Was that it? Eight-minute Liz Truss press
conference will not steady ship
Andrew
Sparrow
Prime minister took only four questions but showed
lack of contrition in lightning fast appearance that will not have secured
goodwill
Fri 14 Oct
2022 15.41 BST
Was that
it? By the time Liz Truss stood up for her press conference (although a
briefing where only four questions were allowed barely counts), we already knew
that she was about to abandon the key thrust of her mini-budget, and that her
chancellor had been sacked. The big question was whether Truss herself would be
able to survive. Her performance will have done little or nothing to persuade
her MPs, or anyone else, that she will – or even that she should.
Truss said
that the corporation tax rise planned by Rishi Sunak, that she campaigned to
abandon during the Tory leadership campaign, would go ahead anyway. She said
this was in response to the fact that her mini-budget “went further and faster
than markets were expecting”. (Until Friday she has implied that global
factors, not the mini-budget, were mainly to blame for the recent market
turmoil.)
But then
she tried to explain that she was being consistent with the mission she set out
during the leadership contest (boosting growth), even though it was obvious
that her strategy had gone up in flames. And – crucially – she failed to
explain why, if the chancellor had to go, she should not quit too.
In so far
as she did have an answer to this, it was that she was “absolutely determined
to see through what I have promised, to deliver: a higher-growth, more
prosperous United Kingdom, to see us through the storm we face”.
Her problem
is not just that this line does not explain why she should stay on in No 10,
but also that there are plenty of others who share her commitment to growth who
have more credibility as leaders. Her whole manner during the press conference
advertised a lack of confidence and authority.
She started
with a personal plea about how she knew what it was like growing up “somewhere
that isn’t feeling the benefits of growth”. This was a reference to the time
she spent in Paisley as a child, but she had a middle-class upbringing and
spent her teenage years living in one of the nicest parts of Leeds. Her implied
sob story sounded phoney.
Then she
took only four questions. Normally, politicians who feel the need to persuade
the press, or the public at large, are well advised to keep taking questions at
a press conference like this until they run out. Not only did Truss fail to do
that, she deliberately started with questions from the two papers most likely
to be favourable, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun. Only then did she take
questions from the BBC and ITV, who normally get priority at such events.
If Truss
was hoping for soft questions first, it did not work. But the hardest question
was probably the final one, from ITV’s Robert Peston. He asked if she would
apologise to her party. She wouldn’t.
The lack of
contrition matters because, if Truss is going to survive, she is going to need
to secure the goodwill of Tory MPs. With this sort of responsibility dodging
and blame avoidance, she won’t get it.
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