Can it really only be a little over six weeks since Boris Johnson walked out of Number 10 for the last time and declared “Well this it folks” ?
He did so in front of an amassed media, flanked by loyal Downing Street staff on one side and his family and political supporters on the other.
It was a spectacle, in the best sense of the word.
A moment befitting someone who had held the highest office in the land through some of the most turbulent times in living memory.
The game was up.
He had some quibbles about the rules, but he knew his time had come.
Knowing when to go in politics is a skill so often absent from our leaders.
Primarily because of the hubris, confidence and resilience they have to develop in order to get to the top.
It numbs them to such an extent that the antennae required to measure emotional intelligence stop working.
The longer you sit in your bunker working on a survival strategy, the more distant you become from the people who hold your future in their hands.
Liz Truss survived PMQs – this time
I was asked on the radio this week what advice I’d give Liz Truss ahead of what was expected to be a bruising, if not final, outing at Prime Minister’s Questions this week.
In a sisterly fashion, I suggested she had to ditch the script and the advisors, the big book of answers and lines to take, and just basically come out swinging.
She finds herself in the unique position of the public knowing little to nothing about her – but having also determined they know enough.
They know she is weak.
That the ideology that has guided her politics for the last two decades is a busted flush.
That she cannot hold a line for toffee, let alone command the House of Commons and the country it represents.
If ever there was a time to just show us who she is and what she is made of then this was it.
And that’s largely what happened at Prime Minister’s Questions.
She survived it, giving the most confident and assured of the three performances she has given as PM at that dispatch box.
Might it still be her last?
Backers and applause – can Liz Truss make a Boris-style exit?
The difference between Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, is that despite all the scandal and controversy of his government, there was a body of people who wanted him to keep going.
Many of these people were the folk who were elected off the back of the mandate he got from the British people in a general election.
A democratic event which gave him an 80-seat majority and a mandate.
He was popular, until he was not.
If Boris Johnson had roots like an old oak tree to anchor him from the prevailing winds, Liz is little more than a tall poppy.
A flower with a short bloom that turns into a husk through autumn and winter.
It is difficult to imagine PM Truss magnanimously leaving Downing Street, toasting her record and departing to cheers and applause.
It’s perhaps because it’s so hard to picture that it hasn’t happened yet.
A British newspaper has started a live stream on YouTube of Liz Truss’s photo next to a lettuce to see which one lasts longer. I do love this country’s sense of humo(u)r. pic.twitter.com/nVpbozX3OP
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) October 14, 2022
The governing party seems to be in paralysis.
It clearly agrees that she must go but doesn’t know how.
Is a dignified exit possible?
Of course, many will say she’s undeserving of any ceremony, given the catastrophe of the past fortnight alone adding £60 billion to government debt.
That rather misses the point though, now that the promise of a safe passage to the other side may be the only way to coax her out the door.
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