What does return of Liz Truss mean for the Tory party?

Liz Truss’s remarkable reintroduction into political life has caused yet more internecine strife for the Tory party as MPs continue to grapple with the debate over tax cuts.

“I was brought down by the left-wing economic establishment” was The Sunday Telegraph’s headline over a 4,000-word essay marking Truss’s political comeback.

In the piece, Truss “took aim at Treasury officials, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK media, US President Joe Biden, Tory MPs and the International Monetary Fund for the disaster that unfolded after her mini-budget four months ago,” said Politico’s London Playbook.

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“I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support,” Truss wrote.

According to The Times, Truss “implicitly criticised” her successor Rishi Sunak as he marked 100 days in office. She said that as chancellor Sunak increased corporation tax from 19% to 25%, a move that was “counterproductive” and had damaged investment in the UK and “people’s wages”.

What did the papers say?

While aspects of her argument for growth “may have merit as the UK stares down the barrel of a recession and have struck a chord with some sensible senior Tory MPs”, said the i news site’s Arj Singh, “the nature and timing of her intervention means the woman once dubbed the ‘human hand grenade’ is once again causing damage to the Government and her party”.

The former PM has “reopened bitter Tory divisions over tax cuts”, said the Daily Mail, with one former minister telling the paper that it’s “an incredibly delusional essay, and most people in the party will probably want to forget her very short period in office”.

The editor of Conservative Home Paul Goodman expressed his surprise that “rather than concede, move on, and focus on the future, she denies, digs in and reimagines the past”.

And economic historian Charles Read said Truss’s claim that her government was not warned of the risks of the mini-budget was “highly misleading”. In a series of Twitter posts he explained the personal warnings he had made concluding that the Truss government “did not heed this warning, did not take care to avoid financial instability, and faced the political consequences”.

But Jake Berry, chair of the Conservative Party in her administration, said Truss had offered the right “diagnosis of the disease that is facing the country”. He told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “I think her point of ‘we need to lower taxes, we need to create a growing economy’, that’s what people want.”

It appears, though, that allies from her time in Downing Street are not lining up to support a Truss return. Although hers “are the actions of someone keen to re-enter the political fray”, said The Guardian’s deputy political editor Jess Elgot, “it very much has the feel of a one-woman comeback” as “there are very few [Tory MPs] who would risk the possibility of Truss blowing up the party again”.

What next?

Truss is reportedly poised to support upcoming interventions on lowering taxes from the Conservative Growth Group, which has 50 Tory MPs on board. But David Davis told the Independent that Truss’s backers had no chance of ousting Sunak before the next election. “Anybody who thinks she can challenge before the next election is dealing in fantasy,” he said.

On the surface then, Truss’s claims “should not matter”, said The Times, given she “destroyed her political credibility” but “in the context of Conservative Party politics, the reality is far more complicated”. Truss’s intervention is “likely to embolden the growing number of Tory MPs inside and outside of the government who want tax cuts to come sooner rather than later”, the paper said.

The problem for Sunak “isn’t so much the messenger as the message itself”, agreed Sky News’s Ali Fortescue. As one backbencher told Fortescue: “No one thinks Liz Truss is returning as the Messiah but I do want a plan for growth.”

Another issue for the PM is that “whatever you think of Truss’s philosophy, she did at least have some democratic mandate via the party vote”, said The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley. “Sunak, who was airdropped in to replace her, has absolutely none at all,” he added.

Those party members who voted for Truss this summer “consistently supported spending cuts and tax cuts marching in step together”, said Conservative Home’s Goodman.

And the future may bring a Conservative leader “who offers both within a framework of reducing the demand for government”, he wrote. But the present offers “either Sunak’s policy or Trussism revisited – that’s to say, Tory MPs floating big tax cuts without big spending cuts to match, as though last September had never happened”, he added.

“Are memories really so short?”