On Thursday, September 8, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, announced in Parliament the largest package of direct economic aid to citizens in recent history: almost 150,000 million euros to face an energy crisis, which had doubled gas and electricity bills, and threatened to burn out the newly inaugurated mandate of Boris Johnson's successor from the start.
It was the most important news in the country, and also important for the rest of the world, which watched with curiosity and expectation the first steps of conservative politics.
Until Buckingham Palace published, in the middle of the morning of that Thursday, the brief note that alerted the newsrooms of a large part of the planet:
The political and economic debate in a country that was a boiling cauldron immediately froze.
But in the struggle for power, one only rests to conspire, and any unexpected event is an opportunity to advance positions.
The United Kingdom mourns Elizabeth II, until the celebration of her state funeral, in Westminster Abbey, next Monday.
Both Truss and his rival, Opposition Labor Leader Keir Starmer, have used the catafalque of national shock to raise their own political stature.
In rigorous mourning, conservative politics was the first to announce the death of the monarch to her compatriots;
She will accompany Carlos III on his first trips around the country, and will have a golden opportunity to reinforce her role when she receives, throughout the weekend, all the international dignitaries - starting with the president of the United States, Joe Biden - who are preparing to travel to London to pay one last tribute to the queen.
It will not be a time to engage in politics, they protest from Downing Street at the idea, but any meeting of this type is profitable, well planned, and the photo alone has incalculable value.
Posing next to a statesman raises the rank.
More difficult has been the challenge for Starmer, who has already suffered his second stroke of bad luck.
When he was elected by the grassroots, in April 2020, to replace Jeremy Corbyn, a leader too far to the left for the British who was defeated at the polls by Boris Johnson, the pandemic had just erupted with devastating force.
The new head of the opposition had to zoom in on the affiliates, and then express his unconditional support for the government, in the face of the looming crisis.
With the sinking of Johnson and the arrival of Truss, the opportunity was unrepeatable.
Labor was already ahead of the Conservatives by more than 15 points in the polls.
Starmer was establishing himself as a trustworthy leader, in the face of the scandals involving the prime minister.
Truss, with his neoliberal message,
Until Elizabeth II passed away.
The national period of mourning became, curiously, a test of the opposition leader.
Not so much for himself or for his sense of responsibility, but because public opinion was going to observe with a magnifying glass how he kept his deputies, the members of his party closest to the "Corbynism" of the party, under control on such delicate days. past, to the latent anti-monarchist sentiment in a left-wing organization, and to its allies, the unions, ready to shake up the country with chained strikes.
With greater or lesser tension, Starmer, whose intervention in Parliament upon learning of Elizabeth II's death was impeccable, has successfully weathered all these challenges.
He gave the blunt order to all his deputies to avoid statements about the monarch's death.
Only the management would speak.
He managed to get the union confederations to paralyze the protests and strikes scheduled for the week.
And he was able to give a mild response to the uneasiness caused in his ranks to see how the police began to arrest anyone who protested in the street against the monarchy.
“Since the Head of State in the UK is hereditary – and, to emphasize the obvious, not elected – there are few ways in which you can express agreement or disagreement,” Labor MP Clive Lewis said on Twitter.
“Of course we must respect the fact that some people disagree, it is one of the great traditions of British politics.
But I believe, and so I ask, that it must be done in a spirit of respect, ”said Starmer when asked about the detained protesters.
The internal debate in the party was settled, and the image of the Labor leader -before a possible future as a tenant of Downing Street- won integers among the citizens.
Provisional peace with Europe
This Thursday was the legal deadline for the end of the grace period granted to the United Kingdom in the customs controls of Northern Ireland.
Until now, London had unilaterally relaxed the new obligations imposed by Brexit - specifically, the Northern Ireland Protocol - to avoid further border chaos.
At the same time, the Johnson Government continued its war with Brussels.
It was precisely Truss, in her capacity as Foreign Minister, who promoted a domestic law -still in parliamentary process- that unilaterally modified the fundamental points of the protocol, to the irritation of the EU, which undertook legal action in response.
Finally, the mourning and pain for the death of Elizabeth II has brought with it a certain spirit of harmony.
London has sent a letter to Brussels requesting an extension of the grace period.
The EU is not going to respond, but that, as a diplomatic subtlety, is a way of not being aware of it and letting everything continue as it is, without getting worse.
Truss's aggressive rhetoric against the European Union, during the primary campaign, had to decrease in intensity by force, once the candidate for the Government arrived.
The goodwill of the rest of the world towards the United Kingdom displayed these days, it seems, has been taken advantage of by a prime minister aware that, as soon as the remains of the monarch definitively rest in the Chapel of Saint George, in Windsor,
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