What always surprises with Liz Truss is that she is never afraid to do too much. The British Foreign Secretary’s obsession? Getting your picture taken in exactly the same poses as Margaret Thatcher in her time: hilarious with a calf in her arms, helmeted in the turret of a tank, wearing a hat and looking thoughtful in the red square in Moscow, astride a Triumph motorcycle or even – more classic – at her desk, dressed in an elegant white blouse with a lavallière. Same angle, same frame, same attitude. A photo album meant to position her as the next Iron Lady at 10 Downing Street.
Claiming this affiliation with “Maggie” is a must for any conservative who aims for the heights. But in reality, it is above all from her mentor, Boris Johnson, to whom she owes her current position, that Liz Truss is inspired. Wearing her most beautiful orange dress, she had preferred to go to a rehearsal of the G20 in Indonesia in early July rather than participate in the final hallali against the disheveled Prime Minister, weakened by scandals. Returning hastily to place herself in the race for the succession, after the latter’s resignation on July 7, his minister insists that she has always remained loyal to him. So loyal that she passes for a female clone of the former mayor of London, of which she seems on track to take the place, on September 5. With 66% of voting intentions of members of the Conservative Party, Liz Truss is indeed leading the race ahead of her rival Rishi Sunak, ex-finance minister, whose departure from the government led to the fall of Johnson.
“Ruthlessly pragmatic”
Beyond their common blondeness, the similarities between these two Oxford graduates are striking. This is “BoJo 2.0”, describes it besides Kirsty Buchanan, his former adviser. “Apart from Boris, I know of no other politician who has a more visceral political instinct than Liz. She is driven by ambition and knows how to be ruthlessly pragmatic,” writes Kirsty Buchanan in The Times last December, already predicting a future for him in Downing Street. In Justice, under David Cameron, she enchants hard-line Brexiteers in 2016 by not defending three judges of the High Court of Justice treated as “enemies of the people” by the DailyMail. They felt at the time that it would be desirable for Parliament to validate the government’s decision to trigger the famous Article 50 and therefore the official Brexit process.
Later, as Boris Johnson’s foreign trade minister, she kept exaggerating her negotiating exploits, as well as “all those opportunities” offered by Brexit. In reality, apart from three trade agreements with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, it only extended 67 trade treaties that Britain enjoyed within the EU. Like Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, enthusiastic and proactive, tends to embellish reality.
Another common point, she is appreciated by the conservative base for her good nature and her taste for celebration. “She likes white wine, butchering 1980s pop songs at karaoke, and dancing late into the night,” says Kirsty Buchanan. On the other hand, in front of the television cameras, she still lacks the cheeky assurance of the winner of the Brexit referendum. “We made him work on his voice, to make it more serious. We also tried to give him a more institutional look”, continues the ex-advisor. But there is still work to do…
“Truly conservative” economic program
The examination of the Instagram account of the candidate is enough to take the measure of the frantic care that she brings to her communication. When she was Minister of the DIT (Department for International Trade, Foreign Trade), her colleagues had quickly renamed her ministry … Department for Instagramming Truss. She is one of the few British ministers traveling with an official photographer, who immortalizes each official trip with pictures showing her in action, smiling and close to the people.
Truss says she is the only one with a “really conservative” economic agenda. She is a supporter of an unfettered market, but is not afraid to be iconoclastic. She has also promised to fight the orthodoxy of the Bank of England and the Treasury by offering all-out tax cuts from the start of the school year, a way of ensuring the unfailing support of Conservative voters, but without no doubt of bringing down inflation. “We must expect her to make risky choices. Caution is not her thing,” said her friend Mark Littlewood, director of the Institute for Economic Affairs think tank.
Like Boris Johnson, Liz Truss always sticks to firm positions… until she defends others, sometimes completely opposed, with the same passion. An activist with the Liberal Democrats (centrists), she changed sides at the end of the 1990s, to join the conservatives. She is then for the abolition of the monarchy, an idea that she has since completely denied. Another reversal, after having campaigned against Brexit, she embraced the winners’ camp the day after the referendum, then became a fierce Brexiteer.
Macron “friend or foe”? She does not decide…
Like all very ambitious politicians, Liz Truss does not hesitate to write her own legend. Born in Oxford in 1975, this daughter of a university mathematics professor presents herself as a child of the “Red Wall”, understand these historic Labor lands which not only voted for Brexit but also, and for the first times, for the conservative clan in the last elections in December 2019. She says she experienced the failure of a public education where “we learned what racism and sexism were while too little time was devoted to fundamental subjects, such as reading and writing”. As a teenager, she claims to have seen her classmates “fail” for lack of stimulation and the fault of teachers whose “expectations were really low”.
In reality, Liz Truss, who promises to tackle this culture of failure, does not come from a Labor background. She spent her teenage years in Leeds North East, a conservative stronghold for over forty years. Her parents may have been on the left, but her school in Roundhay, with its football, hockey and rugby pitches, was an excellent establishment to which she owes her selection at Oxford University. “She once described herself as a Yorkshire girl to please her rich, rural constituents in Norfolk. Now she’s playing Ken Loach [cinéaste britannique de gauche] talking about Red Wall in the hope of pleasing Conservative MPs coming from these former Labor lands”, indignant journalist Martin Pengelly, a former fellow student. Trying to please everyone, saying one thing and then its opposite: exactly the tactic by Boris Johnson.
And above all never forget to hammer home that “Britain is the best”, while stirring up anti-French sentiment – Paris playing a convenient role of scapegoat. Asked whether Emmanuel Macron is a “friend” or an “enemy”, she thus recently refused to decide, causing the amazement of the person concerned (who denounced a loss of “landmarks”).
These postures will not change anything: for a majority of Britons, the return to school promises to be very difficult: repeated strikes, health system on its knees, electricity and gas bills which will jump to 5000 euros per year per family, inflation expected at 14% by Christmas. Not sure that another Boris Johnson at the head of the government is the solution…