Liz Truss was a conviction politician

There’s nothing immature about standing by your beliefs

Prime Minister's Office

As an erstwhile Brexit-voting academic, I’m used to being at odds with those around me. But in feeling troubled at the news of Liz Truss’s resignation yesterday, it seems I’m now in a minority of one. Truss had to go, of course. Her failings have been so well documented they hardly need repeating. Her lack of political acumen was perhaps most shocking: Truss utterly failed to read the mood of the Conservative party, the nation and the financial markets on every single one of her 44 days in office. But still, I have a pang of regret that she is on her way out.

Truss’s stilted performances failed to inspire confidence. So frequently did the word ‘wooden’ prefix Liz, it became difficult to distinguish political commentary from the Ikea catalogue. But everyone knew this; indeed, some even saw it as her strength. Rather than being criticised for her lack of charisma, Truss has, over the years, been feted and promoted for her peculiar brand of Thatcher imitation. This willingness to make a virtue out of her personal weaknesses, while revelling in the soft glow of nostalgia, tells us far more about the current state of the Conservative Party than it does about Liz Truss.

Truss is now the fall guy for a party that lacks talented leaders and new ideas. What’s more, she and Kwarteng have become scapegoats for economic problems that are much bigger and far more long-standing than last month’s ill-named mini-Budget. Sure, the Budget was an indefensible mess. But in the context of decades of infrastructure underfunding, a continual resort to quantitative easing, one of the most expensive Covid-responses in the developed world, global economic slowdown and war in Ukraine that has sent gas prices rocketing, so-called Trussonomics barely registers an impact. In sending Truss packing, we risk burying our heads in the sand about the full extent of the problems facing the British economy.