Why Liz Truss’s political journey matters

As is now well known, Liz Truss has travelled politically. Her parents are left-wing, and there is a photograph of her as a child posing with them and their CND banner in Paisley. She herself was active in the Liberal Democrats. Professor Truss is reportedly upset that his daughter became a Conservative.

I can identify with this story a little since both my parents were/are (my mother is still alive) ardent Liberals and I fear my own move to the right – though never really a party-political thing – upset them. Parents tend to be more upset by children moving to their right than to their left. This is because non-conservative politics is pseudo-religious. It sees political allegiance as a test of virtue and political programmes as means of salvation. If your child moves to your right, you may think it immoral and fear your darling has been corrupted by bad company. My Liberal parents were/are equally opposed politically to Labour and the Conservatives, but it was only the Tories they called ‘wicked’.

For the offspring making the move, it is upsetting to upset one’s parents (even if one’s rebelliousness is partly intentional) but it may make one think harder about what politics is. Liz Truss’s change of allegiance may explain the relish which she brings to new policies – always testing, always searching.

There was mockery on the BBC because Boris and Liz Truss had to go to Balmoral to effect the change of prime minister. It was a waste of time to go so far to see the Queen, was the implication. I should have thought the sight of Deeside might assist calm reflection. It is also good for the Union that you can be made Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in Scotland.

The new Prime Minister shows herself an ‘ally’ of diversity by including among her appointees to the great offices of state a member of an increasingly marginalised minority, Old Etonians. When first a candidate in Spelthorne in the 2010 election, Kwasi Kwarteng was often stigmatised for this disadvantaged background. So he felt nervous when, in a supermarket car park, he was approached by a tattooed, shaven-headed, middle-aged white man.‘ ’ere,’ the man said, ‘is it true you didn’t go to a normal school like us ordinary people: you was at Eton?’ Kwasi anxiously assented. ‘Good,’ said the man, ‘I don’t want the country run by bloody oiks.’

As I write, the new government is about to launch its plan for energy prices. Last week, our coal merchant Steve rang me. Would I like a big pile of coal? He was contacting his regular customers first, because from spring next year it will be illegal for him to sell the stuff. His price increase of about 15 per cent on my last load seemed deliriously low. I gratefully settled for as much as my cellar could fit. The coal ban will be seen by history as a small example of how our energy policy was blind to emerging realities, like the British guns facing the wrong way at Singapore.

Which brings me to the interesting case of Michael Gove, who is leaving frontline politics. In many ways, this was sad news. Gove was probably the most original and certainly the most experienced minister in the administration. Except for a short break, he was in the cabinet for 12 years, longer than giants of the past like Nigel Lawson or, come to think of it, Tony Blair or David Cameron. No one understood Whitehall better, was more helpful across departments, is more acute as an analyst of politics. He could also be bold, as his education policy and his decision to back Brexit proved. But somehow it all got too complicated and perhaps too driven by fashion. Possibly I over-obsess (who doesn’t, now?) about the excessive price of energy, but on the subject of net zero, I feel that Gove, who even sought, as Defra secretary, to ban wood-burning stoves, neglected Enoch Powell’s famous dictum that ‘The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils’. Britain cannot unilaterally prevent the evil of climate change (if, indeed, it is evil), nor unite the world against it. It most certainly does have the power to provide against the evil of energy insecurity and consequent price vulnerability. Yet, backed by Michael Gove’s eloquence, it refused to do so.

This year’s AGM of the National Trust on 5 November will see a determined effort by the growing Restore Trust movement to challenge the extraordinary level of control exercised by the Trust’s management. The preparations already show how concerned that management is. Each candidate for the council has to submit a short manifesto. One, Philip Gibbs, who is backed by Restore Trust, was surprised to be told that his manifesto was being altered. A ‘governance support coordinator’ (the NT has numerous titles of this sort) emailed him attempting to water down his criticism of the proxy vote system by which the chairman can outvote resolutions he does not like. The governance man tried to make him say that it should be reviewed rather than abolished. Mr Gibbs refused.

Sometimes a phrase – ‘perfect storm’, ‘shock and awe’, ‘tipping point’ etc – gains currency and people overuse it. At present, the buzz phrase is ‘Overton window’. It is named after an American thinktanker, Joseph Overton, who, before his sadly premature death, devised it. The window is the range of mainstream ideas which the public will, at a given time, accept. Politicians who wish to change opinion must squeeze their policies to fit in this window. As a description of opinion, this may be a helpful concept, but as a rule of conduct, it is repressive. It suggests that a new idea can succeed only if smuggled in. It therefore discourages clear original thinking and encourages deception. Right now, when radical thinking is so needed, it is the opposite of an idea whose time has come.