Liz Truss’s improbable comeback

Opinion

Tory politician Liz Truss was the U.K.’s prime minister for just 49 days in late 2022. Yet her brief tenure managed to leave an indelible mark on British politics.

It included key ministers resigning, the firing of a close ally via Twitter, several policy U-turns and a disastrous mini budget that almost cratered the economy. Amid the chaos she became an unwitting internet phenomenon. Piggybacking on a line from the Economist, a tabloid newspaper livestreamed the withering of a head of lettuce for weeks, seeing if it would outlast Truss’s time in office.

The lettuce won. But Truss was undeterred by her relegation to the backbenches. And now the self-styled heir apparent to Margaret Thatcher is back, courting right-wing audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Published in mid-April, Truss’s new book — Ten Years to Save the West — is part memoir, part manifesto. It’s a rallying cry to embrace 1980s-era conservative principles as an antidote to the rise of China and progressives run amok. Truss alleges a socialist agenda is destabilizing liberal democracies.

By accumulating institutional power, she claims, leftist elites are pushing an insidious expansion of the “administrative state” and seek to abolish personal freedoms.

The book has been predictably panned by her critics.

A reviewer for The Guardian called it “economical with the truth” and “a cautionary tale of hubristic zeal.”

Nevertheless, there’s a renewed buzz around Truss among Anglophone conservatives. She gave a combative speech in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference — America’s largest and increasingly international annual gathering of right-wing activists, strategists and officials. For 20 minutes, Truss railed against the Biden administration, climate action, “woke economics,” transgender rights and mainstream media.

“I fear our countries are becoming social democracies by the back door,” she lectured on April 12 at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think-tank busy laying the groundwork for a possible second Trump presidency.

Back in the U.K., Truss’s tumultuous premiership is even being viewed with a hint of nostalgia. Conservative pundits are blaming the bland leadership of Truss’s successor, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, for the party’s terrible showing during England’s local elections on May 2, where it lost 474 council seats — almost half its prior total.

It’s an outcome likely to be repeated in Britain’s next general elections, which must be held by January 2025. Intentional or not, Truss’s comeback has coincided with a major rise in popular discontent throughout the West.

Voter anxiety is mounting over affordability issues caused by the fallout of post-pandemic inflation, runaway housing costs and polarizing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. These dynamics have rejuvenated right-wing movements ahead of pivotal polls in both Europe and America.

Ultranationalists are gearing up for European Parliament elections in early June, when candidates representing a coalition of hardline conservative parties from EU member states may win majority status for the first time. Presidential elections in the U.S. follow on November 5. Local authorities in Brussels — the unofficial capital of the European Union — took a heavy-handed approach to preventing anti-EU groups from gathering there in April.

Two hours after it began, police busted up a conservative conference featuring Nigel Farage, a leading architect of Brexit, and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Yet this was probably the wrong tactic.

Contemporary right-wing populism as embodied by Truss and others tends to embrace simplistic solutions to complex problems. Its proponents often reject scientific expertise in exchange for willful denial of the nuanced interdependencies of a globalized, 21st century world. They govern poorly.

But for democracy to function, they must still be accommodated within the political system.

Anti-establishment groups, on both the left and the right, are here to stay. They give voice to a portion of the electorate and are a natural part of the ebb and flow of democracy. Those wishing for their defeat must offer a more compelling vision of the future, supported by innovative ideas, better communication and more effective organization.

Likewise, partisans must accept that elections may lead to outcomes they despise. Liberal democracy superior to other political systems because its legal and institutional mechanisms encourage accountability and place constraints on power — albeit imperfectly. Polarization is not necessarily a problem if competing actors feel their interests and concerns can be channeled within the political system. Or are fairly represented within government. When this doesn’t happen a vicious cycle is set in motion, one clearly evident in America: support for political violence increases and opportunistic politicians indulge extremists for political gain.

In that scenario, everyone loses.

Kyle Hiebert is a Winnipeg-based researcher and political risk analyst, and former deputy editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor.