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Economic growth, energy supplies and the NHS. These were the three key priorities listed in Liz Truss’s somewhat concise inaugural speech on the steps of Downing Street.
They are good priorities, as they go – although MPs in
“red wall” seats will likely have picked up, as did the Yorkshire Post, that she has once again failed to make any mention of levelling up.
With just two years to go to persuade the millions of voters who took a chance on the Conservatives for the first time in 2019 that they made the right decision, this could end up being a dangerous oversight.
But back to what she did say. The big question hanging over that wish list is “How?” For example, she mentioned putting “spades in the ground” to help drive down energy bills. Yet Conservative MPs are allergic to onshore wind, and while Truss supports fracking in theory, the will to get wells dug is absent.
The levelling-up and regeneration bill, which covers planning, could be a vehicle for a transformative, centrally driven energy infrastructure programme. But backbench opposition would probably prove fatal.
Truss clearly has big ambitions. But she inherits a weak position, another leader’s mandate, and a divided party. Good luck to her.
Despite a Tory leadership contest that dragged on as the cost of living crisis mounted and a recession loomed, Truss’s first speech was lacking in detail. There was just one sentence about action on energy bills, due to soar by 80%, prolonging the agony for people desperately trying to plan for winter.
Content with a rigged economy that works only for the wealthiest – as her previous declaration that tax cuts benefiting the richest most were “fair” demonstrates – Truss doesn’t have the will to offer anything more than sticking plasters over the gaping wounds inflicted on this country by 12 years of Tory rule. While taking aim at the energy crisis, low growth and an NHS in tatters, she failed to identify the real culprit – her own party. It’s like calling the arsonist to put out the fire.
She should have offered to give people help that meets the scale of the immediate challenge – not only freezing energy bills, but lowering them to where they were before the sharp rises in April; raising benefits and the minimum wage above inflation; and committing to a proper pay rise for public sector workers.
