The bad Liz

It’s as if we swapped a good Liz for a horrid one. The death of Elizabeth II will forever be linked, in my mind at least, with the assent of Britain’s recent and, what may turn out to be, most horrible prime minister, Liz Truss. So far she has given a hefty tax break to the rich and super rich while taking away benefits for the poor in order to pay for it, thereby devaluing the pound sterling and wrecking the British economy. She’s done more to hurt the little guy than Covid, Brexit and the war in Ukraine. And this is just her first month. She’s only just getting started. Give her time.

Her response to universal criticism (much of it coming from backbenchers within her own party) has been to double down and smugly imply it’s all part of a master plan that we are all too stupid to understand. Sound familiar? It’s right out of the Trump playbook. Think Donald Trump in a skirt. Trump with an Oxford education and a vaguely Scottish accent. Like Trump, she used to claim to be a liberal but quickly discovered she could go farther faster by claiming to be a conservative.

Already petitions are being gathered to have her removed, and backbenchers are grumbling about possible votes of no confidence. Under current rules she is safe from a leadership challenge for a year after her election, but the 1922 executive could change the rules if demand from Tory MPs is sufficiently overwhelming.

Before long people will be speaking of Boris Johnson’s premiership as “the good old days.” With fuel prices going through the proverbial roof and millions of Britons wondering how they’re going to make it through the winter, Liz Truss gave bankers uncapped bonuses. “Don’t be fooled by her mousy disposition and charming lack of charisma,” comedian Jonathan Pye says, “Liz Truss is more dangerous than you could possibly imagine.”

The problem began when it appeared that former Chancellor of the Exchequer and billionaire Rishi Sunak (my choice for PM out of a collection of deplorably bad choices) told the Conservative Party the truth, that Britain could not climb out of its current problem by lowering taxes. Truss, spotting her main chance, came back and promised to do just that — lower taxes. British Conservatives consulted their consciences, noticed they didn’t have one and voted, not for what was best for the country, but what was best for themselves.

The rumour could be true that Boris Johnson is waiting in the wings like a vulture for Liz Truss to fail so he can make a comeback. As a student of history Johnson should know better. Lord Halifax waited in 1940 for Churchill to fail, and fail he did — for some time, anyway, after taking over the premiership. But Britons today don’t like to take backward steps today any more than they did then. Johnson is probably going to have a long, long wait.

One thing is clear, the British people have had it with the Tories. The next general election (no later than January 2025) will probably emerge with a Labour majority. That will mean that the Labour leader, whoever he or she will be by then, will be the next prime minister. Meanwhile Britain is saddled with this awful woman.

So the hope is that Britain will have to endure a Conservative government for just a little over two more years. Labour leaders and other liberals are watching America’s midterm election with keen interest, in order to discern whether or not weariness with conservative hypocrisy is enough to eject conservatives from traditionally safe constituencies.

It’s happened in Britain before. In 1997, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ejected every last one of their Tory MPs, and England got rid of most of them, to usher in the Tony Blair era. It was a reaction to Thatcherism and her tepid successor John Major. Will the same happen in the United States and, as a corollary, Great Britain? We will all have to stay tuned. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.