Ryan Shorthouse is the founder and director of Bright Blue
The tenacity of Liz Truss throughout her career, rising from a comprehensive education to being one of the longest serving Cabinet Ministers, is quite something.
This week, she spoke of how people have constantly belittled or tried to stop her throughout her life, including most recently the Greenpeace protestors who were in the hall during her party conference speech. But Truss just carries on, determined to prove her detractors wrong. No polished performer, often quite socially awkward, the misfits in life have a role model right here.
However, she really must listen to her parliamentary colleagues and the wider public. Both are clearly telling her that the amateurism of her government in its initial weeks must stop. Introducing tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the highest earners when those on modest incomes are struggling with the cost of living demonstrates the wrong priorities. Enough of the vice signalling.
The Conservative party has a democratic mandate from the 2019 general election to grant greater resources, powers and opportunities to people and places who have for a long time felt forgotten. So far, the radical economic policies that have been proposed by yet another Conservative government do very little for them. Economic growth is essential, but so is redistribution, if we are to truly level up this country. The focus should be on raising GDP per capita, embarrassingly lower than many other large economies, not just GDP.
The Prime Minister did deliver a straightforward speech in Birmingham about her principles and the people she wants to support. Her heroes are grafters not campaigners. But she needs to move beyond first principles to detailed plans very quickly if a Conservative government is to grow the economy, level up the country and get the public finances under control. A lot of livelihoods are now at risk and depend on the policies this Prime Minister pursues in the weeks and months ahead. More than anything else, the sharp upward trajectory of interest rates – driving up the cost of borrowing to buy houses and cars – is the biggest threat to Tory electoral prospects.
Frankly, if this government has any chance of catalysing growth so GDP achieves 2.5% in a few years, its priority must be to quickly implement policies that substantially expand and educate the workforce. That means universally affordable childcare. Retirement and pension policies that encourage people to work throughout their fifties and sixties. Lowering taxation on income derived from work by increasing it on income from assets, such as housing and pensions. Increasing skilled immigration. And support that gets many more people both attending university and undertaking work-based training such as apprenticeships continuously throughout their working lives.
Truss needs to be bold to deliver her target growth rates. But she needs to remember that successful “politics is the strong and slow boring of hard boards”, as the sociologist Max Weber said. She needs to deliver not provoke.
