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Andrew Neil has criticised Prime Minister Liz Truss for “bungling” her economic proposals, which he says has “killed off” any chance at Conservative party reforms in the future. Mr Neil also says Conservative MPs now “have the strong whiff of rebellion in their nostrils” after certain decisions by the Prime Minister last week.
Writing for the Daily Mail, the former BBC journalist said: “The Truss U-turn on abolishing the 45p top rate of income tax, forced on her because enough Tory backbenchers were prepared to vote it down, showed the lady was for turning after all — that if enough pressure was applied, she would buckle whatever the earlier protestations of immutable conviction.
“Political indiscipline prospers when it goes unpunished. Restive Tory MPs have concluded that they can get their way by rebelling on a host of other matters at the heart of the Truss project, from planning reform to welfare benefits.”
Last week at the Conservative conference in Birmingham, Ms Truss faced backlash from Conservative MPs, as well as Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt, in order to ensure welfare benefits rose with the cost of living.
The Prime Minister was also forced to make changes to her plans to reduce taxes for higher earners after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget announcement caused the pound’s value to lower and the Bank of England had to interfere to bail out pension funds.
Mr Neil added: “It was quite remarkable how many senior Tories in Birmingham rushed, off the record, to say how awful Truss was, without me even mentioning her.
“These are all common features of a governing party that is coming to the end of its life — that has lost the will to rule and is more interested in its own internal tribal rivalries than the good government of the nation.”
The journalist said that “ironically” the Prime Minister and Chancellor had both promised “a fresh, original start — a real break with the past to rejuvenate 12 years of lacklustre Conservative rule” but through “inexperience and stupidity” have managed to “kill off” any chance of “radical Tory reform”.
He argued that during the Conservative leadership elections, Ms Truss campaigned to challenge the “financial and economic orthodoxy” of the Bank of England and Treasury, but since the bank “bailed out” the economy after the budget announcement, both are now “sitting compliantly at [the Treasury’s] feet as explains what must be done to restore confidence.”
READ MORE: Truss lays bare lifeline to save economy after market turmoil
Mr Neil also wrote: “Truss-Kwarteng have shown no interest in welfare reform. Indeed no interest in any kind of public service reform.”
“Truss lamented the quality of her state school education (though it got her to Oxford) but has said nothing about building on the schools revolution which started with Thatcher, continued with Tony Blair and David Cameron, but has since been allowed to atrophy.
“Ditto the NHS. There is no programme to reform our health service. Just bung it more money. Except that now there is no more money. And the Government is faced with a desperate scramble to find spending cuts to pacify the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility].
“But Truss never talked about cuts during her many leadership contest speeches. Nor did Kwarteng in his budget. So there is no plan to cut, no strategy. It all promises to be very messy indeed.
“Radicalism is dead in the Truss Tory party, despite all the empty rhetoric. Conservative orthodoxy rules, as impregnable as ever.”
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The journalist said that the “biggest casualty” of the current Conservative Party, what has been described as a potential coalition of different Conservative Party voters, has now been “halted”.
Mr Neil said that the 2019 general election “healded the creation” of a potential new coalition of “aspiring working and middle-class voters in the south and north of England” and that there could have been a “new right-of-centre force in British politics, an unprecedented coalition of different classes and regions.”
However, Mr Neil said the “Red Wall voters”, which describes voters in the Midlands, Northern England and North-East Wales which have traditionally been supportive of the Labour Party, were now leaving the Conservative Party “in droves”.
He said those voters blame the Prime Minister “fairly or unfairly” for rising mortgage rates and that any hope of winning those voters is now “dead”.
The veteran journalist wrote the hopeful coalition was “another casualty” of Ms Truss’s Goverment, and said finished the article by describing the current Goverment as “too slow to think, too quick to act, too scornful of the traditions it inherited and which it had a duty to protect.”
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