With Liz Truss as the new prime minister, many have been left questioning where her time in power will lead us. Will she continue the trend of u-turns created by Johnson or will she exacerbate his path of destruction? Most signs point at the latter. Luckily for Truss, with the queen's death, the rising cost of living crisis and the ongoing Ukraine war, expectations are not very high. With low expectations come lowball actions at the hands of the PM, so let me tell you why not to put your trust in Truss.
Let’s start with Liz Truss herself, the fourth Tory leader in just 12 years. Doing a better job as PM than her predecessors shouldn’t be difficult considering all their times in power ended in failure. However, for someone as out of touch as Liz Truss, the only thing she may prove better than them at is being regressive.
Truss struggled to find her way out of a room she had just come into after her leadership launch speech, and yet we expect her to lead our country out of a cost of living crisis? This is the very same woman who managed to irritate Putin so much that he issued a nuclear order.
As for her policies, not only has she ruled out energy rationing but also any chance of increasing windfall tax to help cover rising energy costs. Some may praise her name because she has promised not to raise taxes, but this means no tax increase for all including the commercial giants making profits by exploiting their workers. Not increasing taxes will result in an increase in government borrowing or alternatively cuts to funding in other areas.
Not to mention her outlandish policies on the environment, immigration and workers’ rights.
However, can we really be shocked that such policies are the product of someone with the same voting record as Truss? Let’s take a quick look:
Voted a mixture of for and against higher taxes on banks
Generally voted against measures to prevent climate change
Consistently voted for university tuition fees
Consistently voted for ending financial support for some 16-19-year-olds in training and further education
Voted against investigations into the Iraq war
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Now on to her ever-so-diverse cabinet. On her cabinet sit:
Thérèse Coffey, deputy prime minister and health and social care secretary
Kwasi Kwarteng, chancellor of the exchequer
James Cleverly, foreign secretary
Suella Braverman, home secretary
Ben Wallace, defence secretary
Brandon Lewis, justice secretary and lord chancellor
Nadhim Zahawi, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, minister for intergovernmental relations and minister for equalities
Penny Mordaunt, leader of the House of Commons and lord president of the council
Lord True, Lord privy seal and leader of the House of Lords
Jake Berry, minister without portfolio and Conservative party chairman
Alok Sharma, Cop26 president
Jacob Rees-Mogg, business, energy and industrial strategy secretary
Simon Clarke, levelling up, housing and communities secretary
Kemi Badenoch, international trade secretary and president of the board of trade
Chloe Smith, work and pensions secretary
Kit Malthouse, education secretary
Ranil Jayawardena, environment secretary
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, transport secretary
Michelle Donelan, culture secretary
Chris Heaton-Harris, Northern Ireland secretary
Alister Jack, Scotland secretary
Robert Buckland, Wales secretary
Truss’ cabinet has so far been praised for its diversity due to its inclusion of people of colour, as well as, the fact that not as many white men have been awarded positions of power. However, the issue of class discrimination, which often translates into racism, still exists. While only 7% of the UK’s population is privately educated, 74% of the new cabinet is privately educated.
It is all good and well-awarding people of colour with meaningful titles, but not when those positions are either futile and they hold no real authority, a diversity hire if you wish. The same goes for hiring white-washed people of colour, whose only goal in life is to please the white man. Kwasi Kwarteng is known for being an ally of one of the most notorious dictatorships, meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch is in denial of Britain’s racism. These are not champions of diversity who will fight against institutionalised racism, at best they’ll boost marketing for Black History Month.
Meanwhile, analysis from Opendemocracy found that “Liz Truss's new housing secretary has received money from a property lobbyist and her cabinet includes at least six landlords who each receive thousands of pounds in rent a year.” So not only is her cabinet filled with privately educated rich people but also landlords, running a nation where most people can’t afford housing.
As a cherry on top, Truss decided to quietly change the post of women and equalities minister to just equalities minister and awarded the post to a man. General inequality is prevalent even in a so-called progressive country like the UK, men earn 17.9% more than women on average per hour, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So to put a man in such a position of power only reinforces concerns over women's rights in the UK.
Taking into consideration all of the above and the continuous questionable actions taken by Truss it makes sense why only 12% of the British public trust Truss to do a good job as PM.
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