Liz Truss can’t speak for the national mood because she really doesn’t understand it

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. The barking of politics appears to have been respectfully hushed since the death of the Queen. Parliamentarians were given a couple of days to deliver their eulogies and start swearing loyal oaths to Charles III before both chambers were shuttered. The unlucky Lib Dems felt obliged to scrub their party conference. Partisan cut and thrust has been heavily discouraged until Elizabeth II reaches her final resting place in the royal crypt at Windsor.

Yet politics has not been as absent as it may have seemed. In many ways, the days since her death have been intensely political. Start with the man who now occupies the apex of public life. Charles has been mourner-in-chief while simultaneously introducing himself to the country as its new sovereign. The solemnities, which reach their climax with tomorrow’s state funeral at Westminster Abbey, have been alternated with a whistlestop tour of gladhanding in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. His sister, his eldest son and other members of team Windsor have fanned out to other locations around the kingdom.

As a general rule, it is a good idea to sound like you have some affection for the country you aspire to govern

In the way that a politician with known vulnerabilities might do, he has addressed the charge that he will be a meddlesome monarch. The author of the notorious “black spider” memos to ministers has sought to pre-empt anxieties about how he will conduct himself by making pledges to “maintain the precious principles of constitutional government”. Most take this to mean that he will conform his opinionated personality to his mother’s model of regal impartiality. In well-crafted speeches to the Scottish parliament, Northern Ireland assembly and senedd of Wales, he has demonstrated sensitivity to the strains on the union. There is even a kind of Carolean manifesto in suggestions that he will cut the numbers on the royal payroll to fashion a slimmed-down monarchy. All of this amounts to a recognition that the throne is no longer secured by simply having heralds in antique costume bugle the new king’s right to sit on it. The modern crown has to earn the loyalty and respect of the public. That will ultimately depend on how well he performs, but for the moment he is enjoying goodwill. “Who elected him?” shouted one dissenter at a proclamation ceremony in Oxford. That was a rare expression of republican sentiment and the tiny number of abolitionist demonstrators would have attracted less attention had not that heckler and some other protesters been detained by police officers in need of a reminder that free speech is a sacred component of our liberty. Pollsters report that a large majority of respondents think he will do a good job as king, a marked improvement on his previous ratings. Were he a regular politician, we’d be saying that Charles’s campaign to secure his position has got off to a promising start.

The same cannot be said about Liz Truss. Major episodes in national life – and inflection points don’t come much more dramatic than the death of our longest-reigning monarch – require leaders to understand and express the country’s feelings. Ms Truss and her team were dazed by the Queen’s death, entirely understandable given she was sworn in just two days earlier, and then confused about the appropriate role for the prime minister, which was less forgivable. Some in Number 10 thought they glimpsed an opportunity for Ms Truss, who was installed there with no popular mandate, to give herself more positive definition. It was even briefed out of Downing Street that she would be accompanying the new king on his walkabouts. That idea exposed an atrocious lack of judgment and had to be rapidly squashed. The awkwardness of her curtseying triggered ridicule on social media. Some Tory MPs joined the criticism of the short speech she made outside Number 10. I make two observations about that. One: they were right to feel let down by an underwhelming rendition of hastily strung together cliches. Two: it was telling that Tories, rather than bite their lips about Ms Truss’s leaden performance, chose to share their dismay with journalists. That tells us how profoundly she is disliked in sections of her parliamentary party. The prime minister did better in her later and longer speech to the Commons, but still struggled to rise above platitude. Other parliamentarians spoke with much more elegance and resonance.

One of the higher calibre speeches came from Sir Keir Starmer. Like Ms Truss, he is a youthful republican turned monarchist. Some in his party are fiercely opposed to a hereditary head of state and many are instinctively uncomfortable with genuflecting to inherited privileges. The Labour leader’s endorsement of Charles III as “a devoted servant of this country” may attract a few brickbats at his party conference in Liverpool next week. He will ignore them. One of the many reasons that Labour was so badly smashed at the ballot box in 2019 was the feeling among critical segments of the electorate that it had become an unpatriotic party that loathed Britain’s history. As a general rule, it is a good idea to sound like you have some affection for the country you aspire to govern. Sir Keir will have noted that, from Clement Attlee onwards, all of Labour’s electorally successful leaders were monarchists. His favourite predecessor, Harold Wilson, took what one biographer calls “an almost boyish pleasure” in the pomp and circumstance of royalty. While delivering graceful tributes to the late Queen, Sir Keir has also deployed some lines that can be read as serving his party’s cause by subtly carrying a message of patriotic collectivism: “The country she came to symbolise is bigger than any one individual or any one institution. It is the sum total of all our history and all our endeavours.”

There has been much less refinement to the raw political mauling that has been raging inside government while it has been outwardly mourning. Whitehall is decked in flags. Within its walls, senior mandarins are seething at the brutal dismissal of the permanent secretary at the Treasury and apprehensive that this could portend an ideologically driven purge of the civil service by the Truss regime. Conservative MPs offer prayers to the late Queen while cursing their leader for selecting her cabinet from a small pool of close friends and rightwing soulmates. Politics will become publicly lively again when parliament is unshuttered later this week. Thérèse Coffey, the new health secretary, is due to present her plan for getting the limping NHS through the winter without the service falling over altogether. Kwasi Kwarteng, the new chancellor, is scheduled to explain how he proposes to pay for unfunded tax cuts and the vastly expensive energy price cap.

The queue can be viewed as an expression of togetherness, community and solidarity, values emphasised by folk on the left

Both these ministers may be furtively relieved that the Queen’s death gave them some extra time to try to make sense of Ms Truss’s promises. People close to the chancellor have been briefing that he will lift the curbs on City bonuses, because ensuring bankers can get richer is obviously a top priority and smart politics when so many people are being crunched by the cost of living crisis. Following on from the government’s refusal to raise additional revenues from the windfall profits of the hydrocarbon extractors, Sir Keir’s team are almost pinching themselves in disbelief that the Tories are going to present them with dividing lines that Labour would have chosen for itself.

The response to the Queen’s death has many of us trying to interpret what it says about the character and mood of our country. Consider that vast river of pilgrims winding past some of London’s most iconic landmarks as people patiently wait for hours to observe the lying in state in Westminster Hall. The queue can be seen as reverence for tradition, stability and continuity, properties usually associated with the conservative-minded. It can also be viewed as an expression of togetherness, community and solidarity, values emphasised by folk on the left. I found an intermingling of all those elements, along with compassion, civility and much good humour, when I met people on the line for Elizabeth.

In its early political dealings and behaviour, Ms Truss and her band of zealots have neither shown respect for tradition, stability and continuity nor for solidarity, community and togetherness. Whatever she represents, it does not feel much like the nation.

Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer