PMQs: Liz Truss’ performance shows a PM increasingly divorced from reality

“I am a fighter and not a quitter,” Liz Truss told MPs during Prime Minister’s Questions. Yet, despite her confident words, her performance today felt somewhat desperate. She claimed to have “delivered” on the energy price guarantee, despite the announcement on Monday that the scheme would end in April 2023, having initially been planned to last for two years. This move was made more embarrassing by the fact that Truss strongly criticised Labour at last week’s PMQs for only setting out a six-month plan for supporting households with their energy bills.

Last week’s session came back to bite Truss in more ways the one. Starmer reminded Truss of her pledge not to cut public spending. Just days later, hastily appointed Chancellor Jeremy Hunt warned that the government will have to make “difficult decisions” on tax and spending in coming weeks and that “some areas of spending will need to be cut”. The Labour leader demanded: “What’s the point of a Prime Minister whose promises don’t even last a week?” Truss had the gall in her response to accuse Labour of failing to reflect “economic reality” in its policies.

Starmer quickly reminded MPs and those watching at home whose economic policy had sent the markets into freefall, arguing that spending cuts are only on the table because the Tories “crashed the economy”. Truss trotted out the tired line about the global economic situation, clapping herself on the back for being honest and “levelling with the public”. In an attempt to return to safer ground, the Prime Minister hit out at Starmer’s stance towards striking workers. She asked the Labour leader what he is doing about the strikes, recycling a Boris Johnson classic: “He backs the strikers. We back the strivers.”

“She’s asking me questions because we’re a government in waiting and they’re an opposition in waiting,” Starmer responded. He declared that Truss’ mandate as Tory leader was “built on fantasy economics” and has “ended in disaster”. He ran through each of the policies from the Prime Minister’s mini-Budget that have subsequently been scrapped – with the Labour benches behind him joining in a chant of “gone” after each policy listed in a round of pantomime-esque audience participation. “They’re all gone,” Starmer said. “So why’s she still here?”

Truss repeatedly attempted to turn the discussion back to strikes in order to somehow pin responsibility for the recent turmoil on the leader of the opposition, indicating just how vulnerable the Prime Minister currently is. Having lost her key attack line on Labour’s energy bills plan, she was forced to make baseless claims about Starmer having “no plan” and “no alternative”. She went further into fantasy, telling MPs that she had “delivered” on the government’s support package when, demonstrably, she has not. It was a performance increasingly divorced from reality, which will have done little to calm the nerves of her backbenchers (despite the Prime Minister declaring that she is “completely committed” to the pensions triple lock, in an apparent U-turn on a U-turn).