FTI Consulting Public Affairs Snapshot – Conservative Party Conference 2022

Harold Wilson once famously quipped that a “week is a long time in politics”.  When one compares the feeling of this year’s Conservative Party conference to last year’s, the difference isn’t just a gap, it’s a chasm.

Last year’s Prime Minister’s speech was a tour de force of Boris bombast. Pledges on levelling up, broadband rollout and bumper NHS spending hikes were tossed in the political wok and seasoned with blustery optimism about the UK’s world-beating coronavirus vaccine rollout. Delegates cheered, the media got the punchy clips they wanted for the 6pm news and the conference was generally hailed as “a success”.

To be charitable, it wasn’t like that in Birmingham today.

Ordinarily, newly-installed party leaders enjoy at least some form of polling bounce and boost to their political standing.  This conference ought to have been a chance for Liz Truss to conduct something of a political victory lap; basking in her twenty-point victory margin over Rishi Sunak and dominance over a cabinet shaped very much in her own image.

While a new Prime Minister, possessed with the power of patronage and a substantial personal political mandate, ought to be at the height of their powers, the Liz Truss we saw this week felt like a rather transient figure held hostage to restless public opinion and an even more restless parliamentary party.

The sense of discord reached new levels in recent days, with Cabinet ministers openly disagreeing with each other on issues such as benefits and the 45p tax rate. Normally, these kinds of disagreements take place in private or through background briefings to journalists.

The leader’s speech at any political party conference is always intended to be one of the landmark annual opportunities to announce eye-catching policies and shape the political agenda.  The problem, of course, is that the mini-budget laid out by the Chancellor only a few days ago has already laid bare much of the new Prime Minister’s agenda.  For that reason, today’s speech was rather a non-event from a  policy perspective.

On the face of it, the speech was a solid summation of Tory principles. The Prime Minister reiterated her support for lower taxes and shrinking the size of the state, attacked Labour’s record on fiscal discipline and slammed the “separatist” SNP. On several occasions, she referred to her political opponents as the “anti-growth coalition” – a phrase which may well become a prominent one in Conservative Party communications as we approach the next election. Overall, though, the speech wasn’t a memorable one.

Where the speech did show some spark was where she drew upon her own personal story of overcoming gender-based barriers to her political and professional advancement and her comprehensive education. Her rhetoric on energy independence, attacks on Putin and strongly supportive words for Ukraine were greeted with strong applause.

Her off-the-cuff jokes about the “anti-growth coalition”, issued in response to Greenpeace protestors who disrupted her speech were a reminder of the punchy, unscripted Truss that drew plaudits during the leadership campaign hustings. But this more human, relatable approach did not always shine through today.

Given the RMT train strike had forced many attendees to leave the conference a day early for fear of not being able to get home, the final day of conference had a rather hollowed-out feel.  The number of MPs at the conference was way down on previous years, which robbed the Prime Minister of the hubbub and rallying spirit one would usually expect to see at a party conference.

The elephant in the room was always going to be how the Prime Minister would address her decision to U-turn on the decision to cut the 45p income tax rate. In the end, she took the path of contrition, sought to draw a line under the matter and stated the government “had listened” on the issue.

While the Prime Minister is of course to blame for many of her own political missteps, she is also a victim of circumstance. In the same way as coronavirus upended Boris Johnson’s wish to deliver Brexit and then shift the narrative towards deregulation and economic growth, Liz Truss is hamstrung by a dire global economy and a sense that public opinion that simply isn’t in line with her ideological outlook.

The Prime Minister has spent more than a decade as a prominent fixture on the market-liberal think tank scene, advocating policies to shrink the size of the state and deliver tax cuts.  Regrettably for her, the coronavirus pandemic has shifted public opinion markedly in the direction of high government spending and a high tax burden for high earners.  Liz Truss’s political proposition is clear but the messages the Conservative Party has communicated this week appear out of step with the economic realities of the moment.

For all the talk of coalitions, the potential role of the SNP in a hung parliament or the re-emergence of the Liberal Democrats, British politics remains a left/right, Tory/Labour fight.

The fundamental conclusion from this political conference season is clear. Labour activists left their conference daring to dream their years in opposition may be drawing to a close. The Conservatives, under Liz Truss, can see the political wilderness coming quickly into view.