Priorities

The Truss premiership has been a major headline a minute, so it’s very easy to miss some of the detail. There’s one little contrast I’d like to underline before the whole circus descends into oblivion, because it neatly illustrates what really matters to someone like Truss.

There was a proposal by her climate advisers to run an “energy-saving drive” this winter, to raise public awareness of what could be done to save energy and reduce costs.. No, says Truss, we don’t need that. Can’t afford to be wasting public money acting as a nanny state.

But there were also plans for government ministers to buy advertising space to sell government policies in the build-up to the next election. This might sound like party political stuff but to Truss it’s an essential part of the business of government. Her personal contribution to this would be a campaign to highlight her intervention to freeze energy bills, for which she thinks she hasn’t had anything like enough credit.

So, public campaign benefitting the environment and voters - no.

Party campaign increasing Tories’ chance of re-election - yes.

But the punchline is the amount of money involved. The cancelled energy campaign would have cost £15 million. Ministers’ spending to tout their policies before the election - £93 million. Sod the voters, but when it comes to re-election, the sky’s the limit.