Truss Resignation a Symptom of Conservative Crisis in the Anglosphere

British Prime Minister Liz Truss ahead of a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Downing Street, London, on Oct. 1, 2022. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Commentary

The resignation of Liz Truss after barely six weeks as the UK prime minister is seen by many commentators as the consequence of pursuing “extremist, experimental” economic policies.

Yet, Sir Humphrey Appleby—of “Yes Minister” fame—would have described Truss as “very courageous” in pursuing free market policies, which are now almost universally panned by these same, self-congratulating commentators as “electoral poison.”

The fact is that Truss’s departure from No. 10 Downing Street is a symptom, not a cause, of what’s wrong with centre-right politics across the Anglosphere, for two reasons.

First, centre-right parties in the UK, Canada, and Australia have abandoned core centre-right principles—including economic liberalism—and have ceased making the case for them.

In Britain, the Conservative Party long ago decided it didn’t want to be a conservative, centre-right party.

Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, didn’t lose the prime ministership because of “Partygate.” That was merely the excuse.

Johnson was removed because his embrace of net-zero emissions and climate change super-activism led Britain into an energy crisis.

It has resulted in massive price hikes for household energy bills, born by the very voters in the “red wall” that gave the Tories the biggest electoral majority they had since Margaret Thatcher’s huge win in the 1987 general election.

Johnson won dozens of working-class seats that had never voted Conservative before. He won them on Brexit and patriotism and because the centre-left Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn was so extreme. Now, the Conservatives could easily lose those seats.

Conservatives Presiding Over Centre-Left Agenda

As Australian journalist Greg Sheridan points out, on Brexit, Johnson forced his party to make a choice in utter defiance of the zeitgeist. But on everything else, Johnson has governed as a left-of-centre, zeitgeist-observing Labour leader might.

The two Conservative leaders before Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron, accepted all of Labour’s social agenda. Cameron’s only conservative feature was attempting to control spending and balance the budget, plus some modest tax cutting.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron (R) stands with then-London Mayor Boris Johnson as the Olympic cauldron is lit for the Paralympic Games in Trafalgar Square in London on Aug. 24, 2012. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Now, under a Conservative government, Britain’s tax take is the highest since the 1960s, soon to become the highest since the ‘50s.

The energy crisis and the tax burden are the two big things that Truss tried to address, but was unable to do so thanks to her predecessors.

As John Roskam, of the Institute of Public Affairs, writes in the Australian Financial Review, what has occurred in the past few weeks reveals what happens when you stop making the case for economic freedom.

He cites former Tory leader and Foreign Secretary William Hague, who wrote in The Times that all that was left for the Conservative Party to do was to live with big government and try to make it work a bit better (this is also what many centre-right Liberal members of Parliament in Australia believe too, by the way).

They have given up because, in their mind, it’s too hard since it will likely provoke horror in the financial markets and ridicule from commentators, and spook voters who have become comfortable with staying at home—while leaving future generations with the debt burden.

This parlous state of affairs is thanks to ever-increasing government largesse, practised by both centre-right and left-wing governments.

We have been here before. Advocates for economic freedom are back where they were in the 1970s. They are “policy dissidents,” as Roskam calls them.

What follows is an extract from the memorandum of advice provided to the incoming Thatcher government in 1979 (which former Australian Prime Minister John Howard reproduced in his autobiography “Lazarus Rising”). It is as true today as it was then.

“First and foremost, the UK public sector has swollen beyond belief (due to) the Welfare State, rampant.

“Necessarily, therefore, the overall burden of taxation is too high,

• and its effects are exacerbated by the structure of the taxation system;
• which, although ostensibly directed at the ‘fat cats,’ in practice results not (or not so much) in levies falling genuinely on well-to-do but rather on the middle classes;
• so that, literally, people in that category are increasingly disposed to ‘vote with their feet’ by taking their skills, energies and, not least, their attitudes towards their society, elsewhere.”

Thatcher had to argue not only against her opponents, but also, even more fiercely, against those of her own party, to convince them of the benefits of economic freedom. Even those in her own party begged her for a U-turn, which she famously refused to do.

Leadership Qualities Not Up to Par

The second reason for Truss’s demise is the system that chooses our leaders no longer produces caliber such as Thatcher who can make the case for economic liberalism and carry it through.

As Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson told Piers Morgan, there needs to be a “rethink” in how leaders are chosen because “it’s not working.”

“Clearly the systems that we have had in place post-war the last 80 years to raise up talent to put in positions to rule over the rest of us—that system is very flawed,” Carlson said.

“It’s producing instead short-sighted day traders who have no real investment in the countries they lead, no long-term vision for those countries, and no moral strength.

“They’re weak, and weak leadership in the home, as in the nation, results in disaster.”

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher poses for a photograph in London, in 1980. AP Photo/Gerald Penny

Truss didn’t succeed because she, like her predecessors, doesn’t possess Thatcher-like skills to make the case that prosperity is built on the back of economic freedom, lower taxes, smaller government, and less regulation to allow private enterprise and individual initiative to flourish.

One only has to look at her media performances to know that she was, to put it simply, not up to the task.

Let’s not forget Truss was seen as a “least-worst option” in the party leadership contest compared to former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, a former investment banker and hedge fund manager, whose resignation was the catalyst for the end of Johnson.

It’s this system that sees deep-thinkers such as MPs Kemi Badenoch and Danny Kruger—with their genuine commitment to finding a way to rebuild a good society from the ruins brought about by the globalist creed of the past two decades—excluded from leadership positions in place of mediocrity and careerists.

They’re considered “too risky” and thus a threat to personal electoral survival by many MPs.

Every man for himself now seems to be the order of the day.

Truss’s demise is the wake-up call that not only economic liberals need, but that democracy in the Anglosphere needs if it wants to produce worthy leaders.

The low point of the 1970s led to a revolution. And it can happen again.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.