Little did they know that their sense of joy was to be short-lived. With just a few hours of prime ministerial experience behind her, Truss found herself leading the nation through a period of mourning following the Queen’s death on Thursday afternoon. However, in the few days before all government business was effectively suspended, Truss was not idle. He managed to complete a relatively uneventful cabinet reshuffle, announce a £100-150bn energy bill relief package and replace almost all of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street business. Truss had obviously prepared to a high degree, as it was obvious that she would triumph over her opponent, Rishi Sunak. In the last three weeks of the campaign, she spent much of her time planning the government with a group of close aides at her Chevening retreat. Johnson chose to approach his cabinet from the executive branch in his first days as prime minister, summoning them to his Commons office, resigning their services and leaving shocked and sometimes tearful former ministers to head to his Palace forecourt afterwards. Westminster, where journalists captured their expressions. . However, Truss had a lot of the logistics sorted out before she even entered No 10. She was also a diplomat. Phone conversations became awkward in the last week to prepare those leaving. Seat negotiations for ambitious leadership challengers took place over a period of days, sometimes weeks, beforehand, ensuring there would be no confrontations in No 10 to set tongues wagging. Two of the square pegs that Truss had the hardest time fitting into were her leading rivals Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt. Badenoch wanted to take the post of culture secretary and Mordaunt turned down the post of party chairman. Friends of Mordaud, who was a close third to Truss and suffered a damaging campaign against her backed by her supporters, said she hoped to become foreign secretary. But Truss has chosen to place her most ambitious potential challengers in low-key positions with little chance of building a meaningful policy profile. “If you’re Liz, you don’t want Kemi in the Telegraph every week with juicy ideas,” remarked one Truss-backed MP. “She’s obviously more of a future prospect for the party than Penny or Zuela [Braverman, the home secretary] now.” The reshuffle began publicly on Tuesday, but appointments continued late into the night, largely due to calls between Truss and foreign leaders, most notably US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden took the moment to highlight US warnings about the Northern Ireland protocol. A White House reading referred to countries’ “shared commitment to protect the gains of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and the importance of reaching a negotiated agreement with the European Union on the Northern Ireland Protocol”. The UK reading included the same detail. Truss finished around midnight, but aides said she was back in her office by 6 a.m., preparing for cabinet. As for her opponents, most of Sunak’s most prominent supporters were on the Commons roof after losing the leadership contest on Monday. Outgoing ministers including Grant Shapps, George Eustice and Steve Barclay bought rounds of farewell drinks for their staff before they were even officially told they were out. Shapps was one of the few ministers supporting Sunak to fight back to try to keep his department, having spent the summer making a series of strike announcements. But he was kicked out along with everyone else. the only survivor was Robert Buckland as Welsh Secretary. He had changed tactical sides during the match. Buckland had hoped to return to the Justice Department, where he had served before Johnson quit, but was appeased by a promise to revise the Bill of Rights, about which he had serious concerns. In contrast to the packed Sunak gang, there was a big smile on Keir Starmer’s face as he took to the roof late on Monday afternoon for a rare appearance with his aides and a gang of MPs leaving a meeting. Upon arrival, Starmer was heckled by Conservative MPs, two of whom jokingly congratulated him on winning the next election. Two former ministers expressed dismay at the party’s future, with one saying throwing himself into the Thames was an equally attractive prospect. A sitting minister said they were worried a mass purge of Sunak’s supporters would entrench divisions in the party. They said there was widespread concern that Truss would run her government in a similar style to Johnson, forced to make U-turns and with a “shelter mentality” that alienated critics. “If I were Liz, I’d watch out for those who went up with her because it’s Boris all the time, because the diet will never be the same as their real one,” the minister said, in a veiled reference to her appointment. of Jacob Rees-Mogg, a close ally of Truss’s predecessor. A former minister said they felt a new freedom to speak their mind with the election of Truss. They said: “In the end I was very loyal to the government, I think, and now there are things I want to say that I don’t agree with and a lot of people feel that way now.” Another said the more widespread concern about Tras’s election was exacerbated by the narrower-than-expected margin by which she beat Sunak, pointing out that fewer than 30 MPs had publicly backed her in the first round of voting. “In my life I have never seen a prime minister come with lower political capital.” But those who suffered the biggest shock were not Sunak’s failed backers in the cabinet, but Johnson-era Downing Street staff, many of whom expected to remain under Truss – or at least had asked. Political advisers received an email as Johnson left Downing Street telling them to clear their offices by 9.30am. Truss’ team also made it clear they would scrap Johnson’s No 10 reforms and at least 40 civil servants were told directly about their new roles in the Cabinet Office. Even David Canzini, a former colleague of Trus’ new chief of staff Mark Fullbrook and a firm Brexiter, was not invited to stay. Truss will now face a break in her plans for the government, using the time to take stock and work out the details of her energy rescue package – which was published without an explanation of how it will be funded. When business returns after 10 days of national mourning culminating in the Queen’s funeral, Truss will have a lot to do in a compressed time frame, from a visit to the UN general assembly and an emergency budget, to a series of policy announcements that would be expected at her first party conference. Politics may not be as frenzied as normal this autumn, but the new prime minister’s profile is still on the rise, with her government bracing for a financial crisis, potential energy shortages and an NHS on its knees before too long.
