New British Prime Minister Liz Truss, in her first speech before the House of Commons, announced that average household bills for electricity and gas for the next two years will be limited to two and a half thousand pounds a year. The government promises to prevent further price increases. These measures will cost tens of billions of pounds, the opposition harshly criticizes the authorities for refusing to finance them through a one-time tax on excess profits of oil and gas corporations. Instead, the state will have to build up an already painfully large debt, many economists believe that this will not end well, but Truss shows commitment to his campaign promises in the early days on Downing Street.
At first glance, Liz Truss seems to be the complete opposite of her predecessor: as Boris Johnson is eccentric, extravagant and prone to witty improvisations, Truss is so restrained and constrained in movements and facial expressions, boring and monotonous in her manner of speaking; many consider her to be like a robot. And yet, members of the Conservative Party decided that it was she, and not her rival, the much more flamboyant and charismatic Rishi Sunak (former Chancellor of the Exchequer), who would be the best successor to the Johnson cause. As authoritative polls have shown, Truss's loyalty to the former leader was practically the main factor that determined their choice. Indeed, among ordinary Tories (as opposed to the political elite, and the masses), Johnson is still very popular. So much so that, according to the same polls, party members would prefer a “disheveled blonde” to all other candidates for the post of prime minister, and in such a vote he would win by a wide margin.
However, apparently, Johnson himself tacitly supported Truss. The Times reported that a few days before his final departure, he invited Truss to dinner at his country residence. Johnson had no doubt that it was she who would replace him, and outlined his "political testament" to her. One of Johnson's associates said that he supported plans for large-scale government intervention in the situation on the energy market, since rising gas and electricity prices are fraught with massive bankruptcies and impoverishment of the population, and hence social cataclysms. “The time has come to be bold, maintaining stability will not help anything,” Johnson was quoted by a newspaper source, adding that the outgoing prime minister praised Truss’s position on Ukraine, having received assurances from her that she would fully support President Zelensky. (And after officially taking office, Liz Truss first called the President of Ukraine and only then President Biden. She once again confirmed that the course to counter Putin's aggression would remain unchanged).
Almost all British newspapers predicted that the program of saving the population and businesses from the "energy catastrophe" would become the absolute priority of the new prime minister and her cabinet in the coming days.
“Liz steps on the gas pedal,” the tabloid but very influential The Sun punned . "Truss energy plan to cost £100bn," read the headline on the front page of The Financial Times. “Gas and electricity prices will be frozen until 2024,” the Daily Telegraph proclaimed . The Daily Express, which has always supported the conservative government, played on the similarity of the new prime minister's name and the word trust (trust): "Trust Truss, she will cope with what Britain needs." And the equally invariably oppositional Daily Mirror placed on the front page a montage of the faces of David Cameron, Theresa May, Johnson and Truss merging into one image, accompanying it with the headline: "The same old Tories." But the Daily Star stood out, publishing 15 mini-portraits of a grimacing Johnson on the front page under the heading: "The end of a mistake, a feverish dream 1139 days long."
However, it is possible that Johnson's opponents rejoice early. In his short farewell speech, he suddenly remembered the Roman politician and dictator of the fifth century BC, Lucius Cincinnatus, who was considered a model of virtue, but, to the amazement of the Romans, retired from politics and went to his farm. “Like a booster that has served its purpose, I will gently re-enter the atmosphere and drop unnoticed into some remote Pacific nook,” Johnson said, a comparison that seemed to imply a total abandonment of any political role. in the future: after all, rockets that fall into the sea sink without leaving a trace. But he immediately mixed up the cards, adding: “Like Cincinnatus, I am returning to my plow,” and the journalists saw in this a transparent hint of a completely different outcome: after digging in the ground, Cincinnatus eventually abandoned agriculture and returned to politics.
Britain will definitely not see such unexpected and intricate metaphors and intellectual ironic games performed by the new prime minister. There is no doubt that the political life of the country without Johnson will fade. But Liz Truss differs sharply from her charming predecessor and style of work. After several years of "creative chaos" under Johnson's rule, the premier's staff at 10 Downing Street expects a clear, rigid and highly regulated order. Truss has a reputation for being a demanding, even ruthless, manager. A sharp reduction in the prime minister's apparatus has already been announced, and supporters of Truss's rival Rishi Sunak were expelled from the government on the very first day. Tellingly, Culture Minister Nadine Dorris, who passionately supported Truss, was also left without a seat at the oval table. Apparently, this figure seemed too odious to the new prime minister, hated by all liberals who accuse her of trying to limit freedom of speech and destroy the BBC.
Truss expelled the supporters of Rishi Sunak from the government on the first day. Culture Minister Nadine Dorries, who supported Truss, was also left without a seat.
To some civil servants who had worked under Truss, she sometimes seemed too stubborn, inflexible and rather irritable. Former education secretary David Loz calls her prone to ideological dogmatism: “She has a fairly clear philosophy, a belief in free competition, free markets and low taxes. The flip side of the firmness of these beliefs is that she is not always interested in scrutinizing the evidence.” Critics of Truss consider her promise to immediately reduce taxes for wealthy citizens and corporate income as a striking example of such dogmatism, which, in her opinion, will certainly give impetus to economic growth. She put forward this postulate at all televised debates and at meetings with regional party organizations, ordinary Tories liked it very much and helped her win at the last stage of voting.
Critics of the idea, including Rishi Sunak, declared it "crazy" and "out of touch with reality". From their point of view, at a time when, as a result of the consequences of the pandemic, the macroeconomic balance is already upset (too much money is “chasing” after an insufficient amount of goods and services), to cut taxes, increasing public debt, means to risk further spurring the already exiting out of control of inflation. And this, in turn, cannot but cause an increase in lending rates, and hence a tangible decline in living standards. Some observers were reassured that Truss was saying all this to please ordinary Tories. Once in the chair of the prime minister, she will be forced to change her priorities. But no, in her first speech after taking office, Truss again put the task of lowering taxes and reforming the British economy according to the patterns of supply-side economics ("supply-side economics") again in the first place.
Supply-side economics is the theory that economic growth can be effectively stimulated by lowering taxes and lifting government regulations. It was professed at one time by President Reagan, and under him the American economy really grew effectively. However, many economists believe that that growth was largely predetermined by other factors.
In December 2020, a report was published by David Hope and Julian Limberg of the London School of Economics, looking at the experience of five decades of tax cuts in 18 wealthy countries. The authors concluded that these tactics consistently benefited the wealthy by increasing social inequality, but had no significant effect on unemployment or economic growth. Often, corporations use the money they save in taxes to buy back their own shares, thereby increasing capitalization and enriching shareholders, instead of investing in new plants, equipment, innovative enterprises, or raising the wages of employees. Major U.S. companies spent more than $1.1 trillion on share repurchases in 2018 after Donald Trump cut taxes on corporate income, according to the Tax Policy Center.
One way or another, bitter disputes between economists continue, and the positive impact of tax cuts on economic growth rates is considered unproven. But did Liz Truss choose the right time to conduct a large-scale experiment in the country? Many are skeptical. But the new prime minister clearly decided to show firmness and loyalty to her convictions.
They, by the way, were formulated in the book Britannia Unchained (“Britain without chains”), published in 2012. Five of its authors, including Liz Truss, argued that the UK has "a bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation." The most dissatisfied was the phrase: “The British are one of the worst slackers in the world. We work the least, retire early, and have low productivity. While Indian children aspire to become doctors or businessmen, the British are mainly interested in football and pop music.” There may be some truth in this statement, but no convincing statistics confirming this idea have been given. It was seen by critics as an irresponsible generalization, typical of the far-right Tories, who despise the working class. During the election of the leader of the party, this “unpatriotic” phrase of Liz Truss was naturally remembered, she justified herself by claiming that another co-author wrote it, but at the same time she did not renounce the idea that the British “need to learn to work harder”.
"The British are one of the worst slackers in the world." Truss denied this phrase, but still believes that the British "need to learn to work harder"
But how can this loyalty to ideological principles be reconciled with a reputation as a “pragmatic chameleon” (as some party comrades called her) able to quickly adapt to any political environment?
Taste for politics – and radical – Liz Truss inherited from her parents. Her father was a math teacher and her mother was a nurse, but both were strongly left-leaning and part of the nuclear disarmament campaign, which is believed to have been fueled by the Soviet Union. As a child, Liz enjoyed going to demonstrations, chanting "Down with Margaret Thatcher!" (In a few years, Thatcher would become a lifelong idol and role model for Truss.)
Truss said in an interview that her political views were formed in polemics with her parents and their friends. A kind of youthful rebellion, which then grew into a holistic worldview. Truss managed to enter the super-prestigious Oxford University – in itself evidence of extraordinary intellectual abilities, moreover, that she got there not from a privileged private school, but from the most ordinary state one. In Oxford, she became an activist in the Liberal Democratic Party and even headed the student party organization. She advocated for the legalization of marijuana.
But Truss was especially famous for her impassioned campaigns for the abolition of the monarchy (“No one should have huge privileges just by birth”). I wonder if she remembered this on September 6, curtseying in front of Queen Elizabeth II and respectfully accepting from Her Majesty the appointment to the highest state post in the country? At that moment, apparently, her passion for the ideas of maximum freedom of trade and the market was born. Truss's university friend Mark Littlewood argues that Britain's new leader is not so much a conservative as a "radical". Like Thatcher, she wants to "dramatically curtail state intervention" in people's lives. "I'm expecting a lot of fireworks, a lot of controversy and a lot of action," Littlewood said .
After graduating from university, Truss managed to work as an economist, first at Shell, and then at Cable and Wireless. But she was not going to give up politics: the drift to the right continued and led her to the conservative party, to begin with, to its left wing, the so-called One-Nation Conservatism. "One Nation Conservatism" advocates the preservation of established institutions and traditional principles within the framework of political democracy, combined with social and economic programs aimed at the benefit of ordinary people. Its adherents believe that society should be allowed to develop organically, without trying to artificially remake it. According to this doctrine, which, by the way, goes back to the middle of the 19th century and to the conservative Prime Minister Disraeli, the privileged and the rich should share their advantages, but voluntarily, and not at the point of a revolutionary gun. The elite have a special responsibility, they have a moral obligation to work to reconcile the interests of all classes, including workers and managers, and not to identify the good of society solely with the interests of the capitalist class.
At the beginning of the 21st century, David Cameron declared himself an active supporter and conductor of these ideas, and it was under his leadership that Truss succeeded for the first time after two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to parliament. But at some point, her career hung in the balance. The puritanical Conservative party officials of the East of England district from which Truss was elected were outraged by her "immorality". The Daily Mail unearthed that Truss had been cheating on her respectable husband Hugh O'Leary for a long time with another MP from the same Conservative party. He was ten years older, and at that time he also had his own family. The London leadership helped Truss overcome the critics, her husband forgave her and the marriage survived, they have two daughters. (Commenting on this story, some sigh with relief: "You see, and you say – a robot. No, nothing human is alien to her.")
Truss cheated on her respectable husband Hugh O'Leary for a long time with a married MP. Her husband forgave her and the marriage survived.
Truss gradually realized that she "organically" belonged precisely to the right, Thatcherist wing of the party. Assessing its evolution, it can be argued that, with some opportunism and “chameleonism” normal for a professional politician, its main convictions – an ardent libertarian belief in freedom of trade and entrepreneurship – were formed quite early and have survived with some modifications to this day. This has its pluses, but the minuses are obvious: now she is actually going for broke, proclaiming herself not just a crisis manager of the country (which was expected and expected from her), but also a courageous reformer, ready to take colossal risks in order to "liberate Britain from the chains" of statism.
Social media, meanwhile, is raging, and most are not disposed to give Truss and her reforms any credibility. As soon as she is not called names: both “Johnson in a skirt”, and a typical heartless “servant of the rich”, very often – a “robot-like fool”. No wonder: most outside the party were much more impressed by her rival Rishi Sunak, while others were fed up with the conservatives after 12 years in power. But the more objectively minded note: Truss is in any case a serious politician, a workaholic, for the first time in many years her polemic with the Labor opposition leader Cyrus Starmer is a serious dispute on the merits, and not the offensive wordplay that Johnson accustomed the public to. “The voters won. That's it, there is no more Boris Johnson, who never told the truth and did not answer questions. Truss answered every question put to her and did not bother herself with political balancing act, ”the witness of her debut in the House of Commons described her impressions.
Due to problems with the style of public speaking, Truss sometimes gives a false, sometimes undeservedly unpleasant impression. So, during a meeting with one of the regional party organizations, the host asked her: “The thought of the need to use nuclear weapons makes me physically dizzy. How does this thought affect you? Truss responded, completely dispassionately, as if she were truly a robot with no senses: "I think this is an important task for the Prime Minister, and I am ready to do it." А когда несколько ошалевший от такого ответа ведущий повторил вопрос об эмоциях, которые она могла бы в такой момент испытать, она лишь бесстрастно повторила: «Я готова к этому».
«Я думаю, что применить ядерное оружие — это важная задача для премьер-министра, и я готова это сделать»
Этот ответ дал Дмитрию Медведеву повод обозвать Трасс «термоядерной русофобкой». Между тем ответ был совершенно правильным по существу, но неверным по форме подачи. После знаменитой псевдодокументальной антиутопии «Би-би-си» «Третья мировая война: внутри командного пункта», в которой британская элита, пожалев миллионы простых россиян, решает не наносить ответный ядерный удар по Москве и другим городам, в Кремле и военных кругах, похоже, стали распространяться опасные иллюзии. Дескать, может, и вправду можно ударить и остаться безнаказанными.
Ответ Трасс эти иллюзии призван был развеять. Она твердо намерена написать письма «судного дня» — запечатанные конверты с приказами капитанам подлодок системы «Трайдент» (и скорее всего, уже сделала это). Если Британия будет уничтожена или полностью парализована ударом врага, подлодки должны будут запустить ядерные ракеты по главным российским городам, и они вполне способны стереть их с лица земли. А потому Кремлю лучше забыть об идее «превентивного удара». Но в целях пиара и общественного успокоения Трасс должна была бы изобразить некоторое волнение, показать, что ей не чужды нормальные эмоции, которые наверняка у нее есть — она просто не умеет их проявлять, даже когда это необходимо. А в результате в соцсетях и оппозиционной прессе ее объявили бездушным чудовищем.
Трасс необходимо поучиться у своей лучшей подруги — смешной и эксцентричной Териз Кофи, вот уж кто за словом в карман не лезет. Она курит сигары, слушает хип-хоп и рэп и периодически вытаскивает подругу на сессии караоке, что теперь, наверное, будет происходить совсем редко: Трасс назначила ее своим заместителем и министром здравоохранения — проклятая должность.
И в завершение снова о России и Украине. В Кремле давно считают Лиз Трасс чуть ли не главным «ястребом» и ярым врагом России. В феврале, незадолго до вторжения российских войск в Украину, Трасс приезжала в Москву в тщетной надежде отговорить российское руководство от военных планов. В ходе переговоров министр иностранных дел России Сергей Лавров категорически отрицал агрессивные намерения Москвы, уверяя Трасс, что никакого вторжения не будет. Тогда почему бы не прекратить концентрацию российских войск у украинских границ, резонно спрашивала она, ведь это поможет разрядить напряженность. В ответ Лавров напирал на то, что Россия вольна делать все что ей угодно на своей территории.
Разговор этот, продолжавшийся около двух часов, был крайне неприятным. Российский министр лгал, Трасс это понимала, а он понимал, что она понимает. Вот и получился, по выражению Лаврова, «разговор глухого с немым». В какой-то момент не привыкшая к такому стилю дипломатического общения Трасс запуталась в географии и отказалась признать Ростовскую и Воронежскую области законной российской территорией, перепутав их с Донбассом и Луганском. Сидевший рядом с Трасс британский посол в Москве тут же исправил ошибку, но было поздно. Лавров явно обрадовался, что оговорка британского министра иностранных дел дает ему возможность окончательно уйти от разговора по существу и превратить переговоры в фарс. С подачи МИД российские СМИ долго и упорно злорадствовали по поводу якобы проявленного Трасс вопиющего невежества.
Трасс запуталась в географии и отказалась признать Ростовскую и Воронежскую области законной российской территорией
С тех пор Трасс стала объектом особенно злобной ненависти Кремля. Через несколько дней после начала войны она заявила: «Если мы не остановим Путина в Украине, мы увидим, что другие страны находятся под угрозой: Прибалтика, Польша, Молдова, и это может закончиться конфликтом с НАТО». Заявление это было не более радикальным чем то, что говорили другие западные официальные лица, также предупреждавшие, что расширение конфликта чревато вовлечением в него НАТО. Но Путин решил использовать именно заявление Трасс как повод еще более обострить ситуацию, сообщив, что в ответ он принял решение привести ядерные силы России в некий «особый режим несения дежурства». Западные эксперты пожимали плечами, сочтя, что это чистой воды запугивание, ведь на самом деле российские стратегические войска находятся в такой степени готовности, что дальше лишь приказ о пуске ракет. И никакого особенного режима дежурства попросту не существует.
Победа Трасс на выборах лидера консервативной партии и ее назначение премьер-министром в Москве восприняли с плохо скрываемым раздражением. Пресс-секретарь Путина Дмитрий Песков заявил, что отношения с Британией и так уже находятся в столь скверном состоянии, что им уже некуда ухудшаться. «Не хотелось бы говорить, что эти изменения могут произойти к худшему, ибо худшее представить себе сложно», — сказал он. Трасс же использует каждую возможность, чтобы подчеркнуть приверженность курсу на продолжение финансовой поддержки Киева и поставок Украине оружия. Она считает необходимым еще более ужесточить санкции против России и отказаться от энергоносителей из РФ, несмотря на кризис. «Великобритании и нашим союзникам придется столкнуться с экономическими трудностями в результате введения санкций. Но наши трудности — ничто по сравнению с тем, что переживают украинцы», — говорила она в парламенте.
Одно из очень важных назначений: советником премьера по национальной безопасности будет опытный дипломат Тим Бэрроу, успевший поработать послом и в Украине, и в России. В последнее время он занимал специально созданную в Форин Офисе должность координатора по противодействию российской агрессии. Назначение это очевидно демонстрирует внешнеполитические приоритеты нового премьер-министра.
Напоследок — цитата с читательского форума Times: «Как и все остальные, я страдаю от роста стоимости жизни и особенно цен на энергоносители. Но мне кажется, что в спорах о Лиз Трасс, ее недостатках и достоинствах мы начинаем упускать из виду то, что важнее всего остального. В Европе идет жестокая и кошмарная война, которая определит будущее всего мира. Продолжение всесторонней поддержки Украины со стороны нового премьер-министра должно рассматриваться как абсолютный приоритет. Ее следует похвалить за то, что она громко и четко заявила об этом. В противном случае мы рискуем показаться постыдно недальновидными и провинциальными».