The prime minister has kept her friends close. But will that be enough, when winter bites and economic woes deepen?
The best barometer for how well Liz Truss is doing as prime minister will be how closely her cabinet sticks to the script. When the going gets tough in the coming months, will her ministers back her? Or will the most ambitious start to find reasons to stray outside of their brief, or make crowd-pleasing interventions? Such moves would not only suggest that discipline is slacking, but that her one-time leadership rivals believe there could soon be another vacancy at No 10.
As the new prime minister faces a daunting intray and weaker parliamentary support than her predecessors, her hope is that loyalty will triumph. Truss believes that as a minister she has been loyal to not one but three prime ministers – and it is now time for her ministers to do the same in return.
Katy Balls is the Spectator’s deputy political editor
