There can’t be too many British Prime Ministers who’ve come under so much pressure so soon after coming into office.
The British economy is in crisis. Even Liz Truss herself has been forced to admit that is at least partly down to the actions of the government she has led for just under a month.
Now she is going to have to explain herself to her own party at its annual conference amid reports some of her own MPs are considering voting against parts of her legislative agenda, specifically the decision announced late last month to cut the top rate of income tax.
Last week, in the midst of all the market turmoil, Truss emerged after an extended period of near-silence to give a series of interview on local radio stations. Her performance was widely criticised.
On Sunday, arriving at the conference venue in Birmingham, she has had to face up to the national press and appears to have slipped up again by suggesting the income tax decision was made by her Chancellor (finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng), rather than her. That has been read as an attempt to outsource blame.
Truss must survive the next couple of days but on Wednesday she will take to the stage on the final day of the event to make her speech: A set piece, to a supposedly loyal crowd. No tough questions from pesky journalists.
That will be her big moment and she will have to give the speech of her political life to bring people round.
There is no indication Truss will change course. Indeed, in her interview rounds on Sunday morning, she again committed to the unfunded multi-billion dollar tax cuts that sent shockwaves through financial markets. “But I do accept we should have laid the ground better” she admitted. The policy was not the problem, in other words. It is the comms that were off.
That sets the stage, perhaps, for a speech that seeks to level with her audience to some extent. Though more broadly, Truss and her senior ministers are likely to use the next few days to focus on plans that will prove popular, firstly, with the Conservative party base that voted for her in this summer’s leadership race to succeed the ousted Boris Johnson.
There has been talk, for instance, of scrapping a so-called “sugar tax” on unhealthy food products as part of a bigger plan to de-regulate the British economy.
And secondly, with the markets. So look out for any suggestion of the need to make cuts to public service cuts, in an effort to convince people that the government is serious about bringing down government debt in the medium-term.
It will be a very difficult balance though, because that word ‘austerity’ does not tend to go down too well with voters. And there’s an election due in 2024.
