LIZ Truss has been accused of “deeply irresponsible demonising” of campaigners after branding opponents of her policies an “anti-growth coalition” during her first conference speech as Prime Minister.
Addressing Tory party members in Birmingham last week, she attacked environmental campaigners, unions, “talking heads” and think tanks, as well as accusing Labour, the LibDems and the SNP of being “enemies of enterprise”.
She also claimed they “don’t face the same challenges as normal working people”.
Her remarks have been criticised by Compassion In Politics, a cross-party organisation which aims to promote cooperation in politics. Co-director Jennifer Nadel said the language used by the Prime Minister was “deliberately divisive and inflammatory”.
She said: “Her attempt to demonise humanitarian and environmental campaigners at a time of economic and planetary crisis was deeply irresponsible and will only serve to pour paraffin on the politics of hate which is sadly now consuming our country.
“Name-calling may score political points, but it does nothing to untangle the crises we face or build the nation we deserve.”
She added: “We need leaders who are sympathetic to the public’s concerns, understand our shared goals for health, happiness, and safety, and recognise the need to build alliances to achieve them.”
Truss used the phrase “anti-growth coalition” several times during her speech, which was seen as a crucial moment for her leadership after the market chaos caused by the unveiling of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget three weeks ago.
She told the Conservative gathering: “I will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back.
“Labour, the LibDems and the SNP, the militant unions, the vested interests dressed up as think tanks, the talking heads, the Brexit deniers and Extinction Rebellion and some of the people we had in the hall earlier.
“The fact is they prefer protesting to doing. They prefer talking on Twitter to taking tough decisions.
“They taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo. From broadcast to podcast, they peddle the same old answers. It’s always more taxes, more regulation and more meddling. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Paula Keaveney, senior lecturer and programme leader for politics at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, pointed out it was not necessarily a new tactic, with other Tory leaders previously using the term “coalition of chaos” to describe their opponents.
She said: “What leaders doing these speeches often do is try and create an enemy and it has to be an enemy their members would agree is an enemy to then sort of set up almost a contest – here is the enemy, these people are all terrible, but I am going to go ahead and do this.
“It wasn’t just the coalition which she set up as her enemy, there was a reference to European judges as well, which I felt was an easy enemy to set up for some of that audience.
“So what she was doing was setting up a perceived enemy, but saying despite all these terrible people, I am going to get on with doing this job and we are going to win out over these forces.”
Keaveney said it was a divisive tactic and had been used before by politicians including Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and former US president Donald Trump.
She added: “When you are establishing yourself as a leader of a party which is behind in the polls and there may be some doubt about you, it is more important, I think, to demonstrate you have identified who the enemy is and that you are going to take them on.
“I think that is quite common in certain types of leadership speech.”
Commentators have frequently noted that Truss appears to be trying to emulate Thatcher.
However, Keaveney said there were key differences and that while Thatcher had a couple of “rocky” first years, the situation with Truss was more akin to the second half of John Major’s second government.
“[Major] got re-elected in 1992, but then things were falling apart, and the Tories lost their reputation for economic competence - there were scandals,” she said.
“This makes me think more about that period in time rather than the early-Thatcher period.”
Keaveney said it was too early to tell how Truss will fare as Prime Minister, but she will face renewed pressure when Westminster returns this week.
“The first thing on the agenda is Treasury questions – so the first thing is people getting up and asking all sorts of questions, making all sorts of difficult comments about the economy,” she said.
