The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so it’s no wonder Liz Truss is ahead in the race to be our next Prime Minister. She’s driving all the right people crazy and their increasingly pointless contempt is proving to be her best sergeant among Tory members who are desperate to steer him to the left.
Her critics can’t understand her appeal and show all the classic signs of a deluded ruling class that no longer likes or understands half of its country. The Twitter crowd is already exhibiting the full symptoms of Truss Derangement Syndrome, as even a cursory scroll through the utterances of our cultural elites immediately reveals.
Just like the allergic reaction once triggered by Brexit, TDS is an absurdly irrational overreaction triggered among the same category of people who wanted us to stay in the EU when they see or hear the Foreign Secretary – and especially when she announces Conservative or free market policies that would broke the status quo. They recoil in disgust, obsess over her perceived awkward mannerisms, reject everything she says, and crash even her most humble suggestions.
There were several stages to the advent of TDS. Firstly, when it became apparent that Truss was emerging as favourite, the reaction was bewilderment, hilarity and joy: those stupid Tories have really done it this time, handing the election to Labour! Then, as she began to unveil her bid, there was an outpouring of support for Rishi Sunak from people who would never dream of voting Tory.
We are now in the third stage, with anger, fury and extreme, disproportionate anger at her audacity, her audacity, her unorthodox positions, combined with almost staggering levels of complacency: how dare she call for more grammar schools or better translation for the Bank of England ? How stupid! Doesn’t she know that smart people have already looked into and rejected this? The electorate will hate such ideas, won’t they? isn’t there?
There will no doubt be an even uglier, nastier fourth stage to be triggered if and when she starts to outperform Labor in the polls, and especially if she manages to break the 40 per cent support threshold. It will be met with all-out war and a hysterical, never-ending commitment to destroy it, reminiscent of the scorched-earth campaign that accompanied the Brexit battles in the final days of May’s government.
The truth will no longer matter: it will be a case of the ends justifying the means to stop Truss at all costs. Everything she says will be criticized by intellectuals, academics, pressure groups and left-wing commentators; every little accident magnified; any non-leftist idea presented as monstrously unfair. If she stands firm on Northern Ireland, the bien-pensant crowd will side with Brussels.
TDS is closely related to a series of strange emotional pathologies to which the British centre-left has succumbed. Behind the ‘boosters vs dead’ debate – the argument between those who believe better policies can save Britain’s lethargic economy and those who fear little can realistically be done – is the feeling among some of the latter, that Britain does not deserve to succeed. We must be punished: we voted for Brexit and then Boris, so the failure is our just credit. That is why we are told that raising corporate tax will not change our competitiveness – although of course it would be demagogic to cut taxes to attract capital.
Then there’s the closely related Candide Fallacy, after Voltaire’s satirical novella: the idiotic idea, first aired by Treasury Remainers in 2016, that all is now well in this best of all possible worlds. Tax is fine, and so is regulation, and so is the civil service, and so is the NHS: in fact, some even insist, deregulation would be a disaster, as it would deprive business of the stability it needs. Only rejoining the single market, apparently the only possible driver of growth, would matter: all other reforms are irrelevant, or so goes this flawed argument. His supporters are unaware of the levels of public anger at our economic and social performance, at the state of Britain, and therefore risk fatally underestimating the appeal of a ‘candidate for change’.
Last but not least, our self-consciously egalitarian, progressive London elites make an exception when it comes to right-wing Tory women: the over-the-top nature of some of the attacks on Truss are clearly partly driven by despicable misogyny laced with anti-Northern snobbery. Even Johnson was not treated with such contempt, such mockery, such haughtiness.
The challenges to the PM Truss would be enormous. Quite apart from the diatribes of TDS fanatics, it is legitimate to question whether she can command the operational and management skills required to turn around a sinking supertanker. The next prime minister must bring about urgent, radical change in institutions as well as policies: clever PR will be only one small part of this. Her campaign’s freak mishap with regional pay councils – a good, necessary idea – was not promising. It will require extreme discipline, stamina and focus, as well as the ability to hire great advisors. Dozens of new policies will be needed to boost growth and productivity.
I’ve known Truss since 2008 and I’m cautiously optimistic. Comparisons to the Iron Lady may be misplaced, but there is an instructive historical parallel. Many rejected Margaret Thatcher in the early 1970s; as education minister, her opposition to understanding was disappointingly bland. It ensures that councils no longer have to convert all schools to comprehensives, but this only delays the slaughter. It did not defeat the Spot and saved only 94 high schools, allowing hundreds to be vandalized. She wasted too much political capital by ending free school milk, a minor spending cut.
Such a performance today would cause centre-right critics to write Thatcher off in despair. Few would have predicted how much she would grow into the role, and Truss’ supporters hope she, too, will eventually become a great leader. Her critics, blinded by Truss derangement syndrome, cannot even imagine the possibility of this being correct. They will rue the day they so completely underestimated her.
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