I once declared Liz Truss to be unelectable, and I stand by this claim with no small degree of fear and dread. Liz Truss is a terrible choice of prime minister, and the prospect of her holding the highest office in the land is truly terrifying. Remember what Truss has stood for since her departure from her Liberal Democratic youth: a radical deregulation of the market economy to transform Britain into a glorified tax haven for oligarchs and the capital they command. It is the strategic equivalent of swearing fealty to Wilhelmine Germany, and it is just as dangerous. Truss’s only good idea seems to be that China is to be treated toughly, whatever we are to interpret that as meaning. For if Britain does subject itself completely to global capital, into which China is now fully integrating itself through capital account liberalisation, how could we be tough on China? We have reversed the Bush/Blair years with today’s Truss/Biden years, echoing the Cameron/Obama years in which austerity ran roughshod over ordinary people’s lives. Heavens be hellbent, these are dark times, for us all.
Truss will be a bad prime minister, and this will be obvious, soon enough. The only way she can avoid this imminent reality is through the method Thatcher stumbled upon in the Falklands: geopolitical showmanship. But Truss must risk becoming another Blair with Russia, just as Biden must beware becoming a Democratic equivalent of Bush. The Obama/Cameron years hover more chillingly over the not-so-special relationship. Now we have left the European Union, placating the United States is the only option left to the United Kingdom short of drifting aimlessly through the Atlantic Ocean, hoping for a Latin armada or viking raid to save us from our neomedieval troubles.
But no help is coming, and no Normans would seek to conquer us, in our newly dilapidated state. We have voluntarily forfeited our say over the largest regional market this side of the Eurasian continent, and now we find ourselves as supplicants to a global market which is much less forgiving of deviations from standardless trade and investment flows. And now we have allowed a leader to rise to the highest office to confirm this new slavery. If anything, this proves we, as a country, have failed to do anything good with our ageing political system, and have cast ourselves from the European frying pan into the global fire. A global Britain must learn to live in this hothouse of dragons. Or we might just find ourselves on some great power’s plate for dinner. Now, what’s for desert?
Edmund Wilson 