Voices: If Truss wants to carry on being PM until the next election, she should do one crucial thing

“A political lunch with Liz Truss” does sound like the political invite from hell, doesn’t it? Excruciating, no? It’s how the prime minister proposes to establish parliamentary support for her “plan for growth”, which has shrunk in size and scope since it was unveiled a matter of weeks ago to a frosty reception from the markets.

The idea, presumably, is that if only Tory backbenchers understood what Liz was on about then they’d support it, because it’s based on good Conservative principles, and they’re good Conservatives, right?

The obvious flaw is that the MPs understand the darn thing only too well, and have long since concluded it’s a dud, and a wickedly unfair dud at that. I suspect that after being patronised by Liz for an hour or so over the salmon mousse, Welsh lamb and petits four they’ll be even more determined to get rid of her than they are now. There will be clumps of 30 or so, which will be the worst of all worlds – too big for an intimate exchange of confidences, but too small for any rabble-rousing speechifying (admittedly unlikely at the best of times).

There is a bigger problem approaching – power cuts. They won’t be helped by a series of chatty lunches. If I were Liz Truss, I’d leave the job of persuasion to the whips and the few members of her ministerial and Number 10 team who still believe in her, Kwasi Kwarteng and their unlikely plan.

The backbenchers can be more honest and robust with whips and aides than they can be to a sitting prime minister in her owning dining room, and they can say “it’s all b******s but I’ll vote for it if you give me a job in the next reshuffle, plus a knighthood or peerage when this whole sorry clown show finally collapses”. That’s not the sort of candid deal you can propose to the PM in front of colleagues.

Instead of trying to make sense of nonsense, then, if Truss wants to carry on being PM until the election, she should be spending her lunchtimes – and every other waking moment the good lord grants her – trying to prevent the power cuts coming; a three-hour rolling programme of misery that will coincide with the dark depths of winter and a flu and Covid-fuelled NHS crisis (the only part of our national life there’s no shortage of fuel). I’d be going around Downing Street, chequers and the cabinet office turning off lights and unwatched tellies, like the Queen used to in her palaces.

I’d certainly chuck £15m at a public information energy saving campaign, because the more energy we conserve, the less chance there will be of cuts when the time comes – we need to leave as much of our gas in the ground as we can for when the bad times arrive. Otherwise, when lights go off all over Britain, Truss will last about as long as Ted Heath did as PM when he put the country on a three-day week and selective power outages back in 1973 (ie out by the end of February).

One of Heath’s hapless ministers, Patrick Jenkin (father of Bernard) advised people to brush their teeth in the dark, and to share a bath with a friend. Sound ideas, but by then it was too late for any public information campaign to save a government and nation paralysed by strikes, accelerating inflation and an energy crisis. Strong echoes.

Truss should not be allowed to forget the rash promise she made at the LBC Tory leadership hustings. Asked directly by Nick Ferrari if there would be power cuts, she said “no”. She won’t be able to survive breaking that promise.

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Besides, it’s the right thing to do, as even Jacob Rees-Mogg repeatedly recognises. It’s good for the taxpayer, because it will reduce the cost of subsidising gas and electricity bills. It’s good for the environment, for obvious reasons. It’s good for the wider economy, because it would avoid power outages and help keep output up, and thus avoid imminent recession. The NHS will be glad of fewer hypothermia and pneumonia cases. And every single household will have a lower bill thanks to a bit of extra home insulation and fiddling with the boiler and the radiators.

Equally, one should add, older people and the clinically vulnerable must be told not to turn off their heating because they’re terrified of the bills and getting into debt – some help is available.

But Liz is notoriously headstrong, impulsive and contrarian. That might work if such qualities were matched by intellect and wisdom, but they are alarmingly absent, as we have seen. All one can hope for is that when the time comes for her and her MPs to have a political lunch or dinner the lights go out and they have to conduct their debates by candlelight. It seems entirely appropriate for a leader whose favourite song is Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”.