The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, looks set to be the UK’s new prime minister. Polling by YouGov on August 19 of those Conservative Party members voting to select the new party leader showed overwhelming support for Truss over her last remaining rival, former chancellor Rishi Sunak.
The YouGov poll took place with nearly all ballot papers received: 57% of party members had already cast their vote, with 38% still intending to. Sixty-eight percent of members who submitted ballot papers voted for Truss, compared to 32% for Sunak. Even with the narrower margin when including the voting intentions of those yet to vote, it looks like Truss will get 60% of the vote overall.
What is fascinating, however, is that both Truss and Sunak are nowhere near as popular with the party faithful as Boris Johnson. Indeed, many Conservatives have complained that Johnson is not being offered an opportunity to stand. If Johnson were included on the ballot against Truss and Sunak, YouGov says he would beat them both. In that scenario, 46% of voters say they would vote for Johnson, 24% for Truss and 23% for Sunak. And this is after partygate and wallpapergate.
This shows that Truss is seen as the Boris proxy, albeit nowhere as popular. While it is almost certain that she will be the UK’s next prime minister in just a few weeks, these percentages show she will struggle to hold sway over the powerful and influential Tory backbenchers. She will have to compute a careful calculus in selecting her cabinet, ensuring that political debts owed are satisfied and keeping troublemakers onside.
But shrewd cabinet and ministerial appointments may not be enough to allow her to govern effectively.
Most political analysts here think she will be forced to call an election, to solidify her base by showing she can keep the Conservatives in power.
This is where things will get particularly interesting, given the turbulent nature of UK politics in recent years. Since David Cameron called the ill-judged Brexit referendum in 2016, the country has had two elections and two prime ministers. Cameron was elected in 2015, and after that there were two new prime ministers in Theresa May and Johnson and two general elections in 2017 and 2019.
It’s all a bit much.
However, the internal machinations of the Tories could prove to be their downfall. Boris Johnson for all his flaws and poshness, had the common touch, and his sense of humour and charm made him extremely likable among the electorate. His legacies of “levelling-up”, Covid-19 vaccinations, pandemic spending, and support for Ukraine remain popular with most voters of all stripes.
Truss will find it extremely difficult to keep the Conservatives in power should she have no alternative but to call an election.
The UK is in the grip of frightening inflation and rising energy prices. Many households are in a severe cost of living crisis, stretched to the limit and sliding into poverty. With winter looming as energy companies make huge profits while increasing prices, voter dissatisfaction with the Tories is growing.
Worryingly, Truss hasn’t offered many practical solutions to the cost of living crisis beyond decreasing taxes. She has also had to make a few U-turns after stating she is categorically against so-called handouts. To make matters worse, she has been caught on the record in effect calling British workers lazy, doubling up on a notorious passage from a book she co-write with home secretary Priti Patel and business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in 2012, in which she called British workers “the worst idlers in the world”. These words may come back to haunt her when she seeks to solidify her position needing votes from the ordinary, little people.
• Dr Masie, a former senior editor of the Financial Mail, is chief strategist at IC Publications in London.
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