Liz Truss’s latest idea risks undermining the very idea of levelling up

Editorial: Her public sector plans will drive down pay across the country, at a time of heightened worries over the cost of living

Truss can correctly tell the British people feel that their priorities have not been delivered on (AP)

There are hardly any easier shots to play in the realm of Conservative Party politics than to portray civil servants, nurses and teachers as wasteful bogeymen. This is the context for Liz Truss’s latest plans.

In her reforms, which she claims will save close to £11bn a year, Ms Truss proposes scrapping roles that “distract from delivering on British people’s priorities, such as diversity and inclusion”. She also plans to ditch what is called “facility time”, the provision that allows union officials in taxpayer-funded jobs to devote some of their allotted working hours to union work.

That is merely the headline. The vast majority of the savings Ms Truss desires will come from recalibrating public sector pay in the regions, so local companies are no longer “priced out” by state competition. This will have the impact of driving down pay for public sector workers – including teachers, nurses, firefighters – across the country, at a time of heightened worries over the cost of living.

Such changes are easy hits with Tory members and that speaks volumes about them as a group. But it also speaks volumes about Ms Truss herself.

Ms Truss earlier promised to turn Britain into an “aspiration nation” where “everyone will have the opportunity to succeed”. That speech now seems to be in contradiction with this proposal, which will result in areas outside of London seeing a fall in pay levels. It might even induce more of them to seek work in London for a better salary. Needless to say, in vast swathes of the country, and especially red-wall areas, driving down local wages is perhaps not the way to build an aspiration nation.

One of the big promises Boris Johnson made to the British people was to level up more deprived parts of the country. No one ever quite knew what it meant, but it surely cannot mean what Ms Truss is now proposing. Levelling up is about raising standards everywhere, so that the general life and vitality of the country is not all sucked toward London and the South East.

Johnson himself said it was about not having to leave your hometown to get a good job. Millions of people voted for the Conservative Party on the basis of that idea. That it will now be continued through watering down pay outside London so that everyone can share the same low aspirations is about as violent a slap in the face as can possibly be imagined.

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Ms Truss has somehow positioned herself as a kind of change candidate, a revolutionary, despite being the government’s longest serving cabinet minister. It should be more difficult than it is proving to be, for a person of her unrivalled experience, to hide from the mess around her. Ms Truss should not be able to count herself almost lucky that she is able to run for No 10 and promise to fix it.

Ms Truss can correctly tell the British people feel that their priorities have not been delivered on. The British people, generally speaking, feel that their country is on its knees. And the people who bear responsibility for that are the people who have been governing it, namely Ms Truss herself.

In the Tory leadership race, Liz Truss appears to be unassailable. However, there is another electoral race to come, with the entire country. Her war on Whitehall may play well with Tory voters, but to win a general election amid a spiralling cost of living crisis, she will have to demonstrate to millions of Britons that the levelling up they voted for in 2019 will be a reality, rather than merely an aspiration.