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Does Truss Have Your Support?

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Help me here. I hadn’t heard of her, but there she is, apparently your next unelected Prime Minister! Anyone would think you were living in a Third World country!

She looks and sounds like a freaking nightmare, par for the course for your institutionally eternal Tory government, but does she have secret attributes tucked away? How are you wearing her? And does she have the cojones?

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Comments

  1. The older Tories can see the value in having a truss whereas the younger ones think they’ll never need one. Perhaps that’s why she is the one being supported by the over 65s? I can’t think of another reason*.

    *this is a weak attempt at satire.

      • The front page is on the BBC Papers page. As is the news that Sid Owen is returning to Albert Square. And somebody left his/her wife/husband/partner for whoever they’d been paired with on Strictly, as if that is somehow surprising.

        It’s an astonishing page, every day brings new revelations about how bizarre this country has become. I don’t know about nipples in the DE, but the Star are obsessed with putting overweight naked white men on their front pages. Makes the last years of The Word look like FHM.

  6. I don’t know much about her, but she seems a bit dim. She doesn’t seem as dangerous or extreme as Giorgia Meloni, predicted to become Italy’s first female Prime Minister. (And guess what? Berlusconi, who is now over a thousand years old, is back on the scene, saying he wants to be President!)

    Why is Giorgia Meloni’s party called Brothers of Italy and not Brothers and Sisters of Italy, the less bewildered among you may well ask. It’s cos Italy, a very sexist country, has a very sexist language. When talking about a group of people, female terms are only used if the group is entirely female. So, for example, a 100 piece all-female orchestra would be referred to with feminine terms like “ragazze” (girls/young women) and the Italians would shout “Brave! Brave!” after the performance; but if 99 people in the orchestra are female and there is just one little bloke playing the triangle then all terminology is male, the players are referred to as “ragazzi” (boys/young men) and the audience will shout “Bravi! Bravi!”.

  7. She’s awful. I wouldn’t vote for them anyway not being a Tory but I’d rather Boris was PM. He might be a liar and untrustworthy but he’s not thick.

    Truss is intellectually incapable of being PM. She’s utterly clueless

    • I’ve never been convinced by the notion that Johnson’s bumbling idiot act hides a sharp intelligence. I’ve seen no evidence of it in his journalism nor his conduct in politics.

      A contributor to the BBC podcast Boris made what I thought an interesting point. There is a view among people who follow a certain educational path that your degree at Oxford is the last part of your education. You have then completed it and need learn nothing more. That is why Johnson, who got a 2:1 in Classics by relying on his earlier grounding in the subject and did no work at Oxford, was so gutted not to get a 1st. That would have meant, to him at least, that he had completed his education perfectly.

      Truss, of course, seems thick as arseholes and looks like a budgie pecking a mirror.

    • You prefer untrustworthy? It’s unfortunate that the parliamentary party binned all the candidates with even half an idea.

      I rather think Truss was what Boris hoped for – a “Boris Continuity Candidate” thicker than he is, his last jolly jape on the traitors of the parliamentary party – and sod the country. It would have been even funnier with Nad, but I guess even Boris knew that was a jape too far, everyone would have seen through it.

      The other outsider possibility is that Boris views her as a placeholder, while he works out a plausible way to get back into number 10, carried aloft by his supporters while he munches grapes and guzzles wine out of a carafe.

  8. She does seem extraordinarily dim. Clearly she’s being boosted by people who know they can exploit her utter incompetence in the same way they exploited Johnson’s complete disregard for the consequences of his actions. I don’t know if we can ever come back from where we’re heading.

    • If she does what she says she will, then the economy will properly tank, inflation and interest rates will go high, mortgages defaulted and so on..

      And that’s if we survive her foreign policy pronouncements which could start a nuclear war if we’re not careful

      My MP Kwasi Kwarteng is lined up to being chancellor. An utterly useless constituency MP who doesn’t live there, doesn’t appear unless there’s an election going and who can basically be absent because he’s in the safest Tory seat in the country.
      Next door MP is Raab. I’m surrounded by Cunts

      • Ahhh Staines Massive. I used to have the dubious honour of having KK as my MP too. Absolutely, staggeringly useless. Barely a seat-warmer. The definition of a parachuted-in, Old Etonian banker who feels he simply must run the country, so gizza safe seat, old chap, as is my natural due.

        His predecessor, David Wilshire, may have been a notorious expenses-happy homophobe on the right fringes of his party but he did take his constituency duties very seriously and was – notorious homophobia and expenses scandal aside – the kind of MP Tories seem unable to field these days. I disagreed with almost every political position he held, but he strongly believed in them, and apparently felt it was his most solemn responsibility to represent and help the people of Spelthorne. Imagine that. (While, admittedly, funnelling six-figure sums of public money to a company owned by, er, David Wilshire MP.)

          • Eyethangew *sweeps off feathered hat*

            And just imagine how little I think of Kwarteng if I’d have Wilshire back in a heartbeat.

            Nowadays I’m up the road being represented, if that’s the word (and it isn’t), by Adam Afriyie, a no-mark so heroically delible that he didn’t even manage to get front-benched by Boris Johnson. We really are spoiled out here in the Home Counties.

            • I’m blessed with Ranil Jayawardena. We only ever seem to hear from him at election time. He appears to like equality and the rule of law. I suppose in todays Tory party that is worth stating.

            • I used to work for a company owned by Adam Afriyie before he became an MP (student gig, holidays and evenings sort of deal). Met him several times.

              I have nothing truly negative to report here – he was polite, friendly and treated everyone well. His back story is fairly inspiring.

              He did, however, sometimes give the impression of being possessed of the regrettable trait of regarding himself as clever, when he was merely rich.

              • Yeah. I think that’s also been his attitude to being an MP: I’m rich, therefore I’m clever, therefore I should be in a national leadership role.

                I’ve corresponded with him a few times. His responses have been boilerplate reiterations of whip lines, with a distinct undertone of insult: you’re only making a big deal out of this because you’re the sort of rentamob troublemaker who wants to make life difficult for my party, the natural rulers of the country.

        • Ha yes Wilshire was old school Tory. Very good with his constituents, solid to the bone, but homophobic and on the fiddle…

          He once accidentally took me for a Tory leaflet dropper and put 1000 leaflets through my letterbox for me to deliver. My wood burner got some overtime that day

        • Yep, another Spelthorne dweller here. Kwarteng os an odious creep of the highest order. A complete waste of time. Met him once at a function. He spent the entire 30 seconds looking over my shoulder.

    • Those in the know seem to suggest that Truss isn’t exactly thick, and is actually a very diligent worker, but is absolutely incapable of nuance or thinking outside a very rigid ideological framework. Thus, the market is always right (domestic policy), and Rule Britannia (foreign policy). Her two answers to everything, and why she won’t be able to conceive of solutions to a single one of the pressing issues on the table. (Also why her whole campaign has just been culture war bollocks that hardly anyone not on Twitter is even aware of: how do you address energy prices when your only view is that profit is always good and limiting it is “the socialist politics of envy”?)

      But then, that’s just a different kind of thick, isn’t it? What’s the use of having a brain if you won’t use it? The curse of political/ideological thinking, right there. The minute you think your club has all the answers, you’re voluntarily outsourcing your thinking. (The left, of course, are no different.)

  9. A few smart observers commented before Johnson’s ousting that despite being a ‘reckless narcissist’ as a opposed to an ideologue, he was the Tories’ best electoral asset. A very strong ‘brand’ , not stupid & well practiced at winging it.
    The argument went that he’d so hollowed out his cabinet & filled it with sycophants (partly to minimise challenges), that there was literally nobody with sufficient wherewithal to be presented to the electorate.
    All that existed were the very bottom of the barrel of what used to be laughed at as the ‘hang & flog ‘em’ brigade’. Intellectually lightweight doesn’t come close, not to mention downright vicious.
    Hence a ‘presentable’ candidate (Helen of Troy by Tory standards) like Mordant seemed to be in the running at one stage.
    Leaving us with Sunak & Truss. I thought Sunak would sway it, because apart from not inhabiting this planet on most points & advocating a return to to the days of private cities administered by racketeers on a East India Company model, he wears suits & therefore sends the signal that he is a ‘businessman’ – which is good. However, Truss has copied every Thatcher photo op from her fangirl scrap book – including the tank commander footage & doesn’t present the problem to the base of ( ahem) ‘too much Melanin’. Unfortunately, she is literally unable to find her way out of a room, likes 2 or 3 U-turns before lunch & would probably be outfoxed by ‘P.T.O.’ on both sides of a piece of paper.
    Personally, for the sake of the country I hope she gets it as she is so palpably clueless that I think she could destroy her own party.
    Sunak I feel could conceivably BS his way along like an ‘Apprentice’ candidate, & fool enough voters that he’s competent because ‘I know when to take my tie off & roll up my crisp white shirt sleeves when pretending I’ve used a petrol pump before like a bloke’.
    The notion that they both make the idiot former minister Jeremy Hunt appear as a sage-like statesman figure is frankly terrifying.

    • The candidate who polled best with the Tory base was Kemi Badenoch.

      Leaving aside the horrific notion that the previous Enoch was the good one, I don’t believe KB could reasonably be accused of being insufficiently melanated.

      The Tories are actually fairly egalitarian in cultural identity terms when it comes to getting what they want: low taxes, small state, 1950s social values. I don’t think they care too much what you look like, provided you deliver that laundry list.

      Personally, I thought Sunak was done for before the contest even began, because he’s too obviously highly educated and metropolitan. Too many misty eyed remembrances of his time at Stanford, too much a citizen of nowhere.

      Most importantly, he also left his fingerprints on the blade that did for his predecessor. Tory leadership 101 states that they never go for Brutus, which is presumably why Truss spent 36 hours on a plane while Johnson was being disposed of.

  10. A young woman from an “ordinary” background achieves a good degree at Oxford – she is certainly not thick. What she cannot do is think on her feet. Ask her a question for which she has no prepared answer and she panics like a brain-dead waffle
    However, she has been on PM manoeuvres for at least two years planning and cultivating whilst waiting for Johnson’s inevitable downfall. Certainly not thick but utterly, completely dangerous. God ‘elp us all.

  11. Truss was my stepmother’s late brother’s constituency MP. Nick would regularly see her at the local station, asking for a receipt for her coffee before the journey to Westminster.

    Well, those expenses aren’t going to claim themselves…

  15. Anybody know what the weight supporting limit is for those modern streetlamps they use nowadays? The ones that don’t frighten bats or something? Do you think they’d take the weight of a cabinet minister, or a PM, for example? Just wondering, while I sharpen my pitchfork and ensure the lantern is full of oil. Might be important knowledge should the peasants revolt.

  17. Confidence is low chez Beezer.

    Both Dominic Cummings and Matthew Parris, only the latter of which I take heed, describe her as ‘properly crackers’

    I’ve disliked every PM the U.K. has had since Blair. As much as I keenly dislike Johnson I still loathe Cameron the Whistling C***, the architect of the bulk of our woes

  20. Mr Putin will be listening very carefully to what this waste of good oxygen says first about Ukraine once she’s PM. If any leader is likely to push his buttons before he pushes his buttons its her. Her stupidity is frightening in the world we currently live in.

    • I don’t see much changing between NATO and Russia, no matter who is in charge here once Boris leaves No. 10. Big sticks will continue to be waved to no real effect and the Ukraine war will grind on. The big Western arms suppliers/manufacturers will be rubbing their hands with glee as the money rolls in and they get the kind of field trials they have always dreamed of for their merchandise. Quite likely there will be a rise in serious cyber attacks in both directions. Neither NATO or Russia can afford[*] a full-scale military conflict.

      Eventually, Putin will be humiliated and ousted. Much of Ukraine will be left a wasteland for decades to come.

      [*] In both monetary and social terms.

  21. What baffles me is that once, not that long ago historically speaking, we were one of the most powerful countries in the world, and now we collectively seem to be heading very fast towards a very high cliff made of crises that could wreck the lives of millions of people. And the only people in the frame to somehow prevent this are a woman who U-turns so often she must be permanently dizzy, and a man who seems ridiculously out of touch with the people he wants to represent. How on earth did we descend to this sorry state?

    It seems like a good bet that Truss will get the nod, but who could realistically say that she fills them with confidence? Her only policy seems to be “cut taxes, that’ll fix everything”. Yet I read that 40% of people pay no tax, so her one policy would have no direct benefit for them. Hmm…

    We have people relying on food banks, energy bills going berserk (apparently average bills could rise 200% to 300% – how can this possibly be justified?), Brexit underlying so much Tory thinking even though it seems to have been 100% catastrophe, rises in Covid and monkeypox, and on and on. Yet the man who is still nominally our PM is on his second foreign holiday in a couple of weeks, his two would-be successors are busy plucking policies out of thin air, and the opposition, such as they are, have gone AWOL.

    Is anybody actually running the country, and is there anyone capable of averting even one of the countless crises we seem to be facing? Truss is surely not the solution.

    • You could always emulate the World’s Oldest Fledgling Democracy and install a military junta (repeatedly and regularly) with a puppet P.M. heading a government intent on trousering what remains of the Nation’s wealth after Individual 1 has siphoned most of it off into his private bank account. That seems to work.

  22. I reckon the polls give Truss such a big lead among Tory party members that she’s going to be our next PM, and she’s saying nothing to inspire confidence beyond that backward looking rabble.

    But remember that it’s likely to be at least two years before the next general election. that’s time for her to screw up and the party to dump before it takes place. No idea that that could be.

  23. Listening to Brandon Lewis doing the media round this morning. He’s no political heavyweight, no great thinker, but he’s not thick. I’ve met him a few times and, like most MPs, he’s sharp and personable in the flesh, can take a brief, asks pertinent questions, and can contextualise. Nor is he actually evil, and while I’m sure he’s avaricious I’m equally sure he knows that people with no money can’t make him rich.

    So when he’s out there speaking for the Government, and bigging up Liz Truss, what the hell is going on in his head? He knows they’ve fucked the country, so how does he keep doubling down? If it’s personal ambition, what status is there in being in the last and worst Tory Cabinet? Wouldn’t this be the time to start the resistance, or just shut the fuck up on the back benches?

    • Starting the resistance? The Conservatives are basically on the side of extractive capital, aren’t they? So, tax cuts are just the latest way for the wealthy to keep what they have extracted from the profit derived from labour and the unsustainable single use of natural resources. Small government and the least possible support for the actual wealth creators.

      There are always new and creative ways to maximise return on investment for their donors, surely? If not Truss, then Sunak with his free ports – I hear they are are a great way towards the no ‘red tape’, low wage, low tax economy that will assuredly bring economic growth and high GNP (just don’t look at the median income).

      Maybe they can get everyone below a certain income hooked on heroin? That way, everybody will steal from their neighbours to maintain the income flow.

  24. I agree with Lodestone. I don’t think she is thick, at least not by the standard of a country where at the average reading age is 9 years old. More seriously, her degree and professional qualification suggest otherwise and former employers Shell and Cable & Wireless don’t usually resort to hiring people who are thick.

    Her big failings as a Minister appears to be the tendency to get very enthusiastic about what seem to be random selections of unrelated ideas and policies. It’s also been claimed that fellow ministers and senior officials found her difficult to work with, although this appears to have been down to the random enthusiasms, rather than the aggression and/or bullying other ministers ( from all parties) have been accused of in the past. All of which helps explain why most of the parliamentary party didn’t back her, certainly not as first choice.

    That aside, the biggest idea she is bringing to the table, that of going hell for leather for short-term growth is essentially what Tony Benn argued for ( unsuccessfully) when Jim Callaghan became PM, albeit using very different methods.

    As for whether any or all of her economic proposals would work, who Knows? As ever its not difficult to find economists to give entirely different opinions. And after all, Kier Starmer has this morning proposed a plan for dealing with energy prices that the IMF had essentially dismissed as a terrible idea just the week before. Does that make him thick ? I don’t think so.

    • Good, balanced post.

      I’ve largely given up making predictions about politics. My instinct is that Truss will make a worse Prime Minister than Johnson, but who really knows.

      What does seem certain is that the country is heading for major trauma, largely regardless of who’s in charge.

      My concern regarding Truss is that she’s clearly going to be elevated on the basis of finally giving the Tory members what they really want. For all the handwringing about her predecessors, it’s notable that when you speak to Tories they often feel they haven’t had a “proper” Conservative PM yet, even 12 years in.

      My concern is that Truss will be that proper Conservative PM, at a moment where such a thing may prove to be the very last thing the country needs.

      I do think there’s something of an open goal for Labour here. There’s an argument that some of the economic headwinds facing Truss are global in nature, and not strictly of the making of the Conservative party. But you could have said the same of the 2008 crash, and yet Cameron succeeded in pinning that to Labour for a good decade.

      If Starmer, or ideally his more competent successor, can manage that with the cost of living crisis then Labour should walk back into power and can hopefully start fixing some of the things that have been broken in recent years.

      Or maybe Truss will prove more ideologically nuanced once in power. Personally, I think the fact she used to be a Lib Dem is a cause for at least some comfort, in that it speaks to some limited ability to change her mind, a virtue relatively few can claim to be in possession of these days.

      Whoever ends up in charge, I’m inclined to wish them well and hope to god they get the big decisions right, because there are a lot of British households out there depending on it. A lot of Ukrainian households too. Dark times.

      • I’d humbly suggest that far from heading for a major trauma that a great many people are already struggling through one with it would seem very little prospect of whoever ends up with their hands on the levers of power doing anything other than the bare minimum to alleviate it. There’s the rub. It’s not who is going to be best placed to avoid the major trauma that is already a reality for an increasing number but rather who is going to do the most to help and not make matters even worse. Then there is the little matter of climate change…

  25. It comes as no great surprise to me that just about anyone at Ministerial level in politics or Senior Official level in the Civil Service will describe each other as “Difficult To Work With”.
    I don’t think much importance should be attached to such pronouncements.
    They are all Big Egos, climbing their particular greasy poles towards “The Top”. Anyone not assisting in that endeavour will obviously be regarded as “Difficult”.

  26. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss which school or university any of them attended. It doesn’t matter in the slightest to me if they do or do not have a degree let alone in what subject.
    I look at how they vote in the house and who or what pays them money outside of their salary for being an MP. This is very easily ascertained. After that it’s about how they conduct themselves in general.

  30. John Major sounding like Churchill on those who backed Boris Johnson:

    “They remained silent when they should have said something. And they only said something when their silence would have been self-damaging.”

    This is John Major. Former Conservative Primeminister and the anointed successor to Thatcher.

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