What do Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer imagine is going on in Britain today, as crops fail, food bank queues lengthen, and profits soar? How do they understand the unique combination of social, economic and ecological crises in 2022, which is already wreaking havoc in many people’s lives? The truth is that we don’t really know, and perhaps they don’t either.
Truss, to be sure, has outlined a consistent ideological position – tax and red tape have restrained Britain’s economy from growing – but it is a thesis so easily disproved, so divorced from everyday lives, so obviously rooted in Thatcherite nostalgia, as to be worthless as an explanation of where we are. Sunak, who clearly believed he could waltz through a leadership contest with the same professionally managed Instagram set-pieces that elevated him there in the first place, may have been mugged by political reality, but the effect has been to lead him further towards the authoritarian fantasies of the Tory right.
