Why Liz Truss must go from campaigner to crisis leader - Scotsman comment

It would be customary, not to mention polite, to congratulate Liz Truss on her election to the highest office in the land. The country desperately needs fresh ideas, clear leadership and a coherent voice for the world. We wish her every success in providing this in the months ahead.

Will our new Prime Minister make the grade? In truth, expectations have been set low, thanks to a leadership race noteworthy for its detachment from reality, culminating in yesterday’s results announcement complete with golf club speeches and faltering applause lines.

Yet the conduct of this other-worldly campaign, aimed at an electorate quite different to much of the country, will be forgotten after Liz Truss has flown home to Downing Street from Balmoral later today.

Straight away, the new Prime Minister must face the whole nation, and address the extraordinary cost-of-living crisis we are suffering.

Liz Truss speaks on stage in Birmingham during the Conservative Party leadership campaign. Picture: Getty Images

The vast scale of the problem is clear, as is the need for a decisive intervention by the new Prime Minister. A public the length and breath of the UK, largely disconnected from and uninspired by the leadership contest, will now be paying careful attention to PM Truss's response. It will affect us all.

She and her Cabinet will have a single shot to win our trust – trust destroyed by Boris Johnson's premiership – and offer much-needed support to householders and business owners hurtling towards ruin.

So far, Truss's instincts on policy, at least as articulated to Conservative Party members in recent months, run counter to those demanded by the moment.

A libertarian love of the free market threatens to overlook the impact of an energy market out of control, one that will lead to destitution across the UK this winter.

The grim months ahead will also shine an unforgiving light on her planned tax cuts – to the benefit of the richest in society – and her explicit rejection of attempts at redistribution. Truss should be concerned about how that appears to a nation increasingly weary of elites feathering their own nests while they struggle. The savings-destroying impact of inflation should also not go ignored.

Meanwhile, a desire to pick a fight with the EU over Northern Ireland – the continued legacy of Brexit – must be met with the challenge: really, this, now?

Our hope – clung to, in the face of all the available evidence – is that such talk from candidate Truss was necessary to win the confidence of that small, particular Conservative electorate. That Prime Minister Truss will be more pragmatic and humane in the face of reality, and understand that events require a different response.

The political opportunity for Truss and her cabinet is real, in the weeks ahead: to be seen to act decisively, in the national interest – even if it runs counter to some of their political instincts.

There is, after all, no small state response to the crisis engulfing us: we are at economic war, buffeted by threats at a macroeconomic level that can only be countered with a national response. Reform and reduction of the British state – and fights with the EU over borders – can come after ensuring the nation's lights remain lit.

Alongside humane moves to lessen the blow of the energy crisis, greater devolution of responsibility to the English regions would help puncture the poisonous Westminster bubble and point the way to a fairer, less centralised UK.

Honesty over the scale of the challenge, rather than boosterism, would galvanise the country for the tough times ahead.

Liz Truss gained her opportunity through the calamitous premiership of Boris Johnson, who fractured faith in government, the Union and – for some – in democratic politics. She has the opportunity to repair some of that damage, and set the country on a different course. Thus, for all our sakes, we urge the new Prime Minister to defy our expectations, from today.