Has a Conservative government got any power at all?

In the House of Commons on Monday, someone accused Liz Truss’s government of being ‘in office but not in power’. By chance, I was sitting in the peers’ gallery immediately behind the author of that famous phrase, Norman Lamont, who applied it to John Major’s administration in his resignation statement as chancellor in 1993. It grows ever more apt. I sometimes wonder if modern politicians positively welcome this situation. It is a general feature of the structures of the EU, where no elected politician has real power, but none seems to mind. Much of the joy of ‘compassionate’ Conservatives at the trouncing of Truss appears to derive from the proof it affords that the bond market, the Bank of England, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Treasury are more powerful than they are. They are pleased with Jeremy Hunt, the new Chancellor, because, like a senior civil servant, he puts his mental energy into finding what can’t be done, rather than what can.