Liz Truss, According to Liz Truss: The Long Journey to Neoconservatism

The moment of truth has come for Liz Truss.

The turmoil unleashed around the pound, after learning about the tax cut announced by the new UK prime minister, will serve to show whether Truss's ideological journey towards neoconservatism is just a new image change, or the final destination of a chameleon personality.

Rishi Sunak, the brilliant Chancellor of the Exchequer who lost the battle to lead the Conservatives against Truss, could have been told the same thing that, in another time, in another country, a veteran leader explained to the loser of his party's primary, overwhelmed by a much more popular rival: “Undeceive yourself.

Those who know you have voted for you.

To him, all those who do not know him.

Truss's ability to adapt has allowed her to survive three Conservative prime ministers, hold six ministerial posts during that time, and build an image of herself as a champion of the causes of Brexit -which she initially rejected- and of the neoliberalism of Margaret Thatcher ―which she disowned during her youth― that has seduced the toughest and most militant wing of the Conservative Party.

Barely 81,000

militants brought to power a policy that she has just launched, with the most radical tax cut in the last half century, the riskiest possible bet to retain power.

Dominic Cummings, the brilliant strategist who engineered the campaign to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, advised Boris Johnson during the first year of his term and became his greatest enemy – continually leaked to the press to expose his lies. , recently expressed his opinion about Truss to the digital magazine

: “He is the closest thing to what I would define as a madman of all the people I have met in Parliament”.

Cummings chose the definition of psychopath to denigrate someone who was not his main option in the fight to replace Johnson.

It is not the first time that these excesses have occurred in politics, where the struggle for power always acquires personal overtones.

Others, such as the former Conservative deputy Anna Soubry, defender of the EU and today away from the party, brandish an equally recurring accusation: excessive ambition.

“She is one of the most ambitious people I have ever met.

I honestly believe that many of the positions that she obtained from her, during her upward trajectory in the Government, were for her to shut up.

Her ambition is, without a doubt, considerably greater than her capacity”, Soubry has said of someone with whom she shared working hours in different ministerial departments.

And yet, many conservatives have clung, among the multiple images of Truss, to the one that offered them a better reflection of themselves.

First, the minister who remained loyal to Johnson until the end, when everyone stabbed him in the back.

Second, and perhaps even more relevant, to that of the policy that defended with convert faith the neoliberal creed with which the hard wing of the party promoted the Brexit project, and to which it was tied during the years of ideological uncertainty of the Johnson era: low taxes, market deregulation, patriotic and nationalist message.

"In these difficult times, our country needs a steady hand and a cool head in Downing Street," wrote Iain Duncan Smith,

the brief leader of the party – during the years of the landslide majorities of Tony Blair's Labor party – boosted by Margaret Thatcher.

"His mix of grit, experience, determination and pragmatism from him are exactly what we need for the tough days ahead."

Firmness, determination, pragmatism.

It is possible to have all these qualities with the ultimate purpose of swimming and keeping clothes, or adapting to the moment so as not to deviate from the ultimate goal of conquest of power.

Rescuing the words and actions of Truss, throughout her 47 years of life, helps to understand the personality of the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Truss contradictions

Brexit.

2016. The UK is divided by the referendum of a generation.

The Brexit.

The exit or not of the European Union.

David Cameron's Conservative government is desperately fighting to avoid a break with Brussels.

Truss is then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

She vehemently defends remaining in the EU.

“I support staying [in the European Union] because I think it is in the best economic interests of the UK, and it will allow us to focus on the fundamental reforms, economic and social, that we need to do at home,” Truss defended.

July 2022. Truss launches the manifesto with which he intends to conquer the conservative leadership.

“EU rules and regulations have put obstacles in the way of our businesses.

All this has to change.

From Downing Street I will do everything possible to move away from the outdated legal frameworks of the EU and capitalize on the opportunities that lie ahead”.

Margaret Thatcher.

Paisley (Scotland).

Eighties.

The Iron Lady rules the UK.

Her rejection of her and her policies is especially intense among the Scottish left.

Truss's father is a university professor of Mathematics.

Her mother, a nurse closely linked to the movement for nuclear disarmament.

“

” (Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out, with the peculiar Scottish accent), shout the protesters.

Little Liz is one of them, and she recounts how excited she and her mother were to make a mushroom cloud out of the rest of the old rugs to take to one of the protests.

London.

August 2022. The favorite candidate to lead the Conservative Party wears the same blouses that Thatcher wore in the televised debates.

She had even been photographed months earlier in Estonia aboard a military tank: an imitation of the historic photo of the Iron Lady during her 1986 visit to British troops stationed in West Germany.

Truss rejects, with a small mouth, any comparison between the two, but transmits, in the forms and in the content, the same message of radical change: “We need to be brave.

We need to do things in a different way.

We need to lower taxes.

We need to unleash growth.

We need to unleash the potential of all the people who inhabit this great country,” she writes on her official Twitter account.

The monarchy.

1994. A very young Truss speaks at the Liberal Democrat Party conference in Brighton.

She is 19 years old.

She is a furious anti-monarchist who surprises the elders of the formation.

“I have nothing personal against them, but I am against the idea that a person is born with the right to rule.

I am against someone having the right to be the next head of state because of being born into a family.

It is shameful".

2022, on September 8.

Dressed in rigorous mourning, the new prime minister – she has barely been in office for 48 hours – announces the death of Elizabeth II at the door of Downing Street.

“Today the Crown passes, as it has done for more than 1,000 years, to our new monarch, our new head of state, King Carlos III.

(...) We must unite as a people to support him, to help him carry on his shoulders the enormous responsibility that he assumes for all of us”.

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