There was nothing surprising about Liz Truss’ winning second place in the conservative party parliamentary leadership election. She now goes forward with Rishi Sunak to sell herself to the 170,000 members. The bookies see her as an easy winner.
She is likely to win as she is much more popular than Sunak and because most Tory members secretly preferred Johnson. Truss has the advantage of not betraying Boris, indeed she has stood by him.
Her catch phrase is his catch phrase – she says she gets things done. Rishi on the other hand comes across as David Cameron 2.0. Cameron didn’t get much done and was a bit of a toff to boot, no-one liked him much.
Why is she popular?
Lis Truss is always doing things.
And she’s getting things done
She has also grasped that it is good to say the things that the people you are trying to influence want to hear. This she may have learned from Johnson and Trump – it is called Populism – she is a populist and Sunak is not. She’s not Nadine Dorries but she’s getting there.
This blog is going to really infuriate people like my friend Mark Scantlebury who is appalled that leaders are chosen because they say what people want to hear and do what people want to do them to. But that can’t be helped. Mark lives in Islington and has a beard – he gets riled when I call the bikes I use “Boris Bikes”. He isn’t a populist.
He is not smiling inside!
It may be that Truss blows up, maybe she’ll get the political equivalent of falling off your bike on the Champs Elysee with the Tour de France finishing line in site, but I doubt it.
She got her PPE from Oxford, just like Sunak, which is more than Mark and I got!
Brexit happened, Trump happened , Bojo happened and now Truss is happening. Time that us grumpy old men woke up and smelled the coffee.
These odds tell me that Truss is three times more likely than Sunak to be the next Prime Minister – are you going to bet against it?
