The new prime minister’s aversion to state intervention flies in the face of her supposed pragmatism: there’s trouble ahead
Liz Truss enters Downing Street unencumbered by much expectation of success. Even the party that picked her is full of people whose first choice was someone else. Many of them think it should be the man she is replacing – the one who was discarded as a venal liar and an electoral liability.
Boris Johnson has a stake in Truss’s failure. The worse things get in his absence, the fonder he imagines the nation’s hearts will grow for him. He says he will support the new government “every step of the way” but he says all kinds of things. He once said there were no lockdown parties in Downing Street.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
