Tory leadership front-runner Liz Truss has been accused of “running scared of the media and proper public scrutiny” after pulling out of a one-on-one BBC interview at the last minute.
The foreign secretary had been scheduled to be grilled by veteran political journalist Nick Robinson on BBC One this evening. But while her leadership race rival Rishi Sunak faced Robinson earlier this month in the first of the two scheduled Our Next Prime Minister interviews, “Truss’s team say she can no longer spare the time”, according to a BBC spokesperson.
Her withdrawal means she is likely to become PM “without undergoing a single set-piece broadcast quizzing”, said The Guardian’s political correspondent Peter Walker.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
Is Truss dodging scrutiny?
Accusing Truss of “running scared”, Liberal Democrats chief whip Wendy Chamberlain asked: “How can she lead our country through an economic crisis when she can’t even cope with a basic media interview?”
“She wants to follow in Margaret Thatcher’s footsteps but she’s fallen at the first hurdle,” Chamberlain told The Guardian. “She’s fighting for the highest office by answering the lowest number of difficult questions.”
Labour also claimed that Truss was avoiding having to outline how she intends to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. The party’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Pat McFadden, said that rather than coming up with a coherent agenda, she was simply “flip-flopping” and “floating one policy idea after another”.
Condemning Truss for cancelling her BBC grilling, Conor McGinn, Labour’s shadow minister without portfolio, said: “People will rightly conclude that she doesn’t want to answer questions about her plans for the country because she simply hasn’t got any serious answers to the big challenges facing our country.”
The allegation was echoed by supporters of would-be Tory leader Sunak. A source in the former chancellor’s campaign team “said their tally showed Truss had done just two broadcast interviews of any form during the campaign, whereas Sunak had undertaken nine”, The Guardian’s Walker reported.
The source argued that cancelling the BBC interview suggested she either “doesn’t have a plan at all, or the plan she has falls far short of the challenges we face this winter”.
Would-be interviewer Robinson also expressed disappointment over her withdrawal, tweeting: “Was pleased to secure an in-depth interview with Liz Truss on BBC1. I am disappointed & frustrated it’s been cancelled.”
Was withdrawing the right move?
Truss’s “tactic of avoiding scrutiny” is “more than a little reminiscent of Boris Johnson’s tactics in 2019,” said The Times’ Red Box editor Patrick Maguire.
In the run-up to the December 2019 general election, Johnson declined a BBC interview with Andrew Neil, in contrast to then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Despite widespread criticism of Truss’s decision to do likewise, her team “seems unconcerned” by the fallout, said Annabelle Dickson in Politico’s London Playbook. According to Dickson, Team Truss viewed the interview as “a distraction from their task of winning as many votes as possible in the final days of the contest, and preparing for government”.
An unnamed minister reportedly told the news site that beyond reports of a few “caustic remarks” from parliamentary opponents on party WhatsApp groups, there was little dissent among most Tories.
Painting a similar picture, a “pro-Truss activist” said: “We have all had our fill of this process. How much more do we need to hear the same stuff again, and again?”
Certainly, the leadership contest has long seemed Truss’s to lose. Polling exert John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, told The Guardian’s deputy political editor Rowena Mason earlier this month that Truss was almost sure to win unless she “fouls up in some spectacular fashion” in the final stages of the race.
“We’re crossing our fingers for a game-changing gaffe,” a Sunak-supporting Conservative MP said.
The final official hustings of the leadership race are due to be held in London tomorrow, with the result due on 5 September.
