Does Liz Truss know that she isn’t president of the UK?

Her ideas and plans are not embraced by most of her colleagues, and if there is anything anyone ought to have learned over the past 12 years, it’s that Tory MPs enjoy the taste of blood, writes Marie Le Conte

There is a prime minister in Britain – Liz Truss, you may have heard of her – but there is not a president (AP)

Listen, no one wants to start their column with a quote in Latin. This isn’t The Spectator. I’m not some 174-year-old man sitting in an armchair having port for breakfast, about to argue in favour of something related to Brexit or possibly the Roundheads.

Well, not yet at least – you never know what life has in store for you.

Still, I’m afraid I must start this piece with the words that have been rattling around my head for the past month whenever I have read or heard anything about the way Liz Truss is handling her premiership. It is – and I must apologise once more – a Latin phrase.

It’s primus inter pares. Primus inter pares! It will not leave my brain. It means (if you are less insufferable than I am) “first among equals”.

According to the internet, which can be trusted on these things: “The political title prime minister originally meant that its bearer was the foremost minister of a ruling monarch, and so merely primus inter pares among government ministers or the cabinet rather than head of government.”

Or, to be more concise: this isn’t France. There is a prime minister in Britain – Liz Truss, you may have heard of her – but there is not a president. This is a parliamentary democracy. Truss derives her power from her ability to command a majority in the House of Commons, as the leader of the largest party in said House. Nothing more; nothing less.

I know, I know: you know all this, and you probably don’t take kindly to a foreigner sounding like she thinks that you don’t. In my defence, it’s not you I’m worried about. It’s her. Does Truss know she is not president?

She became prime minister without the support of even half of her parliamentary party. She won the membership vote with the slimmest margin since the new system was put in place. She is the most radically ideological Conservative leader the party has seen in decades. Even with the best will in all the world, this was never going to be an easy play.

Amazingly, she seemed to be oblivious to this until very recently. Newspapers reported over the weekend that she will begin a charm offensive on Conservative MPs in the coming days and weeks. It beggars belief that this approach did not begin sometime in August, before she’d even formally won.

Her ideas and plans are not embraced by most of her colleagues, and if there is anything anyone ought to have learned over the past 12 years, it’s that Tory MPs enjoy the taste of blood.

Speaking of which – if there is anything she could stand to learn from one of her predecessors, it is that no man is an island.

Two years ago nearly to the day I wrote a piece on Boris Johnson’s belligerent No 10 operation – how time flies! – and spoke to a former special adviser of his. “David Cameron used to say, ‘I want to get the secretary of state and the special advisers in here to dip their hands in the blood’,” they told me at the time.

As the person who had to fight to get his party into shape, and then into government, Cameron knew that bringing people into the tent wasn’t solely good in the abstract. It also helped spread the blame whenever there was blame to go around, which was often. Truss should know this first hand; she was no Cameron politically, yet joined the cabinet during his premiership.

The problem, however, is that Truss’s hands are tied by the rigidity of her beliefs. Cameron could afford to have a cabinet that spanned the parliamentary party as he was ideologically malleable. She is not.

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If she wants to achieve what she got into politics to do, she does need a team that sincerely agrees with her. As a result, the reshuffle put her in an impossible position; promoting allies was the only way she could be the prime minister she told the members she would be, but doing so was always going to alienate her benches.

That is where the fundamental tension at the heart of her premiership lies. She must stand alone in order to deliver on what she promised, but she cannot deliver if she stands alone in her parliamentary party.

In short: she ran a presidential campaign in a parliamentary system. It could have worked in opposition or in a party with fewer MPs, but it was always going to be untenable in current circumstances.

She can wine and dine her MPs all she likes and it may well buy her a few months but, let’s be honest: her project had failed before it’d even begun.