The 1% have spoken

Sunday National, 4th September 2022.

The 1% have spoken. On Monday, the 1922 Committee will announce that 160,000 Tory members have decided to inflict Liz Truss on the nation and the sheriff officers will finally pry Boris and Carrie Johnson loose from Downing Street, bag and baggage, after a summer of Prime Ministerial holidays, disaster headlines, social anxiety, and palpable public policy drift. Rishi Sunak will presumably explore the possibility of getting his US green card back from the consolation of his Kirby Sigston mansionette, as his teenage dreams of being Prime Minister turn to dust.

It seems fitting that one of Johnson’s last acts as Prime Minister is spaffing £130,000 of public money on legal advice designed to undermine public confidence in the parliamentary committee currently exploring whether he lied to House of Commons. This is a Prime Minister who has consistently criticised the intrusion of legal logic into the political domain, representing a Tory party which thinks that lawyers and judges should push off and stay out of parliamentary processes.

Except, you know, when their own interests are at stake, and then its wigs ahoy, and “send the invoice to No 10.” I think this is what they call “getting your retaliation in first,” and it is entirely in keeping with what we know of the outgoing Prime Minister’s character and attitude to public accountability. Only the fantastic corruption of his resignation honours list remains.

Thus far, there is no sign that the incoming administration has half a clue how it is going to deal with the economic chain reaction caused by global gas prices, low productivity, and the aftermaths of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, Liz Truss’s cunning plan consists of income tax cuts and ending green levies on industries generating high quantities of pollution and carbon emissions. The first won’t benefit low earners. The latter can only help speed the heat death of the universe.

She has previously dismissed the idea of direct support as unconservative “handouts,” while gesturing vaguely this week to delivering “immediate support to ensure people are not facing unaffordable fuel bills.” “I will be robust in my approach,” she told one of the final hustings in this interminable campaign.

Maybe this is strategic evasion. Maybe there is, as Boris Johnson claimed last month, “a pipeline of cash” just waiting to be turned on in September. Maybe the new occupant of Number 10 will open the sluice gates and allow their party to regain some political initiative, difficult as this is to reconcile with the parsimonious turn of Truss’s leadership platform.

This would, after all, make some kind of strategic sense. There’s no doubt the Conservatives are currently stuck in doldrum tides after months of introspection and internal conflict, but Truss stands to inherit a very substantial Commons majority from her predecessor, years out from the next general election. For all the talk of the newbie PM calling a snap election, this seems wildly improbable given the political frailty of the government’s current position and the many domestic troubles it faces.

Labour are currently leading the Tories by between 7% and 10% in the opinion polls. The leads are now sustained, consistent, and driven almost entirely by the Conservative Party’s determination to set itself on fire. If a new leader can put out the flames, there’s every chance they bounce back against Starmer’s low-energy impression of late-career Neil Kinnock.

Past experience suggests new Prime Ministers benefit from a bounce in public sympathy – though how high and for how long the distinctly shaky Liz Truss will benefit from this bounce is hard to say. According to YouGov, just 12% of people have positive expectations for the kind of Prime Minister the Foreign Secretary will become. 52% are already convinced she’ll turn in a “poor” or “terrible” performance. There’s every chance she crashes and burns. On energy, Truss finds herself on the wrong side of public opinion. Her aspirations and her policy commitments seem inimical to the moment. But never underestimate the motive force of surprise in politics. While the Tories are currently getting hammered for their evasions on the cost of living crisis, they have an opportunity to regain the initiative. The scale of the challenge remains deeply troubling, whatever your politics.

This week, the Resolution Foundation think-tank published a report, setting out the economic and social challenges awaiting the new government. “Challenges” is a euphemism here. Entitled “In at the deep end,” it catalogues the challenges facing the incoming Prime Minister and the stark consequences of UK government inactivity on the cost-of-living crisis. Time’s a’wasting. Winter, to coin a phrase, is coming and millions of people face real destitution.

Between 2021/22 and 2023/24, typical incomes in the UK are set to fall by 10% in real terms. On gas, they explain that the typical energy bill was around £1,500 in 2021/21. It is projected to leap to £3,750 during the next financial year. This alone represents a brutal economic shock for household finances. Its impact is compounded by inflationary pressures on our shopping baskets, and the disproportionate impact this will have on lower earners.

It is the easiest thing in the world for talking heads to take to the airwaves at the moment to say “we’re all feeling the pinch right now.” I suppose this is meant to convey a sense of social solidarity, of sympathy with folk who find themselves struggling – but it isn’t true. As usual, it’s the lowest paid who are going to be disproportionately hammered. While the wealthiest households will see 11% inflation next month, the poorest will experience a 15% hike as the cost of the basic necessities of life continues to climb.

These pressures have obvious implications. In the absence of policy or economic forecast changes, the data suggests that absolute poverty is projected to rise from 17% of households in the UK in 2021/22 to 22% in 2023/24. Percentages can be difficult to visualise. The raw numbers are more eloquent. If this comes to pass, if the UK government sits on its hands and puts its trust in the energy-saving powers of a new kettle and a second woolly jumper, it means 3 million more people will be unable to afford the bare necessities of life, adding up to 14 million souls below the breadline.

A great many of them are children. Absolute child poverty already stands at 23% in the UK. If the Truss regime does nothing in the face of this onslaught of costs, projections say this will rise to 31% next year. That’s 1 million kids facing insecurity, hunger, and cold.

The enduring political success of the Conservative Party sometimes confuses those of us who don’t support them. But what the Tories have always understood is that many voters vote with their pocketbooks. So long as their base remains reasonable economically comfortable, so long as there are sufficiently few men and women of no property, so long as Britain keeps the first-past-the-post system, the Tories know they can afford to ignore the economic distress of great swathes of the country.

Even better, they’ve discovered that can win votes and secure sympathetic write-ups from the UK’s feral media for monstering the poor, the workless, and the struggling. During Britain’s decade of austerity, most of the opinion formers in the British media didn’t feel the plight of those watching their benefits cut – or just didn’t care.

The newspapers and airwaves are now filling up with sympathetic stories of singletons and families confronting unachievable hikes in their liabilities, and small and medium sized businesses facing the possibility of bankruptcy and closure as they contemplate energy contracts demanding several multiples of their current liabilities.

As the more reflective Conservative politicians are quickly realising, this is a different kind of crisis. If civic discontent becomes generalised, if the economic hardship becomes not a minority but a majority concern, the Tories are screwed. And the country too.