Liz Truss’s energy price cap ‘handout’ will put her talent for U-turns to the test
Liz Truss is not the first Conservative prime minister to see her carefully cultivated self-image quickly clash with political reality.
Boris Johnson was the prime minister who compared himself to the reckless mayor in Jaws who kept the beaches open despite shark attacks – but then had to order the British population to lock themselves up at home during the Covid pandemic.
David Cameron initially sought to compete with Labour on entering office by pledging increased expenditure on education and the NHS – but then oversaw brutal austerity cuts that pared back public services to the bone.
And on Thursday, Liz Truss, who has spent the summer promulgating the economic benefits of the small state, will announce one of the biggest government handouts in generations, topped only by the Covid response of up to £400bn, in her first week in office.
The new prime minister is regularly described as the most ideological in a generation, making no secret of her desire to emulate Margaret Thatcher through fiscal discipline, attacks on the unions, culture wars and a variety of outfits featuring fur hats and pussy-bow blouses.
She rejected calls from all wings of her deeply divided party to appoint a unity cabinet, surrounding herself with loyalists like Kwasi Kwarteng, Thérèse Coffey and James Cleverly and bringing on board rightwingers including Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg. While her team protest that she has handed out roles to some of her original leadership rivals, she conducted a brutal clear-out of every senior Rishi Sunak backer. Just a peppering of more minor roles were offered to his allies.
Her first international calls were to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who she reassured that Britain would remain a staunch ally and
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