"One of the most mediocre politicians in Britain"

FVD International Director John Laughland is in despair at the election of Liz Truss as the new UK Prime Minister.

In my view, Liz Truss will be a more catastrophic prime minister than the most catastrophic prime minister in recent history, Theresa May. This is for three reasons.

First, she is not supported by her own MPs, who chose Rishi Sunak in the final round in July before the vote by Conservative Party members. The level of support she received from Conservative Party members, moreover, is the lowest any Conservative leader has ever received in a leadership election.

She is the fourth Conservative party leader and Prime Minister in six years. Theresa May replaced David Cameron in 2016, Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May in 2019 and in turn lost power in 2022. The party (especially the parliamentary party) is in such a febrile state that it unseated the most successful leader in a generation (Johnson). It will easily do so again.

Second, Liz Truss is one of the most mediocre politicians in Britain. Theresa May was stubborn and difficult but at least she had a brain. Liz Truss often leaves her mouth hanging open during speeches, in which she frequently makes enormous gaffes (such as not knowing whether France is an ally of the United Kingdom, or not knowing which country Rostov-on-Don is in), and her leadership campaign only showed up her weaknesses even further.

Her basic weaknesses are compounded by shameless opportunism. Having voted and campaigned for Remain, she now claims to be a staunch Brexiteer. She plays the role of a pound-paradise Thatcher but in fact she was the student leader of the Liberal Democrats when at Oxford. She has occupied six different ministerial portfolios under all the last three Conservative prime ministers, without having left any discernible imprint on any of them.

Third, she assumes office at an exceptionally difficult time. It would take miraculous leadership qualities to steer a country out of the mess the governments of which she has been a member have got the country in, especially the chronic indebtedness from Covid, the inflation which results from monetary creation, and the terrible and increasing fall-out from the Ukraine war on which Boris Johnson and Liz Truss take such a hawkish line.

To deal with the cost of living, Truss will spend even more than on Covid, handing out hundreds of billions to help people pay their energy bills and thereby violently betraying the Thatcherite principles on which she campaigned (tax cuts). Meanwhile, the pound is weakening (like the euro) which will push the price of energy, in dollars, ever higher.

It is sometimes said that Tony Blair came from the Left and governed on the (neo-conservative) Right. Liz Truss comes from the Left (the Liberal Democrats, where she even espoused hostility to the monarchy, a very marginal cause indeed in Britain) and will govern on the Left if not extreme Left, the Conservative Party already being largely in hock to fashionable social causes such as gay marriage.

There was so much hope and excitement when Brexit was finally achieved in January 2020. It has taken us just over two years to reach the low point of absolute despair.

John Laughland is currently Visiting Fellow at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest.