The Daily Mail, which endorsed Truss during the leadership contest, has been backpedalling at full pelt.
“Which is the worst U-turn since Liz Truss became prime minister,” asked Guardian columnist Zoe Williams this week.
Joining the PM, who has made a series of epic about-turns on policies since entering No 10 little over a month ago, is the Tory press, which is rapidly changing its tune on the new prime minister amid growing Tory jitters and turmoil.
The Sun, which labelled Truss the ‘radical prime minister we need for the crisis engulfing Britain,’ and ‘heartily congratulated’ her on her election, has swiftly had a change of heart.
Truss in the boot?
‘Truss in the Boot?’ was a headline in an article on October 13, which spoke of ‘mutinous MPs openly discussing the PM’s removal ‘after just 38 days in office.’
An editorial in the newspaper said Truss “fuelled the chaos by claiming no government spending will be cut.” It then asked: “How, then, can she balance the books?”
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail, which endorsed Truss during the leadership contest, has been backpedalling at full pelt. During the Tory leadership contest the newspaper went heavy on Truss-endorsed content, speaking of how the ‘leadership hopeful could save the UK.’
Following Truss’s election in early September, Dan Hodges, political columnist for the Mail on Sunday, spoke of how the Tory contest has ‘served Liz Truss – and the nation – well.’
Just weeks later and the same columnist is talking about how Truss will ‘consign her party to political oblivion,’ if she doesn’t change course.
In fact, all week the Mail has been spewing disparaging headlines, on how Tory MPs are plotting to replace Truss with a ‘dream ticket’ for her leadership contest rivals Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak, and how ‘almost half of Conservative supporters believe the party made the WRONG choice of leader in Liz Truss.’
On August 6, the Truss-supporting Telegraph published a column that announced it was backing Truss to follow Boris Johnson as prime minister. What is perhaps the most influential newspaper among Tory Party members is now eating its words. On October 14, the day Truss sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng the newspaper dedicated an article to its readers’ reaction to the sacking.
‘Liz Truss is throwing her Chancellor under the bus when he’s just implemented her ideas’ was the headline, in reference to a comments in a string of highly unflattering readers’ remarks about the sacking and the PM.
An article in the Telegraph this week by Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator and columnist at the Daily Telegraph, spoke of how Truss’s recent meeting with backbenchers was not even rowdy but had a mood of ‘murderous despair’, and pointed to a poll in the paper that shows just nine percent of the public have a favourable view of Liz Truss.
It will be interesting to see who the right-wing press will have in their sights as Truss’s successor if she is exiled. The Telegraph has set the scene already, with a feature on the ‘runners and riders for PM’ if Truss is ousted.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
Image credit: Andrew Parsons / Number 10 Downing Street – Creative Commons
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