Five takeaways from Liz Truss’s Tory party conference speech

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Liz Truss’s first – and perhaps, she might secretly fear, only – leader’s speech to the Conservative conference was short on new ideas or policies. But there was, nonetheless, a lot of content to pick over. Here are five key elements:

Truss is by no means the first leader to channel their inner Tony Blair to make a point, and she used it dispel any doubt that a rocky last fortnight will put her off her self-stated mission to cut taxes, something she called the “right thing to do morally and economically”.

The most significant chunk of the address was devoted to this: a re-statement of the belief instilled in Truss with the help of rightwing thinktanks such as the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a belief brought into action by the recent mini-budget.

Yes, the panicked reaction of markets to the unfunded tax cuts might have forced a part-reversal on one element, the 45p tax rate, but this was Truss seeking to reassure the Tory faithful in the hall, who elected her as a cutter of taxes and slasher of regulations, that she still keeps the faith.

Saying that you are all about free enterprise and economic growth is the easy bit. Delivering it, especially in a maximum two-year window before the next election, is much more tricky, and this was where Truss’s speech was more sparse.

Her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and other ministers are under intense pressure to find economy-stoking schemes, but are simultaneously limited both by constraints on public spending and also political blocks to some of the most obvious ways to boost growth, for example easing trade with the EU, and allowing more overseas workers.

Housing will be a particular test case. Truss, like virtually all UK party leaders, heads an organisation theoretically intent on building new homes while also being notably timid in deciding how and where this could actually happen. Given Truss’s only real housing policy so far has been to abolish homebuilding targets, she feels unlikely to buck the trend.

If the speech gave us no new policies, it did give us a fresh rhetorical framing for Truss’s rush-for-growth – as a distinctly Brexit-reminiscent battle between plucky, patriotic reformers and a cabal of liberal, urban elitist naysayers.

Many of the supposed foes of growth are also familiar from the Brexit wars, including Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP, plus the podcasting, thinktank types who “taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio”.

Clearly very taken with the idea of “the anti-growth coalition”, using it six times in the speech, Truss will hope she can, again as with Brexit, enlist some culture war energy into what risks otherwise being a somewhat dry economic debate. Time will tell if the idea catches on.

In just under a month as prime minister, Truss has helped push sterling to a record low, increase the cost of government debt, made millions of people’s mortgages more expensive, required emergency Bank of England support to save pension funds, carried out at least two U-turns with several others expected, seen Labour’s poll lead reach 30 percentage points, and oversee what appears to outsiders a near-complete breakdown of cabinet and MP discipline.

But, rather than appear contrite, Truss made only this one direct mention of her recent political travails, and even that used near-identical wording to when the 45p policy was reversed, by early morning tweet, on Monday.

Some of this is Truss’s character. She is known for her extreme reluctance to admit fault, which can be seen as either an asset or a weakness, depending on your view of her. But it was also deliberate. Truss and her speechwriters were always expected to cast matters forwards, to try to shake off the turbulent first weeks as a blip. Once again, only time will tell if it works.

This mere snippet near the beginning of the speech might have seemed to many little more than a comforting repetition of a few culture war buzzwords to warm up the audience, but it contains the seeds of much bigger battles to come.

The mention of “two-for-one offers” is a clear reference to Truss’s apparent decision to ditch Boris Johnson’s tentative moves to improve public health by tackling the ubiquity of junk food, ideas loathed by Truss and her associated thinktankers.

This is a vignette of the wider disagreement within the Tory party between the small-state Trussites and those who take the more statist approach of Johnson. And the divide goes way beyond junk food – the environment, levelling up, benefits, wider public spending. It is set to be quite the battle.