Author:Anthony Seldon
9 months after her role as Prime Minister came to abrupt end, Truss confronts Seldon at a Spectator summer party. “Why are you writing a book on me?” she askes forcefully. “I’m writing my own book, you know”. Truss promptly stomps off before a nonplussed Seldon could say anything beyond “I’m glad”.
Seldon has documented each PM’s reign in meticulous detail since Blair in 2004. Given that the average time PM’s have spent in office is 4 years 9 months the Truss premiership presented Seldon a challenge. Would there be a book? Maybe just a blog post or pamphlet? Undeterred by either Truss’s hostility or a tenure that failed to reach a half century of days he undertook 120 interviews, reviewed a variety of official documents, some which he admits were sourced “opaquely”. He claims 85% of the book came from in person interviews. Never one to be accused of brevity, the book is in fact it’s one of his most accessible works to date. Despite the recency of her time at No.10, there were a whole host of things I’d not read before, or forgotten.
Normally his books are chronological but with only a month and a half to work with Seldon structures his review of her time as PM around the qualities he thinks a PM needs to be successful (as if we didn’t know the ending…..). Seldon’s forensic analysis of her time at No.10 sets out a mosaic of reasons why she crashed and burned so quickly. Foremost among these was that unlike Johnson, May or Cameron she was driven by an all-encompassing ideology – that the UK could only return to economic success via disruption and a single minded focus on growth. This unwavering vision coupled buckets of ambition and self-belief unfortunately overlooked the need for a plan that was realistic and practical and consequently created one of the biggest economic disasters to ever be inflicted on the UK.
Seldon argues Truss was an autodidact but crucially without Thatcher’s curiosity or Cameron’s incisiveness; she venerated the former for her (Thatcher’s) determination and distained the latter for what she felt was his posh boy misogyny. She loved to set maths tests at interviews, placing great store in raw intellect, blind to understanding that without the ability to use it practically it had little value. Truss personally had no interests beyond politics. After an unexceptional career as an accountant with Shell and then Cable & Wireless, she then became a right leaning think tank (Reform) director.
She entered Westminster at the same time as Kwasi Kwarteng and they quicky became soulmates. Truss admired of his prodigious intellect (double first from Cambridge and a PhD in economic history) crucially coupled with his willingness to defer to her. Very early on she felt the only way to succeed would be to be both PM and Chancellor and she judged he would allow her.
His brief analysis of her early days as an MP provides some insight to what was to follow. There were early conflicts with Michael Gove and his then adviser Dominic Cummings when she was appointed by Cameron as secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs. Cummings described her as “a human hand grenade” who “caused chaos instead of getting things done”.
Seldon maintains Truss was never popular with other Tory MPs, a self-appointed “Brexit Queen” whose support for Remain was abandoned without a second thought once she saw that only unequivocal support for Brexit would give her access to ministerial office. May made her the first female lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice, but Truss was demoted to Treasury chief secretary as May felt Truss was inadequate defending the judiciary after Brexit and was a frequent source of leaks.
The demotion had a significant impact on her subsequent ascension to PM. Truss, already furious and humiliated by the demotion, became even more jaundiced when her ideas weren’t immediately and unquestioningly adopted by Chancellor Hammond or head of the Treasury Tom Scholar. She determined they were “anti-growth” and part of a loose cabal called “the Blob”, which encompassed the Treasury, the Civil Service, the Bank of England, ex public school boys or anyone else that didn’t accept her views. Seldon argues that Truss had a “populist and even reckless streak in her that actively relished the bravado and risk; and rage against the establishment, bordering on paranoia. The ‘blob’ was out to stop her and all she was trying to do; it was almost exclusively peopled by public school men who had patronized her and belittled her, and she was going to slay it”. This fundamentally shaped her tenure as PM, and became it’s most fundamental flaw.
The election campaign for PM is described in detail describing the alliances and double crossing that seem to be central to the process getting MPs votes. As a former Chancellor, Truss’s dislike for Sunak was already deeply embedded and she bought readily into the rhetoric of “Sunak the traitor”. This ensured support from the likes of the de-throned World King himself and his toadies such as Dorries and Rees-Mogg, the latter thinking he would be her Chancellor – something which she didn’t disabuse him of until after she was elected. Truss felt it was wrong to offer ministerial posts in return for votes, but then did exactly that with Braverman by offering her Home Secretary, something she almost immediately regretted. Ultimately victorious, her acceptance speech was notable only for it’s petulant refusal to once acknowledge Sunak, but references Johnson several times.
Truss believed her election gave her a mandate to kick start the UK economy and drive single mindedly for growth. This would be the platform on which she would then win the general election which was just 2 years away. Seldon points out 142k of the 172k Tory membership chose Truss – about 0.3% of the population, and a cohort that was thought be 97% white, around half over age 60 and more than half in the south of England. As mandates go, it couldn’t have been narrower, or more out of touch not just with the wider electorate but her fellow Tory MPs as well. Nonetheless Truss decreed this was the mandate “the UK” had given her, seemingly impervious to how disconnected she was.
As leader, she quickly developed a reputation for inflexibility, an unwillingness to listen to any advice that was at odds with her views and opinions, and with an interpersonal style that was frequently abrupt and demeaning and almost universally without appreciation or humility. Ironically one of the few people she trusted whilst PM was Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who somehow managed not to be dismissed as a member of “the blob”.
In sharp contrast, her immediate priority on becoming PM was to sack Tom Scholar, permanent secretary to the Treasury, and the second most senior civil servant after Case. It was an extraordinary act without precedent with far reaching consequences. Despite Seldon being told by a number of sources that Truss had routinely criticized him long before she became PM, she maintains to this day that his dismissal was down to Kwasi Kwarteng, conflating who she delegated to actually do the deed with whose idea it was. It took Kwarteng 20 minutes to sack Scholar, on the day that Truss was made PM. Andrew Bailey as the Governor of the Bank of England was only spared the same treatment when Truss and Kwarteng concluded removing both so quickly would be too much. Instead Truss briefed relentlessly against the Bank of England (and still does) whilst leaving the Treasury with no head as she planned to implement the most radical budget of modern time. What could possibly go wrong?
As we now know, it turns out pretty much everything. Kwarteng now accepts that they should have gone slower and provided more insight. He acknowledges that he had qualms about the mini budget but failed to stand up to Truss. For her part Truss remains unrepentant and subscribes to all the conspiracy theories beloved by the hard right to excuse the chasm between ideology and real life.
Seldon does a good job of breaking down the time line of economic melt down Truss and Kwarteng unleashed and how each time the possibility of stability and recovery hoved into view, either Truss or Kwarteng simply dug themselves in deeper and rejuvenated the crisis.
A package of massive tax cuts coupled with a massive outlay on an energy price guarantee immediately won over the majority of Tory MPs and the Tory press, but important non partisan sources immediately sounded alarm bells. Paul Johnson at the Institute for Financial Studies spoke of there being no “semblance of an effort to make public finances add up” while the FT was even more direct – “Kamikaze – or kami-Kwasi” was the FT view. The Economist took the budget apart line by line.
No one at the Treasury could offer much reassurance because Truss had refused to brief the vast majority of them. The Office for Budget Responsibility (a body set up by George Osborne), had also been frozen out due to being seen as another part of the anti growth “Blob”. Not entirely surprisingly global markets concluded the budget lacked almost any form of responsibility and Kwarteng’s backside had barely reconnected with the Commons benches after concluding his budget statement before the pound started to plummet to a 40 year low, while the FTSE decided this was worse than Covid and share prices tanked.
From there it got even worse. Seldon’s thesis is that by cutting off the Treasury and the OFB, whilst having only ideology fall back on rather than any actual economic knowledge or experience, they completely lacked any resources to support what they ahd put into motion.
A sequence of humiliating climb downs then followed with Truss blaming anyone but herself. She maintained that Scholar had set up the International Monetary Fund’s damming assessment (he was actually away on a walking holiday) or Sunak loyalists, or the Bank of England. She gave 24 interviews to local TV and radio stations thinking it would get her message out more directly, only to be gob smacked when one after another they went for the throat, questioning her competence and absence from the Commons (Mordaunt stood in having to deny Truss was hiding under a desk) rather than the deference she expected.
The remaining collapse is quite illuminating to see laid out, a string of doom laden dominoes that starts with the reversal of the 45p tax rate abolition, the loss of Tory MPs goodwill culminating in Kwarteng being summoned back from Washington and given his one and only motorcade from Heathrow so that Truss can sack him. Replacement Jeremy Hunt is given a free hand and concludes the whole budget has to be scrapped, thereby terminating Truss’s tenure in all but actual deed.
Seldon writes mostly with a directness and eloquence that makes the whole sorry saga as close to a page turner as a subject like this ever gets to be. He’s prone to detours into political history to create context for some of the events that unfold which do dampen the pace, but in truth these can be skipped. He’s unable to cite most of his sources directly as the majority are still working in government circles, and admits that he was given access to correspondence and even WhatsApp messages on a no names basis. This naturally gives those still in the Truss camp opportunities to discredit Seldon’s narrative, but his factual approach instills a confidence in his work that Truss never once managed in her 49 days as PM.
Length of Read:Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
A reckoning for hubris
One thing you’ve learned
Truss’s budget created a fiscal black hole estimated to be £72bn. That compares with the £30bn George Osborne claimed in the name of austerity over 5 years.
Fascinating and excellent account. I was never likely to read a book on the Lettuce and this will do just fine.
I understand she has decamped to he States where her conspiratorial view of the world will find a more receptive audience.
That is such a wonderful, comprehensive review, I feel I don’t need to read the book. Thank you.
Thanks for that insightful review. It’s frightening to think that somebody so out of touch could ascend to the top job, even if only briefly. The very funny impersonation of Truss on Radio 4’s Dead Ringers, as a jolly-hockey-sticks type obsessed with herself, now sounds quite accurate.
It’s a sign of the times that despite everything, she is seemingly still able to go on the speaking circuit to blame others rather than accepting that maybe, just maybe, she made terrible mistakes.
Once upon a time, even a whiff of scandal would force politicians out and they would go off and do good works or put it all behind them. Now, everything that happened to Truss, Johnson, etc., is somebody else’s fault and/or a conspiracy, and they can turn it all into a money-spinning opportunity with a book defending their actions.
She is of course quite mad. The other day she was claiming at the Conservative Party conference that she would have led her party to a better result than Sunak in the recent General Election, despite not even holding on to her own seat. I strongly suspect she thinks that it’s everyone else’s fault for not understanding her properly.
Indeed.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/30/liz-truss-tories-would-have-done-better-in-uk-election-if-i-had-stayed-pm
Excellent review I too won’t read the book though as I’d probably keep throwing it across the room reading about this woman’s stupidity.
Is it madness or hubris?
I won’t be reading the book either. I will however be eating some lettuce later this week.
Her “reasoning” that she would have led the Tories to a better result (and also kept her seat) was that when she was PM the Reform Party was only polling at 3% while at the election they polled 18% and thus let Labour in.
It’s a perfect example of her “reasoning”, as it totally ignores the impact that Farage deciding to stand had on the Remain vote.
@Gatz
Well her losing every last one of her awful party’s seats would
certainly have been better for the people of the UK
Am I right in hoping that this sells much more than her own book, this side of the pond at least?
I recall reading that in the UK very few political memoirs/autobiogs sell in really big numbers, and that signing up an ex-PM for a book deal is occasionally seen as a boost to the publisher’s prestige rather than a money-making bonanza.
Either way, I won’t be snapping up Truss’ masterwork even if it appears in a bargain bin.
I believe that Rory Stewart’s political memoir/autobiog “Politics on the Edge” has sold pretty well.
His Radio 4 docs are generally excellent, too. He’s both clever and wise, so totally unsuited to modern-day politics.
Just picked that up in Waterstones last weekend, along with James O’Brien’s ‘How They Broke Britain’. A quick skim tells me that they both provide accounts of the same period’s lamentable trail of Westminster stupidities, but through very different lenses. If that turns out to be the case upon proper reading, it will serve well as an indication that all is not – quite – lost in the conservative camp, and that lessons may be learned for us all, whichever side of the house we prefer.
Don’t think Rory would go anywhere near the current Tory Party. Lib Dem perhaps although, if the figures are to be believed, he and Campbell are earning shedloads and shedloads from their (excellent) podcast so why bother?
I think Rory has unfulfilled ambition in a way that Campbell doesn’t. Neither will ever be short of money, but only one has “been in the room” when it mattered.
I concur entirely. In fact, even if he were still a paid-up Tory, I’d have wanted to read his book, as I’ve always thought he had a lot to say that was worth hearing.
He has said on the pod that he would like to chair a cross party commission on social care. Great candidate IMHO.
It’s an excellent read. Even if he is a Tory.
Though not a follower of the party line. I recall this mentioned in the book.
From the Herald review.
Well, he was a Tory. Rory Stewart left the Conservative Party in late 2019.
Yes, I’ve read that too. Many autobiographies – including sports stars – are written to secure serialisation payments (Boris Johnson’s is currently being covered in the Mail). Ashley Cole’s My Defence (ooh, clever!) only sold 4,000 copies, but the Times picked up the best bits…probably about three sentences, then.
Excellent review, F8. I won’t buy the book, on account of my blood pressure…
@fortuneight can expect an injunction from the publishers – “Who needs to read the book now?”
In my defense m’lud, there is a very lot I left out – not least the death of the Queen which happened within, and impacted the 49 days. All I’ve done is provide a trailer.
I’ve changed my mind. I’m buying to help this book outsell hers.
I doubt it’ll need your help to outsell hers.
Brilliant precis of a book I’d certainly never read because it would make me very angry indeed. It still beggars belief that a Prime Minister could be chosen not through an election, but by the Tory membership – older, richer Little Englanders – who overwhelmingly chose a white woman who was clearly deluded over a brown man who was at least competent. In one of the debates Sunak precisely predicted what would happen if Truss/Kwarteng got their way, but by that point no one, not even Conservative MPs, could stop it happening.
Off on a tangent, I wonder if the current crop of late 50s/early 60s UK (alright, English) citizens will become more right wing as they get older, in the way that my father’s generation did. For the record, my dad is a moderately racist, xenophobic Little Englander. If anything, despite the shortcomings of Labour in recent years, I’ve become more left wing, as have quite a few people I know. Maybe it’s just the circles I move in but I find it hard to believe that the people that elected Truss will be replicated once they die off.
I think in the UK (all right, England) the generational divide moment was provided by Brexit. Very broadly, the oldies tended to vote Leave and the younger ones voted Remain. The view from non-Brits seems to be that the Brexit vote was an assertion of an inflated global status and a lack of understanding that the British Empire no longer exists. Gen X and beyond haven’t really known Empire as such so we might find that we sort ourselves out naturally.
Not necessarily just by age other factors need to be taken into account.
The problem was not enough young people could be bothered to get off their arses and vote
Too busy racking up the Deliveroo hours to pay off their loans.
Education as big a factor actually.
I clearly remember having a catch up lunch with several previous workmates back in 2016 or so. We had all worked together in an IT dept all doing very similar jobs. The discussion turned, inevitably, to Brexit – I mentally did a calculation and realised that everyone who had been in further education was a remainer, and everyone else had voted Brexit. It was a small sample to be sure, but typical I think.
I agree. You only had to hear the reasons people voted leave to figure it out.
Brexit was about a lot of things, but one of them was certainly people and communities who had been left behind in the transition to a knowledge economy, people who’d been politically out of sight, out of mind for years, turning out and making their presence felt.
It’s the same reason the criticism of “experts” resonated, and people spoke with contempt about elites while still loving the royals. It wasn’t a social elite, it was an intellectual elite.
Take a look at the sort of people who were rioting a few weeks ago. Plenty of under-50s there, right down to 12 and 13 YOs.
A lot of them will have received their training in racism from previous/older family generations, but it would be foolish to assume they aren’t passing their views on to their children too.
There’s a tipping point where those of us who have strived all our lives to gather a little comfort around us stop worrying about the rich stealing everything from us, and start worrying about the poor stealing everything from us. We do our best to resist, but it comes to us all.
I take your point, even if tongue in cheek, but at the moment, I’m still more concerned about the mega rich being mega rich, without letting go of any of their wealth. At least the Victorian industrialists made a show of building schools and libraries, even if they were still obscenely wealthy. When I left school, the established corporations still operated sports and social clubs and our factory had a visiting nurse. All gone now in the all consuming quest for profit.
It was only a minority of the Victorian industrialists that were setting up libraries and building schools etc. Most were just interested in accumulating wealth and some of the ones that did charitable things were very keen on everyone knowing who it was doing the giving.
“some of the ones that did charitable things were very keen on everyone knowing who it was doing the giving”
Why would the recipients of the charitable giving care about the donor’s anonymity or otherwise? As long as they got access to a library/school, etc, the donor could boast all they wanted – why would the urchins give a monkey’s funky?
I don’t suppose that they did. Getting what you need as a result of someone’s vanity is better than not getting it at all.
You mean the backlash Shell got when sponsoring the Science Museum?
When I was at Warwick University in the seventies, there was an anonymous donor, simply referred to as the Benefactor, who donated millions for buildings, and support for students. It was their choice to be anonymous. It came out after she died that it was the sister of the man who built his fortune in America on Smirnoff vodka. He was originally from nearby Kenilworth and his sister still lived there, and was a key figure in setting up the family’s charitable trust. The joke at the time was as students were the main source of the fortune, they were just recycling the money.
I read fairly recently that 52% (!) of ref. voters would now vote remain, but something like 75% of those who turned 18 since ref. day would vote remain.
I didn’t read on to see whether “it turned out to be a bad idea” or “not the Brexit I voted for”.
Assuming they could be arsed to vote.
My small sample (of two) would have voted in the ref. if they’d have been old enough. Although only 50% of them could be arsed to vote in the GE.
Postal voting is good, turnout doesn’t rely on dry weather.
Excellent forensic account of Anthony Seldon’s analysis, something one suspects he only managed to steel himself to undertake so that he would have a complete set of the recent Tory failures covered, and might one day put it out as an anniversary boxed set of British political tragegies.
Her appearance at the Tory conference the other day, as mentioned above by Gatz, suggests that Truss is still convinced her demise was everyone’s fault but her own and suffers from a total absence of self-awareness. Surely if the “blob” really did control everything, it would never have let her anywhere near the levers of power in the first place? One wonders what it will take to finally get this absurd creature to shut up and keep quiet.
Anyway, an excellent review, Fortuneight, which makes me want to read the book. However, I can’t bring myself to have something in the house with a picture of Truss on it. Some things are just too embarrassing.
You could always try her book with the updated cover, probably makes more sense than hers.
AI
AI can’t spell or was it Truss?
“One wonders what it will take to finally get this absurd creature to shut up and keep quiet”
I’d guess clozaril might work on the delusions
“…created one of the biggest economic disasters to ever be inflicted on the UK.”
Really? The brief Truss premiership created “one of the biggest economic disasters” since the 1707 Act of Union?
Somebody, somewhere is in dire need of a history lesson.
Not even Top 10?
“One of..” it says, so I suppose it depends on how many economic disasters they’re looking at.
Well, that’s the blob for you.
Alternatively, someone, somewhere is in dire need of lessons in both comprehension and economics.
Wot, all this but no mention of her actually KILLING THE QUEEN?!
Was it a killing or just dying from laughing at this?
Nurse! I’ve shit my pants. Get someone here to clean me up.
I have just pissed myself – that is funny
Two soups?
Arf!
Arf Arf
Not just barking mad but howling-at-the-moon mad.
Hopefully to help her return from oblivion she’ll be offered a place on I’m a ‘celebrity’
Is she thinking of The Wombles?
She said a lot on bonkers things at the conference – although Jenrick boasting his daughter’s middle name is “Thatcher” will take some beating – but it looks as if this isn’t true
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/no-liz-truss-didn-t-blame-underground-trans-mafia-for-her-failure-as-pm/ar-AA1rwS0w
It’s still somewhat damning that so many thought it was a thing she could have said.
In all seriousness, I hope she has friends around her looking out for her. Those are not the words of someone with a firm grounding in reality.
Edit: feeling mixture of both relief and disappointment that it isn’t a true quote.
She’s turning into David Icke
Hang on, we haven’t seen him for quite a while…. anyone seen them both in the same room at the same time? Thought not. Crikey.
But wasn’t David Icke originally a goalkeeper, which would suggest he at least had some talent in saving things. Not an attribute one would associate with mdm Truss.
@Chrisf
While he never made it into the first team, DI used to be Cov City’s youth team gk in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Actually saw him play in the home leg of the Youth Cup Final Vs Spurs at HIghfield Road in – IIRC – 1970
I was only 3 years old in 1970 so a little before my time !
Did you also see Stanley Matthews play?
Very nearly. Saw my first footie match in Aug 64 and he retired aged 50 in Feb 65. Unfortunately Cov where in D2 and Stoke were in D1 so never got the chance to see him play
She led a government of none of the talents.
A worthless, deluded blight on the face of humanity.
@Colin-H
First among Eeeeeekuals
As Blair put it, she never failed to meet my lowest expectations.
Stupendous review @fortuneight.
What a remarkable horror story!
Boris Johnson was supposed to be being interviewed by Laura Kusenburg about his new book on BBC at 7.30 tonight.
Silly Laura sent Bojo her briefing notes and they had to call the interview off.
Maybe Andrew Neil could step in…
Force of habit from LK one suspects. I’d love to see Johnson try his bluster and misdirection routine on Andrew Neil, so much so I would even voluntarily tune in to watch Johnson for once.
The only way I could’ve watch it is with the sound off and the subtitles on, if I never hear his voice again I’ll be happy.
Sound off, Hubert!
Andrew Neil got his chance in July 2019
Probably scared and scarred by the experience, Johnson refused another encounter in December that year.
It was the kuennesberg I would’ve watched with the sound off, alas there are no subs with the Neill, I’ll see if there’s a transcript.
Hit the little cog, select auto generated subtitles.
I did thank you @Twang and they made as much sense as the Midwich cuckoo being interviewed.
A useful tool unlike johnson.
Much like the mauling he took off Eddie Mair
That was one where Johnson looked really shifty. It was apparent from the look in his eyes he was looking from side to side, trying to find a form of words to lie his way out of every well-chosen challenge Mair placed his way, wishing there was an audience of braying sychophants to buoy him along and help him bully Mair into silence.
Maybe not so silly – now she has a plausible reason to cancel. And, given her well-documented Tory bias…
Maybe she was always going to send him the questions, but got found out?
Even if that’s true, he wouldn’t have read them
As was reported in a review of his autobiography, he regrets not bothering to read the details of Owen Patterson’s misdemeanours before leaping in to defend him.
I think that’s what a lot of people suspect.
I’m not generally prey to conspiracy theories – if LK wasn’t so blatantly biased toward to Tories in the run-up to the election, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me.
Liz is not amused, apparently.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/oct/04/blue-plaque-erected-at-walthamstow-tesco-to-commemorate-lettuce-that-outlasted-liz-truss
In other news, Boris Johnson wthinks we should have a referendum on abandoning the European Convention On Human Rights.
I think we should have a referendum on whether Boris should Shut The Fuck Up and just Fuck Off. And then when he’s finished Fucking Off he should be encouraged to Fuck Off some more.