Can’t Trust the Truss

By Thomas W Dowling

“Liz Truss Trade Talks with Australia” by Number 10 CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Once in a blue moon, politicians say stupid things and are rightfully called out by the press for it. Tory MP Lee Anderson is one such ‘victim’, having suggested that those on the poverty line have exacerbated the cost-of-living crisis for themselves by being unable to “cook properly.” For all the accusations of classism, Anderson is technically correct, given that a good quality meal can be made for very little for as long as one has the time to avoid dependence on overpriced and underwhelming microwave lasagnes. Then shortly after, there was Rachael Maclean, who in response to a question about how consumers could ease the burden of higher energy prices, kindly suggested that they are free to work longer hours or find a job that pays more. It’s no wonder Maclean’s response was interpreted as insulting: she might as well have just told the homeless to ‘buy a house’, or politely reminded them that they have the same 24 hours a day as Beyonce. 

Neither of these mishaps, however, come close to the public-funded self-harm that exists in the form of Liz Truss. Despite making a strong, public case for herself as the most incompetent, bone idle politician in the UK’s history, Truss has somehow risen high enough in the Tory ranks to inherit the task of managing the UK’s end of the most disconcerting crisis to have emerged in Europe since the end of Second World War – a situation which arguably transgresses the highest tensions of the Cuban Missile crisis – and will most likely be the Conservative leader to succeed Boris Johnson according to the bookies.  

If it were not for the Conservative Party’s renowned historic reputation for nepotism, it would be a complete mystery with regards to how Truss has got anywhere near political office. On one occasion,  she was exposed as either unable or unwilling to spell ‘literate’. Another featured in the Conservative Party conference in 2014, when she quite possibly gave the most embarrassing political address in history, with the only conciliation being her open declaration of surprise at the fact that then-Prime Minister, David Cameron, employed her as Education Minister in the first place. Truss’ classic mask-off moment, however, occurred on a certain appearance on BBC Question Time, when she laughed along with Caroline Flint and Owen Jones as part of a metropolitan sneer against Peter Hitchens, who was openly lamenting Britain’s cultural and moral subversion at the hands of mass immigration. So much for being a reformed ‘conservative’...

From here, Truss has predictably proceeded to confirm all the symptoms of the “interchangeable people” that Hitchens pointed to in the years to come. As Environmental Secretary, she backed David Cameron’s Britain Stronger In Europe campaign for the 2016 EU Referendum, only to simulate the behaviour of an unabashed Brexiteer as soon as the winning side proved not to be her own. She then U-turned to passionately advocate for Theresa May’s deal with the EU (though also saying that no deal would be a more attractive option than remaining in the European Union, to her credit) only to then back Boris Johnson’s amendment of the deal which was worse, having offered not one, but two borders between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. She appears to flip-flop on issues of policy more than the fish she no doubt wishes British fishermen to surrender to the French. This brings us to Truss’ position on the Northern Irish protocol today, namely her will to abolish it. 

Of course, all those who voted for the deal in the first place deserve to bear the brunt of this criticism, not just Truss. But given the fact that she has been constantly metamorphosing throughout her political career – first from a Liberal Democratic to a Conservative, second from a One Nation open door centrist to hard line Thatcherite, and third from an attendee of marches supporting the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to someone who seems to now froth at the mouth at the prospect of nuclear war – it would be foolish to assume that she has political conviction beyond her delusional self-image.

If her piteous posing in a Russian hat on her pre-war diplomatic visit to Russia as part of a desperate attempt to contrive a connection between herself and the Iron Lady herself wasn’t emphatic enough evidence of the inflated opinion she has for herself, Truss has stretched to theoretically advocate for acts of war beyond her remit in the cabinet. This, she did by declaring, from the hip, on public television that she “absolutely support[ed]” any British troops willing to join the fight against Russia, having forgotten, or being completely unaware from the start that any military personnel who acted on her advice could be prosecuted by the Ministry of Defence on return. Despite the best efforts of Admiral Sir Tony Radakin to dissuade those inspired by the seeds planted by Truss, it wasn’t enough to prevent some British military personnel from “going AWOL” and travelling to fight in Ukraine as per her instructions. This sequence of events, according to Vladimir Putin himself (assuming that we can take him for his word), was ultimately what compelled Russia to place its nuclear deterrent on high alert, leaving UK citizens looking into the sky for days wondering where they should be stockpiling emergency supplies of iodine. 

You’d think that after this, Truss would curb the Kissinger impersonation (despite the fact that Henry Kissinger himself has since affirmed explicitly that there is nothing to be gained from arming Ukraine). But no. Instead, at the Lord Mayor’s Estate Banquet in April, she went beyond the remit that even NATO had given to her by stating that Russia should be ‘kicked out’ of Ukraine entirely, referring to both the recently-declared ‘separatist’ regions and Crimea. This was at a time when Ukrainian and Russian diplomats were in negotiation. To escalate things further, she then stated that the UK should double down on its support by supplying warplanes to Ukraine – something which the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, already said would justify a military response from Russia against NATO. Having clearly got an appetite for sparking World War III, Truss digressed into China’s geopolitical affairs at the Banquet to affirm that should China make the slightest attempt to return Taiwan to the mainland, the UK should be on the frontline to offer military assistance to the latter. This was, naturally, before the former had actually done anything.

If Truss is not knowingly trying to destroy the UK, perhaps even the world, she is clearly cynical enough to see the war and the grander geopolitical tensions between the West, China and Russia as a play-thing for her political ambition. Only nepotism explains how she made David Cameron’s A-list in 2009. Because skills in communication, diplomacy and leadership are rarely a deciding metric for the Conservative party, however, her growing recklessness has not stopped her political advance.

To be fair, in this sense, Liz Truss is no different from those we could call her predecessors should she ever lead the country. Boris was elected as a radical, ‘no deal Brexit ready’ alternative to Theresa May, and yet managed to strike an even worse arrangement for the Northern Irish backstop. David Cameron, in 2010, campaigned on an open lie to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands in full knowledge that he had no authority to do so. Tony Blair, another ‘reformer’ but of course for Labour, changed the face of Britain and British politics in ways that are arguably irreparable and justified his foreign intervention in Iraq using information about ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ that turned out to be purposely misleading. And for all the acts of betrayal conducted by the two parties repeatedly, both Labour and the Conservatives, as contemptible as both are to the silent majority, mysteriously remain the only two capable of winning majorities on their own. For as long as the system that works for no-one (except the bourgeois, champagne socialist behemoths comprising the metropolitan elite) remains, such radically fungible wets will continue to carve their way into the Westminster establishment to the detriment of everything outside. If it is Liz Truss who replaces Boris, however, it is more than acutely possible that she could supersede the levels of incompetence he continues to display in “Partygate”.