Politics
Politics Home Article | Recipes for Disaster
4 min read
For Liz Truss’ husband Hugh, there was one small problem. Later, there would be more problems, much larger, but when the family first moved into No 10, the issue was getting food delivered.
The blink-and-you-missed-her prime minister revealed in her memoirs that Ocado refused to accept their new address. The grocery company thought it was a hoax – a suspicion that would be shared by an increasing number of Conservative MPs as the weeks went on.
But Truss wasn’t the first prime minister to find that the reality of life in Downing Street didn’t match up to the imagined glamour. Getting a takeaway delivery to one of the most secure locations in the country is notoriously difficult.
When they fire up Deliveroo, no one brings curry. And when they demand the economy grow faster, nothing happens.
Like much of the rest of the British state, Downing Street is superficially impressive and actually shabby. The corridors are narrow, the rooms small and unsuitable for modern working. It is infested with mice, and it’s not clear that Larry the cat cares. When Covid hit Britain, it was hardly a surprise that it spread very fast within Downing Street.
As Truss herself noted, Downing Street also has difficulty with the political sort of delivery. British prime ministers have a contradiction of their own: on paper they have huge powers, but it doesn’t feel like that most days. When they fire up Deliveroo, no one brings curry. And when they demand the economy grow faster, nothing happens.
Every few years, an incumbent tries to redesign No 10: Gordon Brown, impressed by Michael Bloomberg’s open-plan mayoral office in New York, tried to build something similar in the Downing Street press office, with TV screens on the walls. The information overload didn’t help him to step back from immediate crises. Dominic Cummings planned a “NASA-style mission control” that would allow him to monitor government targets in real time, and possibly launch missiles at his enemies. Sadly, he wasn’t in Downing Street long enough to achieve that.
There are other ways to try to take control. In recent years the size of the No 10 staff has grown. Before the election it had risen to 350, over 100 more than worked there under Tony Blair and five times what it was under Margaret Thatcher.
And yet prime ministers complain that nothing happens. For some, such as Truss, the failure of the Ocado van to arrive is evidence of a deep-state conspiracy spearheaded by the Bank of England. For others, such as Keir Starmer, it’s a sign that they need another new director of communications.
The modern state is incredibly complicated. But perhaps the problems of prime ministers are, at least partly, down to a failure to understand the nature of their role. Truss seemed to believe that, having made it to Downing Street, she could demand the things that she wanted, as though she were putting in an Ocado order. As it turned out, other people had a vote. It’s all very well being a fan of fracking, but a prime minister can only have something if their MPs will vote for it, and none of Truss’ would. The same went for her plans for big welfare cuts.
Prime ministers do better when they use their positions to persuade, co-ordinate and cajole, rather than simply issue instructions. Crumbly old No 10 can become an asset: David Cameron invited backbenchers to barbecues in the garden. The Truss family food delivery did arrive, eventually, after they consulted staff and found out what other people had done in the past. Sadly, there was no time for Liz to learn any lessons from this.
