Inside Politics: Priorities

Hello there, I’m Matt Mathers and welcome to The Independent’s Inside Politics newsletter.

England’s Lionesses thumped Luxembourg 10-0 last night as scoring machine Erling Haaland continued his remarkable start to the season for Man City. Has Liz Truss scored an early own goal with her cabinet appointments? The new prime minister has purged Rishi Sunak allies and given top jobs to loyalists. And it looks like she has already made at last one enemy on the back benches…

Truss holds her first cabinet meeting right about now and faces Keir Starmer at PMQs at noon.

The Commons sits from 11.30am with Northern Ireland questions. After PMQs comes any urgent questions or statements. The main business will be the second reading of the Financial Services and Markets Bill.

Much has been said about how Truss needs to unite her party after a bitter leadership contest. There were, however, no immediate signs of that taking place as she put her cabinet together. No 10 claims the fact that five leadership contenders have been appointed shows the PM is reaching out. But those who supported Rishi Sunak in the leadership contest have been banished to the back benches, as Truss gives top jobs to her closest allies and loyalists, leading to accusations of a cabinet of “cronies”. Truss might feel that, with the scale of the challenge ahead, she needs ministers who she can trust – people who will go out to bat for the government on difficult media rounds to defend what has been a widely discredited economic agenda.

Her critics, however, fear that such appointments will result in her going unchallenged, unable to spot controversy and therefore at risk of falling into some of the traps that snared her predecessor. In her Downing Street address, Truss spoke of the “modern” Britain she wants to see and while cabinet jobs are going to allies, her appointments are diverse, with none of the big four “great offices of state” going to white men for the first time. The Labour Party – take note. Here’s a list of some of the comings and goings.

We are beginning to get a feel for what the new government is going to look like. But what do we know about what it wants to achieve? Domestically, Truss said she has three early priorities: growing the economy (tax cuts), alleviating the cost of living crisis (freezing the energy price cap) and lastly, sorting out NHS waiting lists (no firm detail on this as yet).

The priorities came in the order in which they are written above – despite a general consensus that the third is most important. Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, her chancellor, and their allies clearly believe that one of the main solutions to rising bills is to allow people to keep more of their own money, something which Rishi Sunak, her defeated rival – along with most economists – believe will further fuel inflation. Of course, economics is not pure science, and the former chancellor might be proved wrong. But only time will give us the answer.

Opposition parties complained that there was no detail on the price cap, but if they have been reading the news over the past few days, they will have a fair idea of what is about to come. Truss’s speech (515 words) was certainly brief, coming in about a third shorter than her predecessor’s in July 2019 (1,679). By her own admission, the former foreign secretary is not the best public speaker, and her team is obviously keeping her on a short leash. But as PM – with visits here, there and everywhere – there will be occasions when she simply won’t have the time to practise her lines to death, as she has been doing over the past two months. You get the feeling gaffes will come soon, and her media advisers, who have mostly done a good job so far, have their work cut out.

In setting out her priorities, Truss also drew the battle lines for the next general election, which she has hinted will come in 2024. A number of recent polls showed Labour with leads in all three of the economy, the cost of living crisis and the NHS. If that remains the case in 2024 then it is difficult to see how she can extend her stay in Downing Street. Truss again used the beginning of her speech to praise the Big Dog Boris Johnson, saying history will judge him as “hugely consequential”. If she fails to “deliver, deliver, deliver” as promised in her leadership victory speech, then she too could end up a two-year PM but one of the least consequential in recent times.

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As Inside Politics noted on Monday, Truss faces one of the most difficult in-trays of any prime minister in the post-war era.

In addition to the domestic issues, she also faces significant challenges abroad, with Russia’s war in Ukraine and the growing threat posed by China as tensions build over Taiwan.

The new PM has said that security at home depends on security abroad. But what else can we expect from her on foreign policy?

Some of Truss’s forays into foreign affairs and international trade have led to mirth and been held up as examples of her risible lack of international knowledge and gravitas on geopolitics, writes Kim Sengupta, who takes a look a closer look at what we can expect from Truss abroad.

Truss in her first speech as PM.

“We will transform Britain into an aspiration nation…with high-paying jobs, safe streets and where everyone everywhere has the opportunities they deserve.”

ITV News editor Paul Brand on Truss’s reshuffle.

“Liz Truss appears to have made her first enemy on the backbenches. This is Johnny Mercer’s wife…”

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