The rise and rise of Liz Truss – is she Rishi Sunak’s rival?

Foreign secretary is a great office of state and gives Truss that status, while her retention of the women and equalities brief gives her the licence to speak out about domestic policy, writes John Rentoul

If Boris Johnson were likely to cease being prime minister soon, Liz Truss’s promotion to foreign secretary might have been read as the start of a contest for the succession between her and Rishi Sunak.

The timing is striking, just days after she signalled her opposition to the tax rise for the NHS and social care, underlining her low-tax credentials – the mantle misleadingly known as “Thatcherite”; misleading because Margaret Thatcher put taxes up, at least to start with, because she also believed in balancing the government’s books.

At last week’s cabinet meeting to approve the tax rise, I understand that Truss suggested that the money could be found from borrowing, which prompted the chancellor, her rival for the “Thatcherite” label, to say that he “could not believe” that anyone would suggest even higher borrowing.

What is striking about the reshuffle is that the prime minister obviously didn’t think that her doubts about the tax rise ruled her out of a promotion on which he had presumably already decided. Perhaps he genuinely thinks she will be a better foreign secretary than Dominic Raab. That’s not unreasonable, given that she seems to like talking to foreign leaders, having been around the world signing trade deals, while Raab was criticised for failing to talk to leaders of Pakistan and the former Soviet central Asian republics before the fall of Kabul.

It is easy for Remainers to mock Truss’s trade deals, most of which are simple copy-and-paste texts from the arrangements we had through the EU, but Conservative Party members love the energy and the flag-waving. So much so that they have completely forgotten that she voted to stay in the EU five years ago.

Her efforts to sign deals that keep things the same do at least suggest that she has a basic grasp of economic diplomacy, which will help in the Foreign Office.

She has taken office at a good time, finding herself on the front bench in the House of Commons on her first day, sitting next to the prime minister as he announced a new security pact between the UK, US and Australia. Given that it involves the Australians reneging on a deal with France, this is an important post-Brexit foreign policy turn. And if the Aukus pact is aimed at China, it fits well with Truss’s hawkishness towards Beijing.

It also allowed Johnson to present his new foreign secretary as his new best friend, when he was asked a question about trade with the Gulf states. “I think I’m right in saying, and my right honourable friend the foreign secretary will correct me, that the Gulf is our single fastest growing market,” he said.

“That’s right,” she replied.

“It is; it is.” The prime minister seemed delighted to have got a factual statement right at the despatch box.

It may be cynical to see Truss’s promotion in these terms, but there is no doubt that Johnson, having appointed Sunak because he thought he would be pliable, has grown increasingly alarmed by the chancellor’s popularity. Some Conservative MPs have been a little too free with the opinion that the party is well placed for the future because, if Johnson’s vote-winning jollity begins to pall, they could put a ready-made back-up prime minister into No 10 at a moment’s notice.

Journalists were briefed that this reshuffle was about putting together the team to unite and level up the country; it was also about levelling up the prime minister’s jostling would-be successors.

In one of the previous rounds of reshuffle speculation, a well-placed Conservative even speculated to me that Johnson might move Sunak to the Foreign Office – the first thought of prime ministers troubled by overmighty chancellors and one of the persistent subplots of the Blair-Brown years. “That’s a good way of killing their chances of getting to No 10,” I was told, before this person remembered what Theresa May did to Johnson.

Foreign secretary is a great office of state and gives Truss that status, while her retention of the women and equalities brief gives her the licence to speak out about domestic policy.

In that sense, the reshuffle was entirely traditional, as a prime minister sought to build up one of his rivalrous ministers at the expense of another. Although Truss is ridiculously popular with Tory party members, when they were asked in July who should actually be the next leader of the party after Johnson, Sunak came top on 31 per cent, with Truss some way behind on 12 per cent (and Penny Mordaunt, just moved sideways from paymaster general to a junior post at international trade), third on 11 per cent.

This reshuffle seems intended to tilt that balance of power in the cabinet, lifting Truss up at a time when Sunak is likely to lose some of his credit with both voters and Tory party members by taking difficult decisions on tax.

All of which could be really interesting, except that I suspect Johnson is going to continue as prime minister for some years to come, by which time everything in politics will have changed again.