Donald Trump once remarked, “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning and you’ll say, ‘please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore.’” The former US president sought and failed to reach this point; so too has the Conservative party.
Liz Truss’s tenure as prime minister will go down as the briefest ever, and one of the most catastrophic. In just over 40 days in office, she has brought havoc to the economy, trashed the Tories’ vital reputation for competence, put the Labour party 30 points ahead in the polls and all but lost the Tories the next general election.
Conservative MPs have been achingly slow to appreciate the scale of the damage. As soon as the “mini” Budget was rejected by markets, Truss should have been shuffled off. Instead, they concluded that the pain of yet another leadership contest was greater than the pain of keeping her. Too late, their error has been realised.
With the Tories facing some of their worst ever poll rating, avoiding electoral oblivion will not be easy. But the party has pulled through before: in May 2019, it came fifth in the bizarre and pointless European parliamentary elections (the UK had not quite Brexited) and extinction was predicted. The then prime minister Theresa May was heaved out, Boris Johnson replaced her and went on to win the biggest Tory majority in three decades.
How could this fix be made again? Unless Johnson decides to make a remarkable comeback, the most obvious replacement for Truss is Rishi Sunak, who 60 per cent of Tory party members say they would back in a rerun of the final two. The former chancellor has the track record to reassure markets and the nous to see through very difficult spending and tax decisions to fill the fiscal hole.
Sunak will face the same fundamental challenge as Truss, though: the Conservative parliamentary party is ungovernable. The squalid scenes of whips apparently coercing MPs during Wednesday night’s vote on fracking confirms a lack of cohesion. Physical intimidation is a pitiful tactic.
His best hope would be to strive for a “government of all the talents” (aka a Goat), bringing together senior figures from all wings of the Tory party in the hope, possibly vain, of stability. Promoting Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, would bring along substantial number of supportive MPs. Keeping Jeremy Hunt as chancellor would reassure markets.
A Tory Goat, however, would need a strong whiff of Brexit. Sunak and Mordaunt may have supported leaving the EU, but their personas are too like those of mainstream Remainers. Truss’s replacement must satisfy the substantial Leave wing of the party by bringing in a figure like former defence secretary Liam Fox or former welfare secretary Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
In terms of policy, this government would be able to do little. With only 40 MPs required to overturn the Conservative majority, reverting to the least controversial elements of the 2019 manifesto is the best hope — along with a much-needed period of calm.
To give this Goat any hope of survival, it would require Johnson’s tacit support assuming he does not run himself — a hint that although he may not approve entirely of who is in charge, it is better than falling into a snap election with losses so extreme as to dwarf Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide win. Johnson may still harbour deep anger towards Sunak over the end of his time in office, but he is still a party man.
The alternative to a Tory Goat is perpetual civil war. The next leader will face enormous pressure to hold an election; the best they can do is to stave off until next year when the country has stabilised. If the Tory party has any belief left in winning again — not in the ironic Trumpian sense — it has to hope recent weeks can be forgotten as a bad dream. Unity has been in short supply of late. This is their last hope of avoiding annihilation.