They say the first 100 days of tenure are critical – lord help Liz Truss

Most incoming prime ministers or presidents reckon that the first 100 days of their tenure will define their time in power. Liz Truss may not have that long.

The usual reasoning is that the public make their minds up quickly about a new leader. A series of major announcements can cement a positive impression which future mishaps and setbacks will only slowly erode. But a big flop – or a failure to do anything at all significant in the early weeks – can establish an image as a “dud” which will be difficult to shake off.

For Ms Truss, that crucial period for making a first impression has been hugely truncated. Not for her the luxury of picking and choosing the areas where she wants to make big interventions or launch reputation-building projects.

Instead, she entered Downing Street at a moment of national crisis and the energy price freeze she announced on her second full day in power may be the most significant decision of her premiership.

The scale of the intervention – estimated at anything from £100bn-£150bn – is comparable in scale to the era-defining emergency responses to the 2008 financial crash and the 2020 outbreak of the Covid pandemic.

How the public responds to the package of cost of living support could determine not only her immediate political fortunes but her long-term legacy in the history books.

There was already doubt over whether Ms Truss would benefit from the usual “honeymoon period” enjoyed by most new PMs.

The fact that she was elected not by the public but by a narrow majority of the UK’s 170,000 members of the Conservative Party and that she did not enjoy the declared support of a majority of her own MPs, meant that she missed out on the wave of enthusiasm which sustained former premiers like Tony Blair or Boris Johnson in their first days in office.

Some speculated that she may not even see out her first 100 days, with chatter in Westminster about a challenge to her position before Christmas if her cost of living response misfires.

And now the announcement of concerns over the Queen’s health, which came just moments after she unveiled her energy freeze, threatened to overshadow both the support package itself and anything else the PM may have planned for the coming weeks.

However matters play out, it looks likely that the first 100 days of the Truss era will contain as much political drama as many PMs’ entire careers.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor