The government is more worried about its image than helping people with energy bills

Liz Truss is more interested in ‘tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts’ than reassuring millions of desperately worried people that more help is on its way

Martin Lewis had the right idea in suggesting that Johnson, Sunak and Truss should meet (Reuters/PA/Getty/iStock)

Boris Johnson’s declaration that he is “absolutely certain” his successor will provide more help with rocketing energy bills does not disguise the Conservatives’ failure to grasp the scale of the cost of living crisis. They are more interested in their own image with the public than helping them.

I am told the government is planning a £20m advertising campaign to publicise their (inadequate) measures to help struggling households. The move has raised eyebrows in Whitehall; officials privately think it pushes the boundaries of what a caretaker administration should be doing, and that the money might be better spent on payments to families.

Although the campaign is said to have been approved by the Cabinet Office, one insider said: “It’s highly political. It raises questions of propriety. It’s not what the government should be doing at this time. It contradicts the noises from some ministers about finding efficiency savings.”

It’s the same story in the Tory leadership election. Liz Truss is more interested in her three-point plan for the narrow selectorate of 160,000 party members – “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts” – than reassuring millions of desperately worried people that more help is on its way. She dismissed “handouts” as “Gordon Brown economics” – taking money in tax with one hand and giving some of it back with another.

Yet, the former prime minister, the CBI director-general Tony Danker and money-saving expert Martin Lewis had the right idea in suggesting that Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Truss should meet and agree on at least some new measures, so public fears would be partly allayed. Johnson could have made it happen but is not interested, hiding behind the excuse that his government cannot now take major fiscal decisions.

Sunak, who would boost direct payments to low-income households if he became prime minister, is open to the idea of talks, while admitting differences with Truss. But she dismissed the idea as “bizarre” at last night’s hustings in Darlington; she would rather play her tax card.

Truss claims to be a flexible politician but her stubbornness on the cost of living crisis proves she is the Johnson continuity candidate – but not in a positive way. The outgoing PM often damaged his standing amongst the public and Tory MPs by changing tack slowly and grudgingly. Truss should remember the maxim that “if you are going to U-turn, do it quickly”.

A change of heart in favour of more direct payments is inevitable; the only question is whether she does it during or after the leadership contest. Some Truss supporters, including Sajid Javid, are urging her to act swiftly. Her ally James Cleverly told BBC Radio 4 she is looking at announcing “targeted help” as PM next month.

Behind closed Whitehall doors, a superficially quiet August is anything but. Civil servants beaver away on how to turn the two candidates’ ideas into policy. One insider told me that if Truss became PM, a “cold dose of reality” on energy bills would quickly force her to extend the direct payments to low-income groups announced by Sunak in May. His £15bn package was based on average domestic bills rising to £2,800 a year. Whitehall estimates suggest bills will increase to about £3,500 in October and £4,200 January, in line with the forecasts from Cornwall Insight. This blows a hole in Truss’ claim that we don’t know what the figures will be. (The October figure will be confirmed by the energy regulator Ofgem on 26 August.)

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I’m told Whitehall will have more bad news for the incoming PM. The £30bn of fiscal headroom on which Truss’ plans are built has shrunk since it was estimated in March and her proposed tax cuts would mean breaking fiscal rules promised in the 2019 Tory manifesto, notably balancing revenue and day-to-day spending by 2024-25. This would be awkward for Truss, who has repeatedly attacked Sunak for breaching the manifesto by raising national insurance contributions.

Truss will doubtless dismiss such warnings as more “doom and gloom” from a “Whitehall blob” she is ready to take on. Some allies even suggest privately an “anti-Tory, anti-Brexit, politically correct” civil service, part of a liberal metropolitan elite, is gearing up to block some of her plans. That is nonsense; officials are doing their job in preparing to help the new PM implement their programme, not derail or dilute it. Whitehall did the same job for Jeremy Corbyn – just as well, as its work was almost needed in 2017.

As Truss will almost certainly soon discover, civil servants are merely reflecting what is happening in the real world rather than inside the warm bubble of a Tory party talking to itself rather than the country.