With the usual speech and visuals from No 10’s steps delayed by 24 hours thanks to the Queen’s ‘episodic mobility issues’, the tabloids had to settle for Truss smiling broadly after defeating Rishi Sunak to take the crown Tory and later to become Britain’s. fourth prime minister in six years. The Mail claims there has been no prime minister since Thatcher faced a “tougher environment”. Put the headline “The time is coming, the woman is coming…” over a photo of Truss roaring at the press cameras. One or two of the newspapers are already on nominal terms with the new prime minister. “Liz is putting her foot on the gas,” says Sun, as she gives a cute introduction to our new leader. The Metro dive is ‘Liz: I will deliver’ and says it has a ‘bold plan’ to tackle the cost of living crisis and the NHS. The Guardian strikes a more skeptical tone with its lead headline, which poses a question to the incoming prime minister: “Trusha wins – but can he avert the looming crisis?” She notes that she will fill her locker with loyalists, meaning there is no place for the defeated Sunak. It also says there is likely to be no white person in the top four offices of state for the first time with Truss herself, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, James Cleverly in the Foreign Office and Suella Braverman in the Home Office topping the list. club. “Straight to business” says the Times’ front page headline above a story predicting Truss will freeze energy bills above a certain level in order to prevent “widespread hardship and bankruptcies”. The Financial Times reports that protecting people from high energy costs will be very expensive – “£100bn Energy Plan”. The Telegraph appears to go further and say bills may not rise for a few more years under Truss’ “vision for the office”. “Energy bills will freeze until the next election,” she says, also mentioning on the front that Truss is being asked to make Penny Mordant her deputy. The Express urges us to ‘Trust in the Truss to deliver for Britain’. If that rally call sounds a little tired after the upheavals of recent years, the Mirror has no doubt. “The same old Tories,” he says below a montage of the four Tory prime ministers of the past decade, who the paper says have “destroyed the economy, destroyed our public services, left millions worse off”. The Daily Record doesn’t stop there and says that because Truss won the votes of only 50 Tory MPs at the start of the leadership election, and less than half the votes of Tory members, she should “call a general election now”.
