“Is it all over?”
“Yes, Prime Minister, I think it probably is.”
That exchange, between Liz Truss and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, is one of several blunt conversations documented by Anthony Seldon in Truss at Ten, which was published last month. Seldon has written profiles of every UK prime minister since John Major, and his previous book covered Boris Johnson’s aberrant premiership. Some PMs cooperate with Seldon, and others don’t; Truss and David Cameron did, while Johnson and Theresa May didn’t.
Truss at Ten features new reporting on the key moments from the shortest British government in history: the reversal of the 45p tax rate policy (“the biggest U-turn in modern prime ministerial history”), the sacking of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, and the appointment of Jeremy Hunt as his replacement. Surprisingly, given her reckless self-confidence, Truss seemed to defer to Hunt, telling her Principal Private Secretary: “Jeremy will do the domestic side and I’ll do the foreign.”
Seldon has been headmaster of three schools, and his Truss book reads like a wayward student’s end-of-term report card. He sets out ten requirements for a successful PM, and demonstrates how Truss failed at all of them. (The book is subtitled How Not to Be Prime Minister.) Making frequent historical comparisons, Seldon argues that Truss’s period of office was uniquely damaging to the country’s economy. Ultimately, he criticises her “total failure to understand the nature of leadership and the job of being Prime Minister.”
There have been other accounts of the Truss premiership, the best of which is Out of the Blue by Harry Cole and James Healey. Ben Riley-Smith’s The Right to Rule (retitled Blue Murder in paperback) also covers Truss in office, and Truss herself wrote an unapologetic memoir, Ten Years to Save the West.
“Yes, Prime Minister, I think it probably is.”
That exchange, between Liz Truss and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, is one of several blunt conversations documented by Anthony Seldon in Truss at Ten, which was published last month. Seldon has written profiles of every UK prime minister since John Major, and his previous book covered Boris Johnson’s aberrant premiership. Some PMs cooperate with Seldon, and others don’t; Truss and David Cameron did, while Johnson and Theresa May didn’t.
Truss at Ten features new reporting on the key moments from the shortest British government in history: the reversal of the 45p tax rate policy (“the biggest U-turn in modern prime ministerial history”), the sacking of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, and the appointment of Jeremy Hunt as his replacement. Surprisingly, given her reckless self-confidence, Truss seemed to defer to Hunt, telling her Principal Private Secretary: “Jeremy will do the domestic side and I’ll do the foreign.”
Seldon has been headmaster of three schools, and his Truss book reads like a wayward student’s end-of-term report card. He sets out ten requirements for a successful PM, and demonstrates how Truss failed at all of them. (The book is subtitled How Not to Be Prime Minister.) Making frequent historical comparisons, Seldon argues that Truss’s period of office was uniquely damaging to the country’s economy. Ultimately, he criticises her “total failure to understand the nature of leadership and the job of being Prime Minister.”
There have been other accounts of the Truss premiership, the best of which is Out of the Blue by Harry Cole and James Healey. Ben Riley-Smith’s The Right to Rule (retitled Blue Murder in paperback) also covers Truss in office, and Truss herself wrote an unapologetic memoir, Ten Years to Save the West.
