By Lennon Airey (Levelling-up Correspondent)
Edited by Albie Armitage (Politics Editor)
Just when the Conservative Leadership contest seemed to have a predictable outcome, supposed front runner and current Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss was met with backlash from various Conservative MPs due to her plan to reform the Civil Service. The plan would lead to savings of a reported £8.8 billion for the government as it anticipates a recession until 2024. However, despite the promising figure, the proposed policy was met with backlash due to the civil service pay cuts that would have to occur in order to reach these savings. It begs the question: is the foreign secretary really in touch with the British workers if, during a cost-of-living crisis, she plans to make a real-terms pay cut for 480,000 Civil Servants?
It is officially crunch time for the wannabes for the keys to Number 10, with Sunak and Truss debating about issues such as fiscal policy, culture wars and, of course, restoring trust back into Westminster. Yet, what seems to have been very much missing from a lot of these debates are the recent strikes; with members of the Criminal Bar, UK Rail and so many more currently dissatisfied with their pay. With the current occupants of 10 and 11 Downing Street being MIA, these strikes are gaining serious notoriety especially with the backdrop of energy bill hikes and a forecasted recession. Surely, either of these Conservative candidates should be latching onto this, making it their aim to find a balance between creating a country based around that important word of ‘growth’ and paying its workers properly.
Instead, in recent weeks, Liz Truss, the current favourite in the polls, had set a plan to cut £8.8 billion of government spending on the Civil Service. The foreign secretary had proposed creating “regional pay boards” to set civil service salaries. Simultaneously, whenever a government cuts spending in one area to generate more money for others - something has got to give, most commonly wages. As a result, many members of the conservative and opposition parties alike have criticised this policy as these pay boards would likely lead to pay cuts in areas that were previously targets of the “Levelling-up” campaign. Also, a substantial quantity of these areas that would suffer the greatest cuts are the traditional Red Wall constituencies that turned Blue in 2019, with many MPs in those seats fearful that their constituents may revert to Labour in the 2024 General Election. In fact, “Red wall” MPs including Jacob Young, and Richard Holden had also raised alarm at the policy announced overnight, as well as the former cabinet minister Simon Hart, who said it would amount to cuts of nearly £3,000 for workers in Wales.
This proposed policy was met with anxiety and understandable frustration, with the policy appearing to be completely dismissive of the Cost-of-Living Crisis that the UK is enduring. In the UK, energy bills could more than double to £4,200 a year by January after Ofgem announced changes to the price cap, with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling for Boris Johnson and the Tory Leadership candidates to agree an immediate emergency budget tackling the spiralling cost of living, stating, “We’ve only got 7 weeks to go until October and people will go hungry and cold in October, so action should not wait for another month or two, it should be taken now”. This not only iterates the prudency of action on the cost-of-living crisis but also highlights the fact that a pay cut in the Civil Service would be utterly crippling for so many families as we approach winter.
Another major question that arose from the proposed plan, until it was scrapped only days later, was how the future of levelling up would fair, with regional areas being funded significantly less than major cities, with Teesside mayor, Ben Houchen, a popular figure within the party and a Sunak backer, saying he was “speechless” at the policy, which he said would work against the flagship Conservative policy of levelling up.
Now, the policy has since been abandoned. Just to repeat, the policy has now been abandoned, in what acts another U Turn in the political career of the favourite to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. This is not an anomaly. Looking back through Liz Truss’s political career, some of her harshest critics would suggest that she ‘goes with the wind’ in order to pick up votes. For starters, in the 1990’s, she was a proud Liberal Democrat, who stood strong in her desires for the abolition of the monarchy. She is now a Conservative Minister who supports the monarchy in Britain. As Foreign Secretary, she supported Brits fighting in Ukraine, she then back pedalled on that and later did not support British volunteers in Ukraine. And, rather significantly, Truss was an avid Remainer in the 2016 Brexit Referendum, yet as of 2022, is a staunch Brexiteer. Collectively, what does this truly show about the favourite to become the Prime Minister? The Civil Service plan is another to add to the ever-increasing list.
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