Britain’s economy crashed, its Queen died – but Liz Truss is back. Clara Hill reviews her book ahead of the UK elections.
Unlike her hero Taylor Swift, Liz Truss couldn’t be complex and couldn’t be cool: her time as Prime Minister was outlasted by what perhaps became the world’s most famous lettuce. Ten Years of Save The West is her effort to avoid becoming a pub quiz answer. The book is part reflection on her political career and part zooped-up Thatcherite 10 point world domination plan.
Elected in 2010, Truss quickly ascended the ranks of the Conservative Party. Perhaps unsurprisingly, rehashing her party’s destruction isn’t the most riveting story: her recollections are neither insightful nor scandalous. After 14 years of Tory rule and a cacophony of memoirs from C-lister ministers, that’s no surprise. But the extent of her axe-grinding remains amusing. The signature Trussian mad eye-twinkle bounces off her eccentric, Bond villain-like phrasing and sentence structure. Take the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, for instance. Critics of this treaty warned it would lead to an import of diminished food standards from the US. No matter, says Truss, telling us that ‘hundreds of thousands of Britons visit the US every year and merrily devour flavoursome steaks and chicken wings’.
Truss is not sorry for the multi-billion-pound hole she created in Britain’s economy. She would even dig it again. Her critics are simply ‘untruthers’ or ‘anti-growthers’. Her failure, ergo her ousting, had nothing to do with the validity of her ideas – but rather elite sabotage.
Another standout takeaway is Truss’s generous self-contradiction. She savages ‘excessive government spending’ but, as a minister, bemoans the lack of funding for childcare and prisons. She is happy to finger Russia, China and anyone who was mean about her premiership for threatening the ‘Western values’ of liberal democracy, the rule of law and press freedom. But she never pauses to consider whether her beloved unfettered capitalism is putting them at risk. Nor does she seem to see Parliament as anything but a hindrance. It seems Truss wants Western values like a hole in the head.
When recounting the mini-budget which crashed Britain’s economy, she enters maniacal territory. Why couldn’t the evil networks of power just leave her alone with Kwasi Kwarteng and a calculator, for heaven’s sake? Just how a fan of ‘Western values’ and all the trimmings thinks this is a model for government is presumably to be explained in the sequel.
She hates Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility, created by her own party, the most – labelling it a blockade to economic enlightenment. While this institution is hardly beyond reproach, Truss’ childish analysis is hard to square with her apparent beliefs a healthy civic state. One could, and should, argue that the Westminster model of governance has many flaws, but naturally Truss does not see the more obvious ones: such as its entrenchment of ruling class interests and investment of vast power in the executive. In lieu, she follows the usual right-wing script but on speed: decrying the poison of ‘wokeism’ and attacking the movements which correctly identify that the climate crisis is caused by her beloved lassiez-faire economics.
Along with the Bank of England, journalists, public opinion, His Majesty’s opposition, and leftists – by which she seems to mean anyone west of Genghis Khan – her leadership rival and successor Rishi Sunak is the subject of plenty jabs. Particular ire is doled out to his Covid-19 Eat Out To Help Out scheme, which is at least consistent with Truss having never knowingly discounted the cost of living. Tender anecdotes about her predecessor Boris Johnson follow, which could be a coded apology for stealing his chance to oversee the interregnum which followed the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
It should be laughable to think that Truss will ever have the chance of seeing her grand plan through. But with Sunak now on borrowed time and the likely election of a Labour government seemingly determined to make itself unpopular pretty quickly, her acolytes may well get another try.
