Liz Truss: Conservatives Don’t Understand That Communists Want to Destroy Western Civilisation

Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 22, 2024. Otabius Williams/The Epoch Times

Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has warned that conservatives don’t understand that communists wish for the destruction of Western civilisation.

The former Conservative Party leader was speaking to “American Thought Leaders“ of the reality of mass immigration and net-zero climate policy in Britain, and discussed how she believes that parliamentary powers are being supplanted by unelected bureaucracies.

Ms. Truss said, “We need to be brave, advocating conservative values, and we need to be proud of our countries, and we need to not compromise with the left.”

She highlighted that communists and certain left-wing advocates are seeking to undermine Western civilisation, a fact often overlooked by conservatives.

“You can’t compromise with communists who they want to destroy our way of life and I think the people on the left who advocate this point of view, they are after the destruction of Western civilisation, and too often conservatives don’t understand that that’s the aim,” she said.

“These people are not trying to be helpful. They are actively trying to undermine our way of life and that is why we need to be brave at taking them on,” she added.

Discussing the left and the environmental movement, Ms. Truss noted their success in presenting policies as altruistic while secretly advocating for “total collectivism.” She also criticised the tactic of branding dissenters as “nasty people,” especially in policies around transgenderism.

She said that this tactic is used as “a weapon used against conservatives.”

“I think too many conservatives accept the premise that somehow it’s nice to advocate these policies. No, it’s not. What we’re effectively doing is we’re making people poorer, because they can’t afford energy. We’re exposing our young people to dangerous, irreversible treatments. That isn’t nice,” she said.

Brexit

The former prime minister said that despite the UK’s exit from the European Union and the UK having its own climate change laws, politicians’ hands remained tied.

“Even though we left the European Union, most of the European laws are still on our statute books. So, it’s a bit like getting divorced and still living in the same house as your ex-husband,” said Ms. Truss.

“We’ve reduced carbon emissions, but that’s because we’re importing more goods from countries like China, who are building coal-fired power stations. So, there’s no net benefit to the planet. All that’s happened is we have empowered our enemies, and we’ve damaged our own industry.”

A selection of the front pages of British national newspapers showing the reaction to the resignation of Prime Minister Liz Truss, in central London on Oct. 21, 2022. David Cliff/AP Photo

She said that parliamentary power has been “outsourced.”

“A lot of this happened under the Tony Blair government, when the traditional role of the lord chancellor was abolished and he created a new Supreme Court,” she added.

Reflecting on her brief tenure as prime minister, which was cut short on Oct. 25, 2022 after seven weeks, Ms. Truss attributed her resignation to bureaucratic forces and “the establishment.”

“The forces of the bureaucracy and essentially the establishment in Britain were just too great to take on with the amount of political support I had, was—that’s the bottom line—there was not enough support from Conservative MPs to really change these things,” she said.

Enemy Within Our Own Country

Ms. Truss also talked about the anti-Israel protests sweeping Britain, and Islamist threats targeting members of Parliament.

“There’s clearly a basis of self-loathing. The people who are on the streets chanting in favour of Hamas or saying ‘capitalism is evil’—they don’t like Britain. They don’t like the British way of life. They don’t like our values,” she said. “A lot of conservatives just think this is a normal political fight. It’s not a normal political fight. This is an enemy within our own country.”

“It’s happening across the world but what we haven’t seen enough in Britain is the police actually cracking down on some of the vile anti-Semitism that’s taking place at these rallies,” she said, adding that there is an accountability and enforcement problem in Britain.

“And the most worrying thing recently, is MPs are being threatened. MPs are being threatened to change their vote in the House of Commons because of these vile extremist demonstrators, and that is where we need to make sure our laws are properly enforced,” she said.

Looking ahead to a potential Labour Party victory, the former prime minister had warnings for the future.

“We will have the current situation on steroids if Labour get in,” she said.

She said that the public is frustrated that policies such as the “proper control” of the country’s borders is not being enforced, but in order for them to be addressed, institutions need to be changed.

“We need to get rid of these quangos that are stopping conservative policies being enacted. And I think we need to demonstrate to the public we’re prepared to do that and we understand there’s a problem, but if we don’t this then the danger is Labour gets in power, and they do even more of this,” she added.