What is French President Emmanuel Macron from the British perspective, “friend or foe”? One expects the instinctive response of “friend” from any London leader. Ex-Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, one of the two candidates to succeed Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and thus head of government, uses exactly this word.
Liz Truss, on the other hand, who is after all Foreign Minister and thus Her Majesty’s chief diplomat, tells her party friends in Norwich, east England, that “the verdict has not yet been passed” on this question. Once installed in Downing Street, it will “judge the Parisian leader by his actions, not his words.” Laughter and applause in the hall.
Truss also laughs a little, as if to blur the monstrosity that just happened on Thursday evening: The hot favorite for the country’s highest government office not only has the representative of one of the closest allies – brothers in arms from two world wars, partner in NATO, G7 and in the UN Security Council – offended.
In doing so, she willfully alienates the island’s closest neighbors, on whose cooperation and even help the British are dependent in their refugee policy, in trade with the EU and in the dispute over Northern Ireland. The next day Macron reacted elegantly and clearly: The kingdom was France’s friend, “regardless of who is currently in power”.
How much nonsense are campaigners allowed to tell, how much lack of character show? The questions arise in any free election, and the Tory vote is no exception. All those members who have not yet been able to decide have until Friday to think about it.
Former finance minister Sunak, 42, has also made some U-turns, had to revise tax and economic policy proposals, and made a fool of himself by demanding re-education for those citizens “who defame the kingdom”. When it comes to silly things, false claims, promises that can’t be kept, Truss is just as miles ahead as he is in the polls. Some consider the 45-year-old to be downright dangerous, “dangerously impulsive and stubborn,” as The Times celebrity columnist Matthew Parris wrote: “She has massive hubris and huge ambition, her political mind is the size of a pinhead.”
You might think that’s polemic, maybe even a bit misogynistic. But the fact is: Truss didn’t just talk after the mouths of those who are important for their advancement during the election campaign. It mercilessly serves the clichés that the small group of around 160,000 registered party members – around 0.3 percent of those eligible to vote – have grown fond of.
Example of tax policy: Truss promises tax cuts in the middle of a wave of inflation (currently 10.1 percent, soon up to 18 percent), which is nonsense according to all serious economists, but in any case does not relieve the millions of citizens who are confronted with exorbitantly rising energy prices. But low taxes are better than “alms”, as she disparagingly calls targeted aid for pensioners and the poor.
The candidate thinks it is pessimistic that the central bank is predicting a one-year recession for the fall. In general, the mandate of the Bank of England will soon have to be revised. This indirectly announced curtailment of independence is already causing unrest among market participants.
Example school policy: Truss advocates for new grammar schools, the equivalent of the German high school. Another favorite right-wing Tory idea. Most British pupils attend comprehensive schools, apart from the small group of wealthy private pupils. According to educationalists, there is no evidence that new grammar schools could be effective in educating the population more widely. But such ideas circulate in the minds of the party members, most of whom are of retirement age.
Take foreign policy as an example: the chief negotiator honestly affirms that she is interested in “a positive relationship with the EU”. At the same time, her team is making plans to suspend the Northern Ireland Protocol and thus the withdrawal agreement that is valid under international law in the coming month. This means that the trade conflict with the world’s largest domestic market, which has only been avoided with great effort, is inevitable. It doesn’t matter: when in doubt, you can always blame Brussels.
With dubious promises and claims that are at most quarter true, Truss resembles her predecessor who is still in office. In fact, their cockers have been busily weaving the legend that Boris Johnson was overthrown via an internal party intrigue, with Sunak as the main conspirator. The candidate tells the nostalgic party people that the scandal-ridden incumbent, who has failed due to a proven inability to act purposefully in government, would be a better prime minister than her rival Sunak. From the start, Truss and her team have pursued a scorched-earth policy, also similar to candidate Johnson. Incidentally, he thinks the candidate is “a human hand grenade”.
As a winner, Truss will end her “time out from reality,” according to former cabinet mate Michael Gove, and will have to come to terms with political reality. Whether it can rely on the House of Commons group? In the first of five rounds, she was the first choice for just 50 MPs, less than 10 percent of the Tory group. Only at the last attempt did she move up to second place to go into the duel with the support of almost a third of the faction as a challenger against Sunak.
Truss will probably win this fight. This does not change anything in the composition of the faction. The handful of liberal conservatives will not forgive the fact that she has placed herself in the captivity of the hard right-wing nationalist wing of the party. The large center of the group should pay very close attention to who Truss appoints to the cabinet and with which political ideas they want to score points with the electorate.
