Liz Truss ushered in as UK Prime Minister

As forecast, Miss Truss was elected leader of the Conservative Party on 5 September. However, she polled 57% which is a little below what was predicted. 18% of Conservative Party members did not vote. It is damning that so many party members did not consider either Truss or Rishi Sunak to be worth voting for.

In a decidedly lacklustre speech, Liz Truss did homage to 'my friend' Boris Johnson. Her applause lines merited very muted applause. If this is how badly she plays when she is on home turf, how is she going to appeal to people who are not natural Conservative voters?

On September 6 Prime Minister Boris Johnson will go to Balmoral. That is the Queen's private residence in Scotland where Her Majesty always spends August and September. There Johnson shall tender his resignation. His last act of prime ministerial advice will be that the Queen should send for Liz Truss as the next PM. Miss Truss shall then be summoned to Balmoral and invited to become PM. To signal her acceptance of this office, Truss shall kiss the Queen's hand. That is how it is always done: the incoming PM kisses the monarch's hand.

There is scintilla temporis when there is no PM. Think about it. Johnson resigns and then Truss is appointed. Usually, the incoming PM has to drive five minutes from Parliament to Buckingham Palace. On 6 September she has to fly from London to Aberdeen for an hour and then go on a two-hour drive.

This will be the first time in over a century that a PM has been appointed outside London. That is because the 96-year-old monarch is almost immobile and rumoured to be dying of bone cancer which is not untreatable.

The premiership is a poisoned chalice. Who would want to take over now with galloping inflation; surging energy prices; incipient strikes by teachers, nurses, doctors, barristers and railway workers; public services near breaking point; hundreds of illegal immigrants arriving every day; rising crime and the Tory Party 10% behind Labour in the opinion polls? The sky is full of chickens coming home to roost. Most people have seen their salaries compressed in real terms for 10 years.

Truss said she would announce her policy to keep energy costs down a week into her premiership. Why not tell us during her leadership campaign? Was her plan that unpopular?

At first, Liz said she would help people with the cost of energy with a tax cut and not a handout. A tax cut would make the richest 1,000 pounds better off a week and the poor a pound better off. How does that help the poor when heating bills go up 50 pounds a week in winter?

There is no joined-up thinking in Liz's ideology-addled brain. She has appealed to the blue rinse of the Conservative Party members. But her policies have little appeal to those who have not confirmed Conservatives. She lacks charisma, hinterland or even workable policies. She does not have the courage of her convictions either. Liz rapidly backs down when challenged.

Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt refused an offer of a post in Truss' cabinet. That seems like sour grapes from them. But perhaps they are sagacious. They shall avoid being tarred with the unpopularity of serving in what is widely tipped to be a dystopic government. The Truss Maladministration has some loony prescriptions for the UK's multiplicity of woes.

The Truss premiership will probably change relatively little. She is a Johnson loyalist but probably will not put him in the cabinet. Truss shall continue being a firm supporter of Ukrainian freedom. She intends to beef up the military. But how on earth can she afford it? She wants more weapons but troop numbers are falling. The dysfunctionality of the Johnson years is unlikely to abate.

Miss Truss would not condemn Boris for his lies. She has repeated his untruths. Truss does not spell 'trust'!

Truss is a poor self-publicist. As Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary she was responsible for negotiating trade deals with scores of countries post-Brexit. Are these more advantageous than what the UK had under the European Union? If so, she needs to be shouting this from the rooftops and she has not done it. Her parleys with the EU have not been cordial. She has insulted the French President at precisely the moment the United Kingdom needs to elicit greater cooperation from the French.

5 October 2023 is pencilled in as a time for an early election. But the indications are that 2023 will be annus horribilis. The notion that she could call an election then shows how detached from reality she is. How has her party made people better off in the last decade? They have not.

The suits in the City say that inflation will slow in 2023. But if it falls from 10% to 5% it is still bad.

It is probable that Truss will have to delay the election to the last possible moment: December 2024. Then she will probably lead her party to the richly deserved drubbing the like of which it has not faced since 1997. She Tories are 'trussed'.

Liz Truss is the first UK Prime Minister to be schooled in Canada. She is also the second one to have read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). Despite PPE being a politician's degree these PPEists do not become PMs but hold other posts.

There is something distant about Liz Truss. There is a curious vacuity to her. Somehow things are disconnected in her mind.

The author is a political analyst from the UK. He can be watched on YouTube George from Ireland