The effective PM has some difficult choices to make

Jeremy Hunt’s statement to the Commons underlined that he is now running the government. This wasn’t just evident from what he said, but from what was happening as he said it. The Chancellor spoke with the Prime Minister sitting behind him in silence, barely moving save to blink. Liz Truss had belatedly entered the chamber at the end of the Urgent Question that she had refused to answer herself, and then left half an hour later.

But the statement also showed us quite how hard it is going to be for any caretaker leader, de facto prime minister or other figure to take the party back into a place where it is electorally appealing. Hunt, who until last week was campaigning for more money for the health service, is now about to make some unbelievably tough decisions. He refused to rule out breaking the pensions triple lock, telling the chamber: 

“I’m very aware of how many vulnerable pensions that there are and the importance of the triple lock. But as I said earlier, I'm not making any commitments on any individual policy areas. But every decision we take will be taken through the prism of what matters most to the most vulnerable.

It’s a better strategy to say that everything is up for review than to claim, as Truss did just last week, that there will ‘absolutely’ not be any cuts to public spending. One of the reasons the Prime Minister has lost all authority is that she kept saying something was definitely going to happen, only to perform an awful U-turn. Hunt showed that this approach has stopped, as has her premiership in all but name.