Liz Truss: yet more betting success, and how she can succeed too

Here we go again: Liz Truss' victory means yet another political betting success for me. Indeed, at 14/1, the Truss Triumph equals what was hitherto my best ever political win, the Macron Massacre.

I'll level with you: Truss was not the only bet I placed last November. Macron was simply someone who seemed wrongly priced to me, but I had a different strategy for the PM. As I said back in January, I was pretty confident that Johnson was not going to be in power for much longer. That meant that his potential successor was probably already identifiable. So I picked the most likely candidates and spread my (modest) stake around such that I was bound to come out ahead if any of them won. The net effect of that as things turned out is that I have had a 7/4 winner (i.e., after taking into account the money I lost on the likes of Sunak and Starmer). But a win is a win.

By way of thanking Ms Truss for her contribution to my retirement fund, here are three (or four) suggested policies for her. They are not 14/1 longshots - although I would recommend that she have a few such policies in her portfolio - but more like 7/4 sensible bets, designed to fit in the Venn diagram intersection of 'popular', 'feasible' and 'beneficial'.

(1) Establish a National Strategic Infrastructure Commission, i.e. an expert-driven, technocratic quango tasked with identifying and procuring strategic civil infrastructure for the UK (or perhaps just England and Wales, assuming Sturgeon would be difficult). I am not in principle a fan of "taking the politics out it": the allocation of limited resources extracted from the public by compulsory taxation and the exercise of compulsory purchase powers - and those are two key aspects of building infrastructure - are inherently political activities, and it is only right that they be subject to democratic oversight. But needs must. For the foreseeable future - the next generation or so - there is no real ideological divide as to what kinds of infrastructure the UK needs, but there are various technocratic decisions that need to be made about the details of where, when and what, and the present combination of judicial review and opportunistic political objection to any particular proposal mean that these decisions don't get taken in a reasonable timeframe. We will need appropriate amounts of energy infrastructure, with an appropriate balance between the 'available but dirty' and the 'unreliable but clean'; we will need reservoirs, flood defences, train lines, roads, tunnels; perhaps we need more airports or seaports; covid surely shows us that we need more vaccine infrastructure; perhaps we need better asteroid defences too - who know? these are all questions for experts. Just as NICE successfully de-politicised NHS drug offerings and Bank of England independence de-politicised interest rate changes, my proposed commission would de-politicise infrastructure. Also, the Commission should be based in Birmingham as that way the London classes will ignore it and it can get on with doing its job.

(2) New colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge - but ones that focus on STEM. This hits a policy sweet spot. It's a good idea: we need to build up our science research and education strength, and how better than by expanding our premier universities? The size of Oxbridge has not really kept pace with the fact that they are now global universities, educating large numbers of foreign students: that's a good thing in itself, but it means that a number of British students who would be suited to and benefit from an Oxbridge education are being edged out at the margin, and the parents of people at the margins of Oxbridge acceptance are the kinds of pointy-elbowed middle class people who have been drifting away from the Conservative Party. STEM subjects tend to favour state school pupils, so there is a social mobility angle that can be played. Moreover, the Conservative Party has been gaining a bit of an anti-elitist, 'had enough of experts' reputation and this would be a good counterbalance. It's an opportunity for good politics too. What should we call the colleges? I'd go with "Elizabeth" (for the Queen) for the Oxford one and "Turing" for the Cambridge one, although some combination of "Nightingale", "Seacole" and "Lovelace" seems inevitable, but the papers will love to talk about it, and people will want to vote for College-y McCollegeface or whatever. And can Labour oppose it? On what basis? Too expensive? Maybe, but it's investing in the future. It'll be funded by government borrowing, of course, but in the form of an exciting new National Savings product: the Science Investment Bond, which will feature in all the best buy tables, and allow people with savings (i.e. pensioners) to gain a competitive rate of interest while investing in their grandchildren's future. Oh and if you want to make everyone's head explode then why not make Boris Johnson the first Warden of the Oxford college? He would actually be quite well-suited to an Oxford Head of House role.

(3) Both of the policy ideas above are long term ones. That's good in itself and also good for the Truss government, which needs to look big, sensible and long-term to distinguish itself from its predecessors: Brexit was not May's fault, and covid was not Johnson's fault, so they each had premierships defined by short-term priorities that were not their own. Truss has the chance to be different and better. But she will need short term policies too, and preferably distinctly Tory ones that Labour has to oppose and look bad for doing so. The economy is tricky and there are no easy answers: I'll leave Truss and Kwarteng to think about energy prices, but the most that can be hoped for is damage control. Immigration and culture war issues are always tempting, but those can be left for the moment. Rather than look opportunistic by raising them now, wait: at some point, someone on the Left is bound to accuse the government of being racist and/or use a racist epithet against the government (in fact the latter has already happened: google "coconut cabinet" for details), and that is only going to help the current Cabinet. That leaves crime. There is a lot of it about, noticeably low level but unpleasant crime in London, and I detect a widespread feeling of Something Must Be Done But Won't Be. The kind of anti-crime measures that people notice and like are ones that involve visible police presence on the streets. That's expensive. But how about trialling giving the power of arrest to Community Support Officers, in certain cases and with certain safeguards? Just a trial - surely it's worth seeing if it can reduce low-level anti-social behaviour? It's the sort of thing that will annoy the right people too. Another anti-crime topic is cameras: there are now lots of cameras around that can play a role in crime prevention and detection, not just CCTV but mobile phones, Ring doorbells and so on. A new Use of Cameras in the Prevention and Detection of Crime Bill that would 'put the anti-crime use of these devices on a sound and modern statutory basis', i.e. making it clear that people can use these things sensibly without infringing the GDPR or privacy laws or whatever, would be popular. It would also have a potential 'benefit of Brexit' angle that could be helpful and, again, it would annoy all the right kind of people from the point of view of a Conservative Party facing a Labour Party headed by a human rights lawyer.

So there you have it. Truss has helped me and I've done my bit to repay the favour. I'll wait to see if she follows my advice before placing my bets for the next General Election.