LIZ Truss admits she is “not the best communicator”.
But yesterday’s keynote speech to the party faithful was delivered with more authority and panache than expected after a week of bludgeoning from her own party.
It scored a genuinely warm welcome, huge applause over Ukraine and a standing ovation at the end.
Admittedly the new Prime Minister was preaching to the choir. She was among pals, the loyal grassroots supporters who actually voted for her, the first Tory PM from a bog-standard comprehensive.
“My friends,” she smiled, arms wide, perhaps feeling safe for the first time since arriving in Birmingham on Saturday, “these are stormy days.”
She even managed a smile as jeering Greenpeace demonstrators unfurled a “Who Voted For This?” banner before being dragged out of the hall.
The speech barely touched on the PM’s biggest pratfall so far - her screeching U-turn over the 45p tax cut. “I listened,” she said - and passed on.
There was no name check for baby-faced assassin Michael Gove. No hint that she might be kick him out of the party. No rebuke for Cabinet ministers who oppose plans for smaller benefit increases.
Britain and the rest of the world are floundering in a debt-fuelled, post-Covid, economic and energy crisis triggered by Kremlin tyrant “Mad Vlad” Putin, she said.
Drastic steps are vital to save our wallowing economy and raise billions for the NHS, for schools, police and defence against authoritarian regimes who invade other people’s countries.
That means cutting tax, axing EU red tape, paring back the cash-guzzling state and letting the economy rip - basic Tory policies.
“There are three priorities for the economy - growth, growth, growth,” she insisted.
This surely is a motto engraved in the DNA of every signed-up member of the Tory Party, every one of the 14million who voted Conservative in 2019 and handed Boris Johnson an 80-seat majority.
But apparently not. For some Tories, it is now easy come, easy go.
They seem as beguiled as Labour by taxpayers’ money, hypnotised by the £410BILLION sprayed on Lockdown, furlough, track and trace and crooked company bail-outs.
Didn’t Liz say she was prepared to be unpopular?
Today, we have a major jobs emergency with one million vacancies and pubs and restaurants crying out for staff.
Yet fit and healthy 50-somethings have left the workforce for an early retirement, partly funded from benefits.
There are sensible proposals to raise these in line with increases in average earnings rather than the higher rate of inflation.
Yes, there will be screams of protest - some from Tory benches - but didn’t Liz say she was prepared to be unpopular?
Almost any move to cut spending and borrowing, reduce taxes, tackle benefits, build new houses or deal with illegal immigration will spark protests…from Tories as much as Labour.
These are what Truss described yesterday as the “anti-growth coalition, driven from their north London town houses to BBC studios to preach more tax, more regulation, more meddling”.
She might have been talking about lefties, but if the cap fits…This represents an stunning breakdown in discipline for a party whose secret weapon used to be unity.
Warring Tories need to lay down their arms quick smart and rally behind the best Prime Minister they’ve got.
Trevor Kavanagh
To quote John Major, a previously embattled Tory PM, they have turned into a “circular firing squad”.
After 12 years in government, endless war over Brexit, the pandemic and now inflation, the party is exhausted and reckless. Amid the bloodshed there is nostalgia for different times.
As the booze flowed in Birmingham on the eve of Lis Truss’s speech, gloomy ministers, MPs and delegates with “buyer’s remorse” pondered how to “bring back Boris”.
Too late, folks. You have knifed the only leader who might have saved your bacon.
What Liz Truss is offering, like it or not, is your last chance to step back from the abyss, hold your nerve until Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s growth agenda starts bearing fruit.
Within two years inflation will be under control, the pound strengthened and, with the EU in worse economic trouble, the UK will, to quote a City wizard, be the “best looking pig in the abattoir”.
Warring Tories need to lay down their arms quick smart and rally behind the best Prime Minister they’ve got. Otherwise they face slaughter at the next election.