Britain has a new prime minister in Liz Truss, who journeyed Tuesday to Balmoral, Scotland, for her first official audience with a queen who prefers not to travel these days but still is constitutionally required to invite commoners to form a new government. The unusual location far from London was fair enough, given that the aged monarch was meeting the 15th prime minister of her 70-year reign.
Truss’ predecessor, Boris Johnson, also made the journey to Scotland to tender his resignation. Impish character that he is, Johnson’s farewell address was notable for his likening himself to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the virtuous Roman farmer and statesman whose name was memorialized in Ohio’s Queen City and whose leadership was seen as a calling from the people, not a consequence of personal ambition.
“Like Cincinnatus I am returning to my plow,” Johnson said Tuesday, surely aware that Cincinnatus returned to power a second time, plow conveniently set aside.
But then Johnson also has a vested interest in rebranding his legacy as something other than the guy who partied in the basement of 10 Downing Street while ordinary Britons couldn’t attend funerals of those they loved. Cincinnatus is as good a metaphor as any for that, even if few Britons will be fooled.
Truss, who lacks Johnson’s bouncy, cartoonish personality and probably the Teflon that long surrounded him, has to act like Farmer Boris will be a permanent condition, forthcoming memoir notwithstanding. She has announced that her deputy prime minister will be Theresa Coffey, and, adding Wendy Morton as the new chief Tory whip, that means more women will be in high offices in this new Conservative Party government than ever before.
That’s a notable moment in world history. In the upper echelons of British power, white men suddenly are in notably short supply. This will be far and away the most diverse Western government, far more so than U.S. Republicans or Democrats have achieved to date.
For most ordinary people, though, Truss will be expected to focus first on the cost-of-living crisis and its most troubling constituent, the energy crisis. This will require her to depart from some Conservative market orthodoxies, and she has signaled a willingness to do so, as well she should.
Truss is expected to borrow money in order to freeze residential energy bills for two years at no more than £2,500 a year (about $2,875) or £2,100 ($2,415) after prior government intervention is considered, thus averting a ballooning crisis that threatened to send millions of people into food insecurity but coming at a cost estimated to be over £100 billion ($115 billion).
Truss also has promised to cut billions of dollars in taxes, potentially including a cut in VAT, a tax on consumption. Her plan worries some in the Biden administration, given the possibility of her cutting corporate tax rates below the 15% that Biden’s team wants as an international floor, even though that might not be in the best interests of other nations.
And, as is typical with incoming prime ministers, Truss has promised to fix the issues with the National Health Service, probably by diverting money into so-called social care with the aim of freeing up hospital space. That’s a smart idea, given the hours people often are waiting for ambulances.
The theoretical justification for all this is that the debt from the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 crisis, and also Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, should be seen as akin to the postwar recovery years of the late 1940s and financed over a longer term. That’s a bet, of course, on a brighter future.
Other promising ideas abound: More legal immigration, an understanding of the need to manage the transition to clean energy so it causes the minimum of economic pain, a commitment to more housing, better electric trains, and a desire to maintain the union with Scotland.
There is also plenty to get in the way, not the least of which is the declining British pound, which has been wavering in the early hours of the Truss government, unsure of how to move.
And, of course, Putin can continue to ruin everything.
If there is any arena in which Truss needs to channel her inner Iron Lady, it is in the theater of Ukraine, one of the few areas in which Johnson exceeded expectations, especially if you ask a Ukrainian. She has said she will do everything in her power to support the Ukrainian people and vanquish Putin.
And so she should. Putin is causing all kinds of trouble and there is no viable, long-term solution for Europe without the crushing of his aggression.
