Liz Truss turns down temperature with strong Commons performance, but her backbenches simmer

Liz Truss made a shrewd choice at her first Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, turning down the temperature in the packed Commons chamber by praising Labour leader Keir Starmer.

“I hope that we will be able to work together, particularly in areas we agree on. I know that we have had strong support from the Opposition in opposing Vladimir Putin’s appalling war in Ukraine,” she said.

She seldom put a foot wrong throughout the session, showing a quick response at times, cheering up the benches behind her with familiar taunts about Labour and appearing to answer most of the questions. But Starmer left the chamber satisfied too because his questions exposed an ideological difference between the two parties, with Labour on the more popular side of it.

[ Starmer accuses Truss of piling debts on taxpayers ]

The new prime minister is about to steal Labour’s idea of freezing energy bills at their current level to protect people and businesses from the catastrophic consequences of surging energy prices. But Ms Truss has rejected Starmer’s proposal to fund the intervention by taxing the excess profits earned by energy giants because prices have risen so much.

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“I am against a windfall tax. I believe it is the wrong thing to be putting companies off investing in the United Kingdom, just when we need to be growing the economy,” she said.

The Treasury estimates that the energy companies will rake in £170 billion in excess profits, which some analysts estimate will be the cost of freezing energy bills. So Starmer was able to accuse the prime minister of saddling taxpayers with more borrowing than necessary because she wanted to protect the profits of big business.

[ New British prime minister Liz Truss makes sweeping changes to government ]

Conservative MPs were happy to cheer Truss on as she preached the old-fashioned gospel of the Laffer curve and low taxes driving economic growth. But her backbenches are an unhappy place following the appointment of her top team, which saw just one supporter of Rishi Sunak invited to sit at the cabinet table.

She appointed some of those who backed other candidates to junior ministerial posts on Wednesday but those moves did nothing to change the impression that her government is less a team of rivals that a group of pals. Truss had a good day in the Commons yesterday but as the prime minister relished the roars of her MPs while she stood at the despatch box, a few rows behind her sat Theresa May, like a Memento Mori.

In the words of David Cameron, she was the future once.