News that Queen Elizabeth II was on her deathbed interrupted a government in the process of tackling an emergency. Literally so, in the sense that information was passed to Liz Truss in the chamber of the Commons. The prime minister had just announced plans to freeze energy prices – a vast and expensive state intervention. Almost immediately, parliament, along with the rest of Britain’s constitutional apparatus, switched into mourning gear. Politics gave way to the pageantry of succession.
Britain has already lost a summer of government to a Conservative leadership election in which only a tiny fraction of the national electorate could vote. Boris Johnson squandered his valedictory period as prime minister on holidays and burnishing a largely fictitious legacy. The Tories turned their back on the country while problems heaped up in the neglected Downing Street. To suggest that parliament might only sit for seven or eight “working” days between 21 July, when it broke for the summer recess, and its planned return on 17 October – almost a quarter of a year – was extraordinarily remiss.
Downing Street has now confirmed that it’s looking at shortening the month-long conference recess. It must do so. Shaving off a day or two won’t suffice, when there is still a war in Ukraine and Britain’s relations with its European neighbours are still frozen, thanks largely to myopic brinkmanship and threats to abandon the Northern Ireland protocol of the Brexit agreement – a foolish tactic to which the new prime minister appears as committed as her predecessor.
If Ms Truss runs into trouble with the right over big state interventions on energy she may be tempted, foolishly, to play up a clash with the EU. In such fraught times, parliament can ill afford to suspend scrutiny of law and government. Downing Street can survive happily without MPs asking urgent questions, tabling amendments and summoning ministers to committees. But those activities are central to the operation of democracy. It is especially important now that there is a new government.
The prime minister is in that role by appointment of the late Queen on the basis that she leads the party with a Commons majority, won under a different leader. Her mandate is constitutionally valid but secondhand. Her personal authority is not yet established. She may be prominent in performing the ceremonial functions of a prime minister in the transition from one monarch to another, but that is no substitute for political scrutiny.
Already there are signs of an arrogance about Ms Truss’s administration that isn’t justified by any achievements in her current role, or previous ones. The new prime minister is not inclined to appoint an ethics adviser. She said she has “always acted with integrity”, so there is no need for an official to advise her. Boris Johnson has killed the “good chap” – or “good chapess” – theory of government.
It is fitting that politics be paused, briefly, for national mourning on the death of a monarch. But suspending politics has limits, especially in the face of an impending crisis. Time is of the essence. If the Conservative government is to prove its seriousness, it needs to bring parliament back without delay, and tell us now.
