A house divided against itself…

Honestly, what to say. It has been a rough old time for the party of Government in Birmingham. Attendance was visibly limited, the mood stretched between flat (Ministers), despairing (backbenchers) and incredulous (journalists). Tory MPs, who aren’t on the payroll, were barely in evidence. Here are some on-the-ground reflections…

The unedifying U-turn over the 45p tax rate is significant in a way that goes far beyond fiscal policy. The insurgency against the original decision, led by Michael Gove, shows that the Government’s majority is no longer secure. On controversial issues, we are now effectively in a hung Parliament. That will have all sorts of implications for legislation expected in this Parliamentary session – some of them unpredictable as party discipline breaks down. That will in turn make the job of governance harder as policy development within the civil service slows.

We can’t ignore the polling. It coloured most of the conversations I had about the political outlook. The new No 10 team expected a bounce as they assumed office – and the action to support domestic energy bills for the next two years, at huge expense, should probably have reinforced that. But it simply hasn’t happened – Labour has record leads with virtually every pollster. And when that happens, power and authority drains away from the centre of government.

I’ve written before about Liz Truss being undefined in the public mind when she came to office. That’s no longer the case. Her speech today is actually a powerful demonstration of that – by arguing effectively that disruption is the price of growth, she’s already having to justify the obviously rocky start her administration has made. Putting it politely, this is not the position her aides envisaged less than a month ago. The speech was short precisely because, in an error-strewn week, Downing Street wanted to limit the chance of any further damage.?

And somehow, the Tories have made one of Labour’s strategic weaknesses under Keir Starmer – bluntly, he’s a bit boring – into a virtue. For a lot of people, and an awful lot of businesses, a dull period of relative calm is beginning to look increasingly attractive.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Either – and it looks unlikely – the PM puts the mess behind her and mobilises the government with a unity of purpose and real evidence of economic growth, or Abraham Lincoln gets proved abundantly right at the next election.

Paul Harrison, Senior Counsel and former Downing Street Press Secretary?