Al Mayadeen English

  • Ar
  • Es
  • x
Al Mayadeen English

Slogan

  • News
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Sports
    • Arts&Culture
    • Health
    • Miscellaneous
    • Technology
    • Environment
  • Articles
    • Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Blog
    • Features
  • Videos
    • NewsFeed
    • Video Features
    • Explainers
    • TV
    • Digital Series
  • Infographs
  • In Pictures
  • • LIVE
News
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Sports
  • Arts&Culture
  • Health
  • Miscellaneous
  • Technology
  • Environment
Articles
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Blog
  • Features
Videos
  • NewsFeed
  • Video Features
  • Explainers
  • TV
  • Digital Series
Infographs
In Pictures
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Asia-Pacific
  • Europe
  • Latin America
  • MENA
  • Palestine
  • US & Canada
BREAKING
US President Donald Trump arrives in Saudi Arabia, beginning Gulf trip that includes Qatar, UAE.
Support and Stability Apparatus (SSA) chief Abdel Ghani al-Kikli confirmed dead.
Gunfire heard in various areas of the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Libyan sources: The Ministry of Interior urges all citizens in Tripoli to remain in their homes.
Libyan sources: Air traffic halted at Tripoli Airport following reports of the death of Support and Stability Apparatus (SSA) chief Abdel Ghani al-Kikli.
Libyan sources: Clashes and military movements reported inside the capital, Tripoli.
Sheikh Qassem: Lebanese officials must also prioritize rebuilding the state economically and socially, as well as returning the depositors’ funds.
Sheikh Qassem: The second priority is reconstruction, and I call on the Lebanese government to place this item first on the agenda of its next session.
Sheikh Qassem: Lebanese officials must prioritize ending Israeli aggression, its violations, its occupation, and securing the release of prisoners.
Sheikh Qassem: We are part of the new era and partners in its benefits, and we want those who previously took certain stances for specific reasons to reconsider them in order to build the country.

News from Nowhere: Hail to the Chief

  • Alex Roberts Alex Roberts
  • Source: Al Mayadeen English
  • 5 Sep 2022 15:06
7 Min Read

Even before it had begun, the era of Liz Truss’s premiership appeared tainted by the blundering idiocy, the moral complacency and the entrenched dishonesty and cynicism which had blighted Boris Johnson’s time in office.

  • x
  • News from Nowhere: Hail to the Chief
    News from Nowhere: Hail to the Chief

Last month, a recording emerged in which it appeared that Tory leadership contender Liz Truss had branded British workers lazy. While this was hardly a great revelation or a state secret, there is an unspoken rule in UK politics that this point ought to be glossed by talk of low productivity in the national economy (which is in part the result of relatively low levels of corporate investment in production processes) rather than being blamed upon the aptitudes and attitudes of the great British worker. 

Truss’s comments, taped at least three years ago, referred to a lack of ‘skill and application’ in the UK labor force, which she compared unfavorably with the Chinese. ‘It's partly a mindset and attitude thing,’ she had said. ‘It’s working culture basically. If you go to China, it's quite different, I can assure you.’

Prior to her recent elevation, Ms. Truss’s most cited political statement had involved the condemnation of Britain’s reliance on imports of foreign cheese and her praise for the establishment of new British pork export markets in Beijing. There will be those in the trade union movement who will be anxious that her enthusiasm for enhanced trading relations with China appears to extend to explicit ambitions for the adoption of some that economic superpower’s stricter industrial practices.

She went on, in that leaked recording, to observe that productivity in London was very different from that across the rest of the country. This might go some way to explaining her extraordinary willingness to support her campaign team’s plan to reduce public sector incomes in the poorer areas of the UK – specifically outside the capital and the prosperous south-east of England. That absurd proposal had of course been ditched within hours of its announcement following an immediate backlash both from Her Majesty’s Opposition and from parliamentarians within her own party. Yet, demonstrating an extraordinary lack of judgment, the politician who had already then seemed clearly destined (barring accidents or miracles) to be the UK’s new Prime Minister had zealously – albeit briefly – endorsed it.

Her recent track record is hardly otherwise unblemished. She has vociferously resisted proposals to introduce targeted support for those most in need at a time of high inflation and unprecedented energy price hikes. She has dismissed such plans as being little more than socialist ‘handouts’ and has instead argued in favor of tax cuts which would most benefit the wealthiest individuals and corporations and which have been described by members of her own party as ‘incredibly regressive’.

Indeed: progressive she is not. As Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss had wholeheartedly backed Boris Johnson’s scheme to deport asylum-seekers to the central African nation of Rwanda, a plan whose implementation she has said she will continue as Prime Minister. A few weeks ago, it was reported that the former administration had chosen to ignore, and then attempted to suppress, concerns raised by one of Ms. Truss’s own officials as to the Foreign Office’s formal assessment of Rwanda.

In April, that expert on African affairs had advised that the country to which the UK was preparing to send its refugees had a rather poor human rights record itself, not only in its failure to tolerate political opposition but specifically in its use of ‘arbitrary detention, torture and even killings’ as ‘accepted methods of enforcing control’. It appears that this highly controversial (but also potentially pertinent) piece of advice had been rejected out of hand, and that this had happened on Liz Truss’s watch. Perhaps more worryingly, the government in which Truss continued to serve as Foreign Secretary had, since then, sought to ensure that these documents were excluded from court proceedings in ongoing legal challenges to its deportation policy.

Related News

News from Nowhere: Five Years

News from Nowhere: Left Behind

In many ways, she seems as consistent and clear as Boris Johnson in her inconsistencies and obfuscations. A fortnight ago, it was reported that Truss had abandoned her plan for a full emergency budget upon her accession to Downing Street. This would have necessarily been accompanied by official economic forecasts. With analysts at one investment bank predicting that the rate of inflation could exceed eighteen percent by January, it appears that the last thing that Team Truss wants would be expert opinion announcing the economic damage that is likely to be inflicted by her politically opportunistic tax policies. Like her predecessor in Downing Street, it seems that the country’s new Prime Minister favors the unthinking bombast of heady optimism over a nagging insistence upon solid facts.

On the same day, it was revealed – amidst mounting public outrage at daily news reports of raw sewage being dumped into rivers and the sea – that, when she had served as Environment Secretary, Ms. Truss had made significant cuts to funding earmarked to tackle the problems of water pollution.

That week, it was also reported that Truss had used her government premises to conduct campaign meetings. This is not permitted by ministerial rules. Then, when asked whether she would appoint an ethics advisor to replace those who quit over the last few years, she ducked the question and responded only that she always acted with integrity.

Ten days ago, Ms. Truss provoked further disquiet within her own party when she commented that the jury was ‘still out’ as to whether the current president of France was a ‘friend or foe’ of the UK. She appeared to have forgotten that France remains one of Britain’s key international allies, and that she was still at the time, as Foreign Secretary, serving as her nation’s most senior diplomat. One former Tory minister observed that people might have expected that the Foreign Secretary would be aware that the country enjoyed an important military alliance with France. Another suggested that she hadn’t just been ‘playing to the gallery’ but had in effect let the ‘prejudices of the gallery’ go to her head.

Emmanuel Macron himself responded that if the two countries were incapable of saying whether they were friends or enemies then they were ‘going to have a problem’. It had hardly been the most glorious conclusion to Ms. Truss’s term as Foreign Secretary nor indeed the most auspicious prelude to her tenure in Downing Street.

Then, one week ago, Liz Truss cancelled a major interview scheduled with the UK’s national broadcaster. Her rival had already undergone a similar in-depth interview, but, the day before it was due to be screened, Ms. Truss chose to renege on her previous commitment to take part. In doing so, she displayed a resistance to scrutiny that has lately become all too familiar at the top of British government.

So, even before it had begun, the era of Mary Elizabeth Truss’s premiership appeared tainted by the blundering idiocy, the moral complacency and the entrenched dishonesty and cynicism which had blighted Boris Johnson’s time in office.

We can only hope, for the sake of the future direction of the nation, that these ethical lapses and political failings are not irrevocable signs of things to come, nor symptoms of deeper flaws in the character of the nation’s new leader, and that we don’t find ourselves once again abandoning the possibilities of truth and trust in the UK’s government now that the country has at last become totally trussed.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
  • United Kingdom
  • London
  • 10 Downing Street
  • Liz Truss
  • Rishi Sunak
  • Boris Johnson
  • British Prime Minister
Alex Roberts

Alex Roberts

Journalist, author, and academic.

Most Read

All
Throughout Operation Prosperity Guardian, current and former US military and intelligence officials expressed disquiet at the enormous “cost offset” involved in battling Ansar Allah. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)

Ansar Allah triumphant: US facing Red Sea defeat again

  • Opinion
  • 3 May 2025
"Israel" appears to be the only place in the world where there are actual demonstrations defending rapists as national heroes precisely because of their crimes. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Batoul Chamas)

'Israeli pride' - Celebrating rape in the Zionist entity

  • Opinion
  • 4 May 2025
Why the Israelis cannot win in Gaza or Yemen

Why the Israelis cannot win in Gaza or Yemen

  • Opinion
  • 7 May 2025
The hero who overthrows tyranny: The path of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam

The hero who overthrows tyranny: The path of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam

  • Blog
  • 2 May 2025

Coverage

All
The Ummah's Martyrs

More from this writer

All
News from Nowhere: Local difficulties

News from Nowhere: Local difficulties

News from Nowhere: Far from the madding crowd

News from Nowhere: Far from the madding crowd

Indeed, Trump’s 10 per cent universal tariffs will almost certainly do unimaginable damage to the entire global economy. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)

News from Nowhere: This time it’s war

Those who think UK politics has reached its lowest possible point should just look to the United States before choosing to vote for its chaotic president’s best friend this side of the Atlantic. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)

News from Nowhere: Dumb, dumber, dumbest… and then some

Al Mayadeen English

Al Mayadeen is an Arab Independent Media Satellite Channel.

All Rights Reserved

  • x
  • Privacy Policy
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Authors
Android
iOS