Liz Truss Won't Save The West

Although the question does have to be faced of how this loon was a Cabinet Minister for 10 years and under three Prime Ministers, even UnHerd has seen through the mad, sad old bat, as Peter Franklin writes:

Liz Truss only had 50 days as prime minister. It’s less than 500 days since she occupied the role, but in that time she’s had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra.

Her latest stage was the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort in Washington DC. She was politely received, ripples of applause punctuating a less than riveting 20-minute speech. But when you have Nayib Bukele and Javier Milei on the conference programme you need a few lulls to balance out the excitement.

In any case, hers was not an upbeat theme. “Western civilisation is doomed,” Truss warned the audience — unless, that is, conservatives gain not only office, but power too. It is no use the Right winning elections, she argued, unless the Right also has a plan for dealing with the “administrative state”.

It’s a view she expands upon in her new book Ten Years to Save the West. But from what, or whom, does the West saving? A familiar axis of evil: Russia, Iran and China.

As for the enemy within, those are summarised in the subtitle of her book: “Leading the revolution against globalism, socialism and the liberal establishment”. Her opposition to socialism we can take as read; the liberal establishment she blamed for her rapid loss of both power and office; but what doesn’t add up is her newfound animus towards globalism.

Didn’t Truss campaign for Britain to remain in the European Union? Wasn’t she an enthusiastic advocate of free trade as a minister? Hasn’t she spent her entire political career defending capitalism in its neoliberal incarnation?

She once famously declared that young people are “Uber-riding, Airbnb-ing, Deliveroo-eating freedom fighters”. And when she was PM she moved to liberalise immigration rules to funnel more people into the low-wage economy. If all of that isn’t globalism, then what is?

The oddest thing about her speech was that she didn’t explain. There was a jibe at Net Zero — a policy she supported as a leadership contender and PM — but otherwise no real rejection of the global agenda.

Far from advocating the isolationism preferred by many within the Trump-era Republican Party, her arguments were all about strengthening the West as a whole in readiness for the geopolitical struggles to come. As her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, once said to an American audience: this is no time to go wobbly.

Truss is right about that, but not going wobbly starts with a frank assessment of one’s own weaknesses and responsibilities. Unfortunately, what we’re still getting from her is a heap of excuses. When it comes to the collapse of her government it’s simply untrue that the deep state did it and ran away. She and her allies did it to themselves.

In putting the words “leading the revolution” on the cover of her book, an obvious implication is that she’s not done with the idea of leading her own party. But without a much deeper rethink, there’s no chance of that again.