Liz Truss isn't up to being Boris's Chancellor

Refreshing though it is to hear that there is still something to play for in the Conservative leadership contest, it would be foolish to pretend that Boris Johnson is anything less than the

runaway favourite. In Westminster circles, in fact, everyone is so convinced of a Boris victory that talk has turned away from the race at hand and onto who will make up the next cabinet.

Senior politicians, too, are getting rather excited at the prospect of a reshuffle – and a few even seem to have taken time off their day jobs to enthusiastically audition for the role of

Boris’s Chancellor.

As David Gauke pointed out on Twitter a few weeks ago, being Boris’s number two wouldn’t be a walk in the park: the former Foreign Secretary has spent the last few months outlining lavish

plans for public spending in his Telegraph column – and it still isn’t 100% clear where all the money is coming from. Whoever is picked for Number 11 in a few weeks time will have to temper

and moderate the new Prime Minister, while simultaneously “peddling the optimism” (to coin a phrase) which Boris hopes will win him the next election.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid is the current front runner, but he isn’t by any means the only one vying for the job. Liz Truss, the first Cabinet-level minister to publicly endorse the Prime

Minister in waiting, is making no bones about her ambitions. Last week, she used her appearance at a Press Gallery lunch to set out her stall to be Britain’s first female Chancellor: in not

quite so many words, she explained how she would cut stamp duty, level up Britain’s infrastructure, and make the argument that people keep more of their own money.

On the face of it – she wouldn’t be a bad choice. Her experience as Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Philip Hammond’s Number two) would stand her in very good stead, and her libertarian

views (she is famous for hating the “nanny state”) would chime with the new Prime Minister’s. Her temperament, too, would be a good match for Boris’s: the pair both have a highly developed

sense of the ridiculous, and neither – judging by Truss’s Instagram and Boris’s behaviour over the last 40 odd years – take themselves too seriously. With Truss in Number 11 and Boris in

Number 10, it’s hard to imagine a Blair/Brown style bust up.

On the other hand, she has a record of flip flopping: although she now styles herself as a free-market loving Brexiteer, when she was in David Cameron’s government, she voted Remain – and

would have been considered a “One Nation Tory”.

More importantly, she’s hardly shone in any of her cabinet positions so far, and has often failed to gain the respect of those with whom she has worked closely. In one memorable incident in

2017, Lord Thomas, the Lord Chief Justice, laid into Truss (the Lord Chancellor) in a way that top barristers suggested was unprecedented. After beginning the session with an excoriating

attack against the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), of which Truss is the head, and its approach to the introduction of pre-recorded evidence in criminal trials, he went on to blast her for

failing to defend the judiciary against scathing media headlines in the wake of the Brexit legal challenge when she was Justice Secretary. According to Thomas, Truss was:“[C]ompletely and

utterly wrong in the view she takes… We must maintain a free press… but there is a difference between criticism and abuse, and I don’t think that is understood. I don’t think it’s understood

either how absolutely essential it is that we are protected.”

If these words were spoken by a staunch Remainer, they could, perhaps, be taken with a pinch of salt. Given, however, that Lord Thomas has never shown bias against Brexiteers before (in 2017

he dismissed rumours that leaving the EU would affect the quality or certainty of English law or the standing of British courts) his judgement on the woman putting herself forward to be

Britain’s Chancellor sounds pretty damning – and it chimes in with persistent doubts about her competence in Westminster.

When Theresa May became Prime Minister in 2016, she picked her cabinet based on optics. The result was a perfectly balanced mix of classes, genders and Brexit positions, united in

mediocrity. Though appointing Britain’s first female Chancellor will be tempting for Boris (who will want to quash rumours that he’s a misogynist) he must resist. Liz Truss has yet to

demonstrate that she is ready for one of the great offices of state.

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