In a highly unusual press conference on October 15, embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss was asked the same question, consecutively, by three separate reporters.
Though the three – these were “friendly” reporters, from right-wing media, all of whom Truss herself called on – used different wording, their question was essentially the same: “Why should you remain as prime minister?”
It is an essential question and one that is very much in the national interest. But as is the nature of politicians, Truss – having just hurled her chancellor of the exchequer to the sharks in the vain hope of assuaging her legions of critics – chose not to answer directly, instead pivoting to her long-term plans.
But she has much to answer for. No British prime minister of recent times has started off her premiership so disastrously. The critique of the day is the total loss of capital market confidence in the UK’s economy under her stewardship. But her foreign policy is a mix of bluster, aggression and u-turns.
Reuters was not exaggerating when it reported today that the UK is engulfed in “a political crisis.” The situation raises two further questions: One of critical immediacy, one of more systemic import.
Firstly, is it time for Truss’ Conservative Party – which is by now very, very well practiced at this – to control the national damage by unseating Truss as soon as possible?
Reports from the UK yesterday allege that process is underway, suggesting that the UK is on the verge of choosing yet another national leader even though the revolving door from predecessor Boris Johnson’s September exit has barely stopped turning.
That raises the second issue. If Truss goes the way of Johnson, is it time to reconsider the tradition of rump party members – who are, by nature, more extreme in their political views than the general public – being given the power to choose disastrous party leaders?
Radical growth plan goes south, fast
One might suggest that anyone who sought to be prime minister at a time when the UK was facing such a formidable array of challenges was a fool or a lunatic.
Those challenges include: the confluence of spiraling energy costs with a cost-of-living crisis; war in Ukraine; the detritus-strewn aftermath of Brexit; and the possible disintegration of the national union.
A determined Truss won, beating out a stern challenge from ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak. But rather than taking an even-handed and prudent approach to the economic challenges, Truss – who is, in experience terms, economically illiterate – went radical.
In a mini-budget, she and her chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng – a widely published economic historian – announced new rounds of borrowing and slashed taxes for the rich in order to generate swift growth.
Described as “quantitative easing on steroids” this damn-the-torpedoes strategy was in stark contrast to the policies being enacted by the US Federal Reserve, which is engaged in a global growth-choking tightening cycle.
The analysis of one markets executive – speaking to Asia Times anonymously as he did not have permission to talk to media – was that Truss and Kwarteng were hurling sterling under the bus as part of a race-to-the-bottom plan that would kick-start investment and a flood of capital inflows.
What actually happened was the pound leaped over the cliff and the pension market teetered on the brink of implosion, prompting an intervention by the Bank of England.
Analysts of the latter crisis-within-a-crisis – such as the markets executive quoted above – were surprised to learn that UK pension funds, in an example of the loose regulatory regime pertaining in London, were permitted to leverage.
After widespread speculation, Truss saved herself by pivoting on a sixpence and hurling Kwarteng – whose tactical errors worsened the dire impact of his and Truss’ policies – under a bus of his own. Truss then summoned a safer pair of hands, Jeremy Hunt, to take over the position.
His own plans have not yet been revealed, but Hunt is making stern-faced pronouncements dripping with prudence and caution in what looks like an all-out attempt to regain trust and stem the bleeding. And if you think British prime ministers are trapped in a revolving door set on “fast spin,” consider this: Hunt is the fourth chancellor to be appointed since July.
Meanwhile, the national economy is not the only segment of the British polity that Truss is placing in the utmost peril. Diplomacy and security are also being thrown into the hazard.
Anti-Russia, anti-China – anti-EU?
Any general knows fighting a two-front war is a bad idea. But – at least according to the UK’s media – this is what Truss is set to do.
Widespread speculation in both the right- and left-wing sections of the British media has it that Truss has bowed to hawks in her own party – not to mention the US government – and is set to imminently redesignate the world’s second-largest economy a national threat to the UK.
According to multiple British media, citing sources within government, Truss plans to officially upgrade China – dubbed a “systemic competitor” under Johnson – to an “acute threat” in the UK’s policy documentation and parlance. Such a policy might be welcomed in Washington, which would then have London as an outrider for its own anti-China bent.
But not all think she is on the right track. Her hostility to China led former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating to belabor Truss, during her tenure as foreign secretary. In an op-ed, he called her “demented” for her hostility toward China, after she had suggested Beijing might mirror Moscow’s aggression toward Kiev in the Pacific. (Something that has not happened as China keeps its head below the parapets vis-a-vis overtly supporting Russia.)
In a swing at London’s Indo-Pacific pivot, Keating continued, “Britain does not add up to a row of beans when it comes to East Asia.”
Indeed, amid the Ukrainian carnage, it seems bizarre for Truss to compare China to Russia.
No question, Beijing has built a string of bases in the South China Sea, engaged in punch-ups on the Chindian border in the Himalayas and is engaged in a war of nerves in the East China Sea against both Taiwan and Japan. And when it comes to 360-degree hybrid war, high-tech, highly prosperous, mass-populated China looks far more dangerous than Russia.
But that danger is potential not actual. The Chinese dragon has proven far warier of kinetic engagements than the Russian bear. Under Putin, Russia has dipped its claws in blood in locations as distant as Chechyna, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine while deploying assassins on deadly missions in London and Salisbury.
China seems nonplussed at Truss’ punchiness. Even Beijing’s often-rabid Global Times penned its piece on Truss’s expected move with an air of surprised indignation rather than puce-faced fury. It is worth quoting at some length.
“How exactly, of course, China represents a ‘threat’ to the United Kingdom is not made clear. Either why or how. The two countries sit on opposite sides of the world, are not neighbors and have had a tremendously prosperous bilateral trade and investment relationship. China is not attempting to invade Britain, to impose its ideology on Britain or anything truly malign beyond “win-win” cooperation. History does show that Britain has in fact been a threat to China, but never the other way round. Britain has invaded China, but China has never invaded Britain, and logically speaking, never will.”
The newspaper gets into its stride subsequently. Truss is “by no exaggeration a NeoConservative fanatic who has a worldview only characterized by abrasive ideological confrontation,” it editorialized.
If Truss does sign off on the designation, it would officially close a “golden era” in Anglo-Chinese relations that saw their warmest moment with Xi Jinping’s state visit to the UK in 2015.
Since then, London has – under pressure from Washington – pushed Chinese telecom giant Huawei out of national projects, despatched a carrier strike group to Indo-Pacific and taken an increasingly strident tone toward Beijing.
It is not only China that Truss is aiming her gunboats at.
London, along with Washington and Canberra, is leading the Anglosphere on a hardline anti-Russian ride. This may not contrast with public interest: Indications are that, despite their rising economic hardships, Brits support Ukraine’s plucky struggle.
But it is striking how closely this aligns the UK with Eastern European nations – the Baltics, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – which have far better geographical and historic reasons to fear and even despise Russia.
Other players in the Global North – notably Berlin, Paris and Rome, but also including Seoul and Tokyo – are critical of the Kremlin’s invasion but significantly more reticent when it comes to drum-bashing.
One of Truss’ few sensible moves has been rebuilding some bridges with the EU. That itself is a fortunate u-turn given some of her pronouncements as London’s top diplomat.
As foreign minister, Truss infamously declined to say whether she was a friend of French President Emanual Macron. At a European meeting in Prague to address the Ukraine crisis, she changed tack, admitting that the two were on amicable terms.
That news from Prague followed news that Truss’ administration has sweetened the sour vibes that prevailed between London and Dublin/Brussels regarding the Northern Ireland protocol – a protocol that London signed, then shamelessly reneged on.
No trust in Truss?
Truss is looking acutely vulnerable amid a party with a long tradition of bloody backstabbings and in-house coups d’etat.
Johnson was dethroned for his personal and behavioral failings – his endless lying, and his refusal to be bound by the regulations the public was forced to abide by – rather than for his policy disasters. They were significant enough – notably, Brexit, and Covid’s early, deadly rampage across the UK.
But on the personal front, Johnson had a saving grave, which was his trademark personal package of idiosyncrasies. His unkemptness, his sense of humor and his mastery of the English language made him irresistible to many Brits.
Truss can boast no such carapace of attractiveness, and according to one source, the ax designed for Truss’ neck is already being forged. The Daily Mail reported yesterday that her party’s MPs are massing to prepare a vote of no confidence as early as this week.
For the reeling Conservatives – who have now, according to polls, massively lost the voter support they had won following Johnson’s last election triumph – giving yet another prime minister the boot is hardly a good look. The party has, since 2016, seen David Cameron, Theresa May and Johnson exit ignominiously.
The risk is that unseating Truss could trigger a general election that polls suggest the Conservatives would lose by massive margins. And even if they manage to finesse her removal without an election, an enormous shadow hangs over the succession process.
Allowing the wide party membership, rather than sitting members of parliament, to choose party leaders is democratic. But in recent years, it has been disastrous.
Labor’s rump voted in old-school leftist Jeremy Corbyn, who proved to be a dual disaster. Firstly, he never came close to winning an election. Secondly, he failed to stand against the most seismic issue in post-war British politics – Brexit – robbing the nation of both a loyal opposition and any serious parliamentary debate.
Still, to their credit, Labor’s red hordes finally got the message and emplaced the vaguely electable Keir Starmer as party head.
The Tories true-blue stormtroopers exhibited no such sound sense after kicking out Johnson. Johnson’s chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was a safe pair of hands who had shepherded the national economy through Covid, and who, during debates, expressly warned Truss of the risk implicit in her planned economic trajectory.
The Conservative faithful, however, has no time for Sunak’s conservative approach to the economy and ushered in the Trussian wrecking ball.
Result: UK Inc has now lost massive face in capital markets. Vultures are circling. The consequences of this sentiment have been disastrous and could prove more calamitous still.
The selection of Truss by Conservative goons is – ironically – perhaps the only argument for keeping this ruinous premier in place: On past form, her successor might prove even worse.
Andrew Salmon is Asia Times’ Northeast Asia editor. Follow him on Twitter @ASalmonSeoul