Why 2022 was the most dramatic political year I can remember

I saw up close the fall of Margaret Thatcher, the rise and fall of Tony Blair, the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, the pandemic and war in Europe. Yet domestic politics in 2022 trumped all of it, writes Andrew Grice

As well as three PMs, we had four chancellors, five education secretaries and a partridge in a pear tree (PA)

The past 12 months has been the most dramatic year of my 41 with a ringside seat at Westminster. I have seen up close the fall of Margaret Thatcher, the rise and fall of Tony Blair and the 2008 financial crisis. I thought Brexit would be the biggest event I would witness, but then came the pandemic and war in Europe.

Yet domestic politics in 2022 trumped all of it. As well as three PMs, we had four chancellors, five education secretaries (including the 48-hour tenure of Michelle Donelan) and a partridge in a pear tree. I remember losing count of the 60 resignations from Johnson’s government as his MPs finally lost patience with his lies and incompetence.

I think of Nadhim Zahawi, who I had tipped (wrongly) as a dark horse for the leadership (he ran but fell at the first hurdle). He became Johnson’s chancellor when Rishi Sunak resigned. The next day he told Johnson to resign. Then Zahawi backed Truss. Later, when she quit, he backed Johnson’s bid to return, just as he dropped it. Then – shock news – Zahawi backed Sunak, the last runner standing, and is now Tory chair. The Zahawi farce sums up the year.

As the Tories pause for breath under the relative stability Sunak has brought, they debate whether was it inevitable that Johnson and Truss failed. Could a better Downing Street operation have rescued them, as some allies of both former leaders believe? I don’t think so. Their own character flaws killed both premierships.

Johnson had three staffing regimes in No 10 but none could save him from himself. After getting Brexit over the line and a thumping election victory, one close ally told me, he didn’t really know what he wanted to do next. When he focused, as on Ukraine, he was effective. But he couldn’t replicate that on domestic policy.

He was brought down by “three Ps” of his own making: Paterson, Partygate and Pincher. Johnson’s approach since his time as a journalist was to think he would always get away with it, that any media storm would soon blow over. Eventually, he was proved wrong on both counts.

Johnson is unrepentant. He believes his party made a terrible mistake in ousting him and will soon realise the error of its ways. In 2023, to be precise. Unless Sunak can close the opinion poll gap, Johnson will run his flag up the leadership pole again. Friends insist he can still lead the Tories into a 2024 election. I doubt it. Grassroots Tory members still love him but voters do not and the party’s MPs know it.

Two books were published in 2022 with “the fall” of Johnson in the title, by Andrew Gimson and Sebastian Payne.

Then Out of the Blue: The Astonishing Rise of Liz Truss by Harry Cole and James Heale, was transmogrified as they wrote it into The Unexpected Rise and Rapid Fall of Liz Truss.

The shortest premiership in UK history – 49 days – trumped all the other events I have witnessed for drama. Like Johnson, Truss had always been an insurgent. She didn’t blow up during her 10 years as a minister because there was always someone above her to stop her. When she reached the top, there was no one.

There was hubris after her victory over Sunak. She excluded his supporters from her cabinet, a mistake that returned to haunt her; she had few allies when she needed them. Her marginalisation of the Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility helped to destabilise the financial markets.

Truss told her inner circle she had only two years and was not going to waste a moment. But the Queen’s death, two days after she became PM, unexpectedly gave Truss too much time to think. She and Kwasi Kwarteng adorned his forthcoming mini-Budget with so many extra measures that her aides would later call it a “Christmas tree”.

She dropped a planned public spending review, with cuts of up to 10 per cent in departmental budgets, that might have reassured the markets. Crucially, Truss excluded from the mini-Budget debate the outside economic advisers who had warned her about likely market turmoil, her policy staff and the communications advisers who had rescued her wooden leadership campaign. The markets were spooked, Truss was forced to abandon most of her unfunded tax cuts and even her friend Kwarteng. As he then told her, the end for her was nigh.

Truss, too, is unrepentant. Her admirers believe her tax-cutting, pro-growth agenda will return – under a better communicator. I think it’s dead for a generation. If, as expected, the Tories lose the next election, the permanent damage – for example, higher mortgage payments – left by the Truss experiment will be blamed. If the Tories retain power, Sunak will get the credit for ditching her “fantasy economics” and clearing up her mess.

This year had a fin de siecle feel as in power palpably began to shift from the Tories to Labour. That will probably continue in 2023. It can’t possibly be as turbulent as 2022... or can it?