Food shortages would end the honeymoon for Truss

That minority tends to be older, more to the right politically, and largely based in the south of England. It is however not unusual for a prime minister to come through this process, rather than a general election. That said Liz Truss will face constant calls from opposition MPs to test her legitimacy via an early election – although in the teeth of a cost of living crisis there is little public appetite for even more uncertainty.

Much will be said about how Truss will put her mark on government in the two years she has before a general election. It is hard to think of a time when someone has come to a job with greater challenges for which there are no obvious solutions. As she looks around her new office it would only be natural for her to ask herself why she fought so hard to grab a poisoned chalice.

That said the nature of politics is to climb the greasy pole for the top job and that is just what she has done. If she can makes a success of it against the odds of economic reality she will earn her place in history – but the odds are stacked against that happening.

For farmers the key question is whether there is any prospect of them being better off under Truss. Judging by the social media response to her bland and largely meaningless comments about how she would help UK agriculture prosper, the industry has little confidence it will be higher on her agenda than they were with her predecessor. Social media is a poor measure of real opinion, but it showed farmers unimpressed by her track record and commitment.

Truss was a Defra minister under David Cameron, but made little impact, viewing that job as she has others as stepping stones to bigger things. She will not be easily forgiven by farmers for her policies on southern hemisphere trade deals when she was the minister responsible.

She never convinced farmers that she took on board their concerns when she trumpeted a trade deal with Australia as a post-Brexit success and blueprint for future deals. Her successor in that post, after she moved on to be foreign secretary, concluded a similar and equally poor trade deal with New Zealand. The test of both those deals is that the EU made clear that it would not accept similar terms. To be fair to Truss, the UK, with a small population, will never have the muscle of the EU or others in trade deals. She has her sights set on a bigger trans-Pacific trade and political alliance, which again lacks any upside for farmers.

That is the reality of politics and as a pro-EU campaigner in the past she will now have demonstrate with the zeal of a religious convert that Brexit can deliver lower prices for consumers, even if those come at a cost to farmers and food security.

The immediate test Truss will face is over her relations with Brussels. She adopted an aggressive stance as foreign minister, believing this could secure the concessions she wants over the Northern Ireland protocol. If that works it will be a big feather in her cap. It would not be hard to have better relations with Brussels than her predecessor, who despite having lived and worked there ended up deeply unpopular over his populist approach.

A promise of a rougher line with the EU won Truss the votes she needed to secure the job, but now she will have to turn that bluster into real politics. That will not be easy, and the first thing she will need to decide is whether to take a huge gamble by risking the EU scrapping its trade deal with the UK. That is a high wire act where she needs to move on from the weeks of political rhetoric to impress the 0.3% of the population that are Conservative party members.

Truss has bigger issues on her plate than agriculture, but she nonetheless needs to make food security for the UK as important as it now is in the EU. The hand she has to play is not easy – but if food shortages join gas shortages then her honeymoon period as a new prime minister will be very, very short.