Liz Truss’s disgraceful chapter in British politics shows the peril of pig-headed political zealotry
Posted by Jim on October 20, 2022
In just 44 days, this talentless PM has crushed the living standards of tens of millions of people – yet still wallowed in self-pity
Backed by the DUP, Liz Truss was a truly dreadful Prime Minister who has done incalculable damage to the Union
October 20 2022 04:57 PM
Liz Truss departed Downing Street as she had inhabited it: Weakly, woodenly, arrogantly, haplessly, incoherently, unrepentantly, reeking of incompetence and without an ounce of personal insight.
This disgraceful chapter in British political history will serve some purpose if it demonstrates to future generations the peril of pig-headed political zealotry – whether from left or right. But even if that is so, it will have come at a terrible price for tens of millions of people.
In a pathetically deluded 90-second statement outside Number 10, Truss’s stated reason for quitting wasn’t that she had belatedly realised what she was trying to do was daft, but that she realised she would no longer be permitted by Tory MPs to deliver that reckless agenda.
It is to the credit of the many Tories who saw how thoroughly unsuited Ms Truss was for the job of Prime Minister and distanced themselves from her as she became increasingly wild, just as it is to the shame of those Conservatives who, unable to see past their partisan blinkers, kept lauding her as she destroyed Britain’s reputation and saddled tens of millions of people with financial hardship.
These calamitous few weeks will mean years of higher taxes, cuts to public services and massively higher debt repayments – both for individuals, and for the UK.
Truss’s resignation statement managed to blame Vladimir Putin, the economic problems she inherited and structural difficulties in the UK economy – but avoided any remorse for her own inescapable and inexcusable failures.
Liz Truss making a speech outside 10 Downing Street, London (PA)
Instead, trying to fashion some coherent positive narrative from the rubble in which she stood, she boasted: “We delivered on cutting energy bills and on national insurance” – the first, a policy which every western democracy has delivered and the second a pitiful consolation for the people whose outgoings will now soar by vastly more than the small cut in one form of taxation due to her inability to manage the public finances.
Preposterously, she talked about “maintaining our country’s economic stability”, and lamented how “our country has been held back for too long by low economic growth”, without any acknowledgment that her contribution to this was to take gradual decline and spectacularly accelerate it.
Politics is not a game; putting oneself forward to lead a nation is not to be done lightly because it involves people’s lives and people’s wellbeing. Truss’s talents were too limited to realise that she was unsuited to such a task. Her party was too willing to look past her obvious failings, but has also simply exhausted itself after too long in power – she won in large part because her rival was an untested relatively new MP whose eye-watering wealth would hardly have been well received by voters struggling to heat their homes.
Truss also demonstrates the short-sightedness of those who worship at the altar of quotas in politics, believing there should be percentages reserved for woman or other groups insufficiently represented in Parliament. Some Tories trumpeted her modest background and the fact that she was the third female Tory leader. But while there is a need for more women in politics and more people from humble backgrounds, just because she ticked both of those boxes did not mean she was good.
Many people disliked Margaret Thatcher or were appalled at her policies. But she was demonstrably up to the job intellectually and had a coherent vision of where she wanted to take the UK.
Thatcher, who Truss haplessly sought to emulate, once said that “being powerful is like being a lady; if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t”. Just 44 days after entering Downing Street, and after burning much of what was within her reach, the Downing Street arsonist’s only real power was over the timing of her self-immolation.
There is a final lesson from this tragedy. The DUP has now backed three successive Prime Ministers. In each case, it has seen the candidate it wanted triumph and in each case that individual has been disastrous. Indeed, each of those individuals has been more shockingly incapable of delivering either good government, or the DUP’s own narrower priorities, than their predecessor.
Sammy Wilson praised Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous budget as something which would “increase living standards, boost employment and raise revenue for public services”. It did none of those things, and instead saw a currency crisis, increased inflation, and increased poverty.
In backing Truss, just as the DUP had lauded Theresa May and Boris Johnson, they have not only made it harder to remove the Irish Sea border, but have weakened the Union itself – literally in a financial sense, and figuratively in the eyes of those undecided voters in Northern Ireland on whose votes the future of the Union will someday depend.
Just as Sinn Féin is the worst possible advocate for Irish unity among those undecided on the issue, so the DUP has been actively driving people away from unionism for years – and in more recent times has been enabling wanton damage of the Union itself.
The UK has survived civil war, a mad monarch, the rise and fall of empire, Hitler’s onslaught, financial crises, separatist movements and terrorism. But seldom have those who cherish the Union unthinkingly brought down such destruction on that which they love.