The importance of appearances: How shy Liz Truss met her downfall

There has been a certain amount of frustration on newspaper picture desks over the last few weeks. Normally a serving prime minister would be one of the easiest people to find varying pictures of to illustrate a website. But recently Liz Truss seems to have done everything she could to avoid the cameras – and our scrutiny.

Each morning, the news desk would ask: “Are there any new pictures of Truss?” The truth is, it seemed that there were few days when the prime minister left her self-inflicted crisis bunker in No 10.

Despite a clamouring from the press to get clarification on her ex-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget, Truss had been pictured relatively few times this month. These included a press shoot with the England women’s football team, a video call with the G7 leaders and her weekly audience with the King. Hardly the right settings to face review of her policies; although King Charles reflected the public mood with his “dear, oh dear”.

It was most noticeable during that humiliating and ill-thought-out seven-minute press conference on Friday evening last week following Kwarteng’s sacking. It appeared that Truss was attempting to break a record for the shortest press conference and hoping to avoid difficult questions by only speaking to three journalists. Unfortunately, she seemed to leave a big question in the room – namely her fitness for office.

After the weekend there came the Labour Party’s urgent question in parliament when Truss decided to let the formidably robust Penny Mordaunt deflect attacks instead of her. The reason for her non-attendance from the House of Commons has not been sufficiently explained, but the absence of clarification invites the suspicion of poor leadership.

At one point the prime minister did join MPs, only to appear sitting sullen-faced behind her newly appointed chancellor Jeremy Hunt as he tore up each policy she announced just weeks before. It goes without saying that the optics of this were damaging for her.

Truss did then find herself on camera apologising to the British people for the disruption caused by her policies in a short BBC interview broadcast later that evening, but by then the damage had been done.

On Tuesday, Truss was only pictured leaving No 10 to scurry into a government car following a cabinet meeting. By Wednesday and Prime Minister’s Questions the writing was on the wall.

We in the media know that optics can make or break a politician. You can point to the examples of Ed Miliband clumsily eating a bacon sandwich or, more recently, the awfulness of the many party pictures that came from Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s tenure in lockdown.

With Truss, though, it was her unwillingness to get in front of the media and engage with the public during a challenging time that became her downfall. With the absence of any other explanation, the public could only ever interpret the character of her leadership themselves – and they judged it weak. Before her election, many were aware of her awkward public appearances, with some of her supporters admitting she was not the best communicator. Precisely the wrong qualifications for a prime minister.

Yours,

Alex Hickson

Deputy picture editor