prime minister became the poster child for all that has gone wrong in the UK over the past few years. Their attack line is now gone. It is no longer relevant, and whatever comes next is fully owned by the new party in charge.
That is bound to come with complications. Labour are already angling to be able to say in a few months’ time, around their first fiscal event, that the situation is far worse than they expected. That means difficult decisions on tax-and-spend: precisely the kind they were not forthcoming about during the campaign.
Yet there is very little hiding in the financial shadows. One perk of the OBR (sorry, Truss) is that the horrors hidden in the public finances are put on full display. It’s how we already know that there is around a £20bn black hole in departmental spending in this next Parliament. It’s how we know that pledges like the NHS long-term workforce plan have not been costed by any political party. To actually deliver such lofty promises is going to cost unbelievable sums.
With their spectacular majority, it’s all on Labour now to come up with solutions. There is no more scapegoat. There is no more fall guy. All eyes are on the new Government. It may quickly miss having someone else to blame.
Kate Andrews is economics editor at The Spectator
Liz Truss’s greatest gift to the Tory party was losing her seat
The former prime minister’s name was everywhere during the election campaign – her political opponents made sure of it