PMQs: Rishi Sunak grilled on Liz Truss time as Prime Minister
On this day one year ago, Prime Minister Liz Truss stood at a lectern in front of Number 10 to announce she had accepted the Queen’s invitation to form a Government.
A lot has changed since then – party political polling not included.
The scandals that sealed Boris Johnson’s fate saw Labour claw a decade-record 14-point lead over the Conservatives in the weeks before he left office.
Despite assuring the public she would “ride out the storm” alongside them, within 49 days, she was gone.
With an eye to next year’s general election, Express.co.uk takes a look back at a year in the polls.
POLL: Is Rishi Sunak doing a good job as Prime Minister?
Tory fortunes
Ms Truss’s “bold plan” to reform the economy – centred on a £45billion package of unfunded tax cuts – sent the pound crashing, interest rates soaring and forced an unprecedented intervention by the Bank of England on the bond markets.
The first polling results to come out after the so-called mini-budget – from YouGov on September 27 – put the Opposition ahead by 17 points, the largest-ever lead recorded by the pollster at the time.
Rishi Sunak took over on a pledge to fix her mistakes and restore stability. At its widest, the gulf to Labour reached 26 points in December, as he struggled to get to grips with inflation, energy bills and an NHS in crisis.
Although undoubtedly steadier than it was in 2022, despite also claiming his Government would have “integrity, professionalism and accountability”, the Tory boat has been rocked repeatedly by high-profile gaffes. In January, Nadhim Zahawi was dumped as Conservative Chairman for a “serious breach” of the ministerial code over his taxes. In April, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab was ousted after months of pressure over bullying allegations.
Just this week, as the furore over unsafe concrete in schools reached fever pitch, Education Secretary was caught giving an expletive-laden rant, deemed a “damning indictment” of the Prime Minister. The latest Ipsos Political Monitor puts the Tories 17-points behind Labour, at 28 to 45 percent of the vote.
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Can’t get no satisfaction
Despite executive power being shared among Cabinet, perceptions of the leader as an individual are proving increasingly important.
Just before leaving office, Ms Truss had a net satisfaction score – the amount of people polled who approved minus those who disapproved – of -51 percent, with just 16 percent of the public convinced she was doing a good job in charge.
While her successor’s satisfaction rate has hovered around 30 percent throughout the year, those unhappy with his performance shot from 37 percent last November to 63 percent this July.
Dissatisfaction with Sir Keir Starmer has gone up too – from 42 to 53 percent over the same period.
To the question of who would make the most capable Prime Minister, however, in July Sir Keir crept ahead of the incumbent for the first time since January – by 36 to 31 percent.
Commons composition
Whatever the public mood at the time, Ms Truss inherited her predecessor’s undeniable mandate off the back of the landslide 2019 general election victory.
From the 357 seats occupied by Conservative MPs at the time she entered Downing Street a year ago, the Party is now down to 352.
Mr Johnson resigned back in June ahead of the release of the Privileges Committee report into Partygate, Nadine Dorries vacated her Mid-Bedfordshire seat in August amid mounting criticism over absences and David Warburton stood down in June facing allegations of drug use and sexual assault.
While the Tories held on to the former Prime Minister’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency – buoyed by the ULEZ row – they faced thumping defeats in the two other by-elections this summer. Labour’s Keith Mather overturned a 20,000-seat majority to become the new MP for Selby and Ainsty.
According to the latest prediction by Electoral Calculus, based on surveys taken throughout August, Labour is expected to pick up a majority of 178 seats at the next general election, with just under 200 Conservative MPs expected to be booted out.
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