Liz Truss didn’t display any signs of anxiety during her first Commons Question Time as prime minister.
Contrary to what her detractors had predicted, she carried herself with assurance at the dispatch box, spoke clearly, and her love for conservative principles was evident.
Her retort was withering when Sir Keir Starmer criticized her for declining to impose a second windfall tax on energy producers and scrapping anticipated corporate tax increases. He didn’t get people’s desire to retain more of their own money, ambition, opportunity, or any of those things.
Turning his ‘same old Tories‘ jibe on its head, she said: ‘There is nothing new about a Labour leader who is calling for more tax rises. Same old tax and spend.’
Liz Truss is due to announce her plan to freeze energy bills and mitigate the cost of living crunch today
But important as this combative performance was for party morale, PMQs is essentially theatre. The real work of government begins today, when Miss Truss announces her plan to freeze energy bills and mitigate the cost of living crunch.
It will be eye-wateringly expensive and incur a massive rise in short-term debt. So it cannot be more than a temporary fix. It must be accompanied by a broad and radical strategy for the better exploitation of domestic supplies, from the North Sea, new nuclear generators and possibly fracking.
Though the Green lobby will howl, we must do all we can to insulate ourselves from global market shocks and the belligerent whim of tyrants such as Vladimir Putin.
But judging from her first full day in office, Liz Truss will not shrink from the formidable challenges ahead. Or from subjecting them to traditional Tory solutions.
Diversity in action
It was a simple enough question but one that exposes Labour’s much-trumpeted commitment to diversity as a sham.
Why is it, Theresa May asked Liz Truss, that all three female prime ministers have been Tory? Answer – because while Labour preaches equality of opportunity, the Conservatives practise it.
Just look at the composition of the new Cabinet. None of the great offices of state is now held by a white male. Three of the four are of ethnic minority heritage and two are women.
This is not through any exercise in quotas or positive discrimination. It is simply because they were deemed the best people for the job, regardless of sex, colour or creed.
It was typical of Labour yesterday that because they couldn’t criticise the new Cabinet for lack of diversity, they retreated to the class war bunker – pointing out that the majority were privately educated.
Have they forgotten that their current leader went to private school – as did Jeremy Corbyn, Tony Blair and several others? Or perhaps they are just incorrigible hypocrites.
Pain of justice delayed
The Mail makes no judgment on the domestic violence case against Ryan Giggs, which ended with a hung jury last week.
But having already spent many months preparing for trial and going through a gruelling four-week court case, having to wait another 11 months for a retrial places unfair and unbearable stress on both alleged perpetrator and alleged victims.
It is symptomatic of the deep malaise currently afflicting our criminal justice system, which has a backlog of some 60,000 cases and is exacerbated by an indefinite barristers’ strike over pay.
This is a huge problem for incoming Justice Secretary Brandon Lewis to solve. But he must find a way. If victims have to wait years for their case to be heard, many will simply give up.
Faith in justice would then collapse and the Tories’ reputation as the party of law and order would be shattered for good.