As the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister prepares to leave Downing Street after 45 days, it is easy to imagine Liz Truss feels her time there hasn’t been quite the triumph she had hoped for. But who are the real winners and losers of her premiership? Winners Jeremy Hunt The former health secretary was roundly rejected for the leadership of his party and was out of favour with recent prime ministers when it came to ministerial positions. But many saw him as the de facto prime minister as he rode in to 11 Downing Street and tore up Truss’s pledges. Arsenal Famed for their 2003-04 invincible Premier League season, this could yet be their invincible Truss premiership. All the north London football club need to do is beat Southampton on Sunday and, assuming Truss leaves when she said she will, they will boast a 100% record during her time in No 10. Lettuce In recent times the workhorse of the salad world had been bypassed in favour of its more bougie colleagues: rocket and baby spinach. But Truss’s premiership gave it a moment in the sun as the Daily Star set up a webcam on a lettuce and asked if it would have a longer shelf-life than the prime minister. It did. Tofu On the other end of the bougie continuum, at least in the mind of the home secretary, was tofu. Suella Braverman regarded the foodstuff as a key indicator of a person’s propensity to be a member of both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, to read the Guardian and, of course, to cause traffic disruption by holding a protest at the Dartford crossing.
Mark Drakeford The usually mild-mannered first minister of Wales has not pierced the public consciousness too often. Not, that is, until his emotional outburst at the Welsh Tory leader, Andrew RT Davies, in the Senedd. Drakeford told him it was “shocking that you think that you can turn up here this afternoon with the mess that your party has made, to the budgets of this country, to the reputation of this country around the world”.
George Canning No longer will he be the answer to the pub quiz question: who is the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister? He does, however, remain the answer to the question: which former UK prime minister was once wounded in a duel when his opponent shot him in the thigh? Chris Mason BBC political editors are not used to being popular. Chris Mason has, as Westminster watchers like to say, had a good war. Bankers The country was crying out for the stringent cap on bankers’ bonuses to be lifted. And a benevolent prime minister granted their wishes. Sweeping aside such trivia as shocking ambulance waiting times, Truss made lifting the cap for bankers a top priority when she entered No 10. BBC local radio They were seen as a soft touch by a No 10 operation looking to get the prime minister’s voice heard, but wanting to avoid a roasting by the broadcaster’s supposed big hitters. However, during a round of local radio interviews, Truss was treated to a series of interviewing masterclasses by talented presenters, who left her a laughing stock by lunchtime.
Boris Johnson? Incredible as it may seem, Tory MPs are openly talking about returning the man still under investigation for allegedly lying to parliament to No 10 for a second shot at not causing total chaos across the country. Losers Krishnan Guru-Murthy The Channel 4 presenter is not the first broadcaster to call a Tory minister the C-word, but his colleagues were largely mispronouncing Jeremy Hunt’s name in their on-air slip-ups. Guru-Murthy had no such excuse when talking about Steve Baker off-camera. Anyone with a mortgage The bills, the bills! Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous economic experiment forced a sharp interest rate rise, with the knock-on pain being experienced by anyone with a non-fixed-rate mortgage, or looking to get or renew a mortgage. Kwasi Kwarteng So it follows, then, that Truss’s chancellor is a major loser. He and Truss had long dreamed of a low-tax, freewheeling market economy that had no time for things like tax and workers’ rights. It, and he, survived only days of contact with the real world. Tufton Street A former adviser to Boris Johnson said the Institute of Economic Affairs had “incubated” Truss and Kwarteng and that their budget was a “massive moment” for the rightwing thinktank. Years of lobbying and media appearances were finally paying off. Again, though, reality intervened and the political campaign group Led By Donkeys mockingly placed a blue plaque on its Tufton Street HQ that read: “The British economy crashed here.” Patrick Minford The economist once hailed by Margaret Thatcher was evoked once again by Truss when asked if she could name an economist who thought cutting taxes was the right medicine for the economy.
Daily Mail “Cometh the hour, cometh the woman,” read the paper’s front page when Truss entered No 10. “At last! A true Tory budget” was how it greeted the unveiling of her economic strategy. Wednesday’s headline? “Millions facing pain on pensions.” Pension funds Speaking of which, pension funds have had a tough time. They have been hit by a double whammy as the Tory economic disaster threatened to cause a selloff that could have caused a financial crisis, and then the prime minister flip-flopped over whether to guarantee the triple lock. M People Politicians using songs their creators would have preferred they didn’t is nothing new. M People are just the latest losers on that front after Truss used their song Moving On Up as her walk-on music at the party conference. “No permission given for that … we’re very angry,” a member of the group said. Roundhay school “Many of the children I was at school with were let down by low expectations, poor educational standards and a lack of opportunity,” Truss said during the leadership contest. Well, many of the people she went to school with disagreed, including one who told the Telegraph: “May I on behalf of all alumni of Roundhay School apologise for letting the whole of the United Kingdom down. She should never have been let in nor should she have been let loose on such an unsuspecting world.” Anyone who uses gas or electricity in their home The one policy triumph Truss kept returning to whenever she was asked about her failures was her energy price cap. Leave aside the fact average households still face a roughly 25% increase, Truss’s cap is itself no longer assured for the long term. And let’s not even raise the possibility of rationing this winter.