Liz Truss policy blitz on hold as Queen’s death poses new test

As she took to her feet in the Commons to announce her £150bn package to freeze energy bills, Liz Truss will have been under the impression that it was a moment likely to define her premiership.

If the announcement landed well, sceptical Conservative MPs had suggested, it would buy her time to get on with the business of governing. If not, her time at No 10 would be over before it had begun.

But moments later that piece of received Westminster wisdom was turned firmly on its head as one of her senior ministers whispered into her ear that the Queen was gravely ill.

Suddenly, the address that Truss had hoped would mark a bold, ambitious beginning was relegated to a footnote on a day that will for ever be remembered for the end of a reign.

Now, Truss has a new challenge that could make or break her premiership. As prime minister, her first and most pressing task was to reassure the nation in a televised address shortly after Buckingham Palace confirmed that the Queen, who for so long had represented stability and order to her people, had died.

Her voice quivering ever so slightly with emotion, she paid solemn tribute to the monarch, describing her as “the rock on which modern Britain was built” whose death was a “huge shock” to the country and the world. She said the Queen’s sense of duty had been a “personal inspiration” to her and many other Britons, adding: “She was the very spirit of Great Britain and that spirit will endure.”

In the days ahead, Truss will have some constitutional responsibilities in representing the government with the palace, but her principal task will be making sure that the cogs of the state keep turning smoothly as well-rehearsed plans for this moment swing into action. Any slip-ups will be viewed dimly by the many people who regard the Queen as much more than an institution.

She will also have to play a leading role on the global stage, as the world’s media turn their collective lens on the royal family and the country at large, and tributes pour in from Commonwealth and global leaders, who will travel to the UK to pay their respects.

Many at Westminster believe that Truss – poised and presentable in a way that her predecessor, Boris Johnson, was not, and well-versed in diplomatic protocol from her time at the Foreign Office – is up to the scale of the task.

This period will also, they whisper from behind their hands, give her some much-needed public recognition as she is propelled into the limelight, after focus groups suggested that the painfully long Tory leadership this summer had failed to register with vast swathes of voters.

However, the Queen’s passing denies the new prime minister the opportunity to carry out her widely briefed “shock and awe” campaign to stamp her authority on the government, starting with the energy package but planned to continue with a policy blitz including tax cuts and slashing red tape over the coming weeks. That ambition is now very much on hold.

The Commons is expected to sit on Friday so that MPs can offer their tributes to the Queen, but after they are complete the house will then be suspended while the 10 days of official mourning take place. Government business will continue during that period, but officials have stressed that this will be restricted to essential work and no announcements will be forthcoming, apart from in an emergency.

Truss’s first 100 days in office had been mapped out by her team, but aides will be ripping up those plans and starting again. The planned emergency budget setting out how she intends to steer the country through the stormy economic waters ahead, as well as details of how the government will prop up an NHS on its knees, will have to wait.

There is also a question mark over foreign visits in the diary, to Dublin to try to reach a deal over the thorny issue of the Northern Ireland protocol, and to New York for the UN general assembly and – No 10 aides had been hoping – talks with Joe Biden.

Beyond that looms party conference season, where the prospect of the usual pugilism and partisanship sits uncomfortably with the idea of a nation still in mourning. Truss must regard this as a moment of potential danger, for she will be expected to judge the public mood.

With her plans for her first days in office thrown so dramatically off course, expectations of her, from within the Tory party and among the wider public, will be higher than ever. But with the country still fearful of the cost of living crisis despite the government’s steps to help, the stakes for Liz Truss have never been higher.