Liz Truss - Woke Yourself, Stupid

After presiding over the briefest and most economically disastrous Prime Ministerial interregnum in recent history, what would be the best course of action for the over-promoted (and especially by our free and fearless press) and under-talented Liz Truss to take? What would a sensible politician do? What would a serious politician do? What would Nietzsche have done?

Sadly, in the world inhabited by Ms Truss, and perhaps by those in and around the Tufton Street network of Astroturf lobby groups fraudulently masquerading as “think tanks”, movers and shakers do not operate on such a lofty intellectual plane. So it is that the UK’s least credible former Prime Minister will emerge into the sunlight - well, wind and rain - for a speech.

As ITV News has told, “The former prime minister, who was forced out of office after 49 days, will deliver the Margaret Thatcher Freedom lecture at the right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington DC on Wednesday”. That’s the same Heritage Foundation that has majored in climate change denial, promoted false voter fraud claims, and opposed transgender rights.

This less than totally august body has also opposed the $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. But where does Mrs T come in to this? Wikipedia reminds us “In 2005, Heritage established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in honor of the former British prime minister. Thatcher herself maintained a long relationship with The Heritage Foundation”.

Thus perpetuating the right-wing myth that one can only be truly free if taxes are lowered and regulation diminished. Ms Truss will offer more along those lines. “It was Anglo-American individualism that made the world prosperous [odd way of saying ‘debt’] … Low taxes, limited government and private enterprise were what won the Cold War”. Military expenditure? Proxy wars?

Still, if at first you don’t succeed, well, suck a little more seed. “We have seen low growth for decades… Real incomes haven’t increased significantly since the financial crisis. In fact, the average GDP per capita in the UK is nearly 30% lower than it is in the United States”. Who’s been in power in the UK for the past 13 years? And who’s hobbled the UK economy with Brexit?

Moreover, she doesn’t make sense. First we hear “we have to ask ourselves: are we still match fit to take on China and to take on the whole concept of state capitalism?” Then comes “We need to get real about the threat from authoritarian regimes and their unwitting allies in the anti-growth movement”. Not checked out China’s growth figures for the recent past, then?

But the pièce de résistance comes in the news that Ms Truss will be “arguing that ‘stagnation, redistributionism and woke culture’ have been ‘taking hold in businesses and the economy in the UK and the US’, resulting in ‘more tax, more subsidies, more regulation’”. What she describes has absolutely nothing to do with anything that can be legitimately called WOKE.

Let’s consider the two definitions of that word: first, the lesser meaning “Well-informed, up-to-date”, and second, the greater meaning “Alert to injustices in society, especially racism”. That, and nothing else, can be taken as a meaning of the term WOKE. The clear conclusion is that Liz Truss, aided and abetted by her speechwriter, does not know what she’s talking about.

No regret for the shambles that was her - fortunately - brief time in power. No apology for the steepling rise in mortgage costs for millions of citizens. No remorse at the run on Sterling, the diminishing of savings, the further weakening of an economy already on the rack after more than a decade of Tory austerity. Like all Tory ineptitude, it’s all someone else’s fault.

The Heritage Foundation and its Margaret Thatcher Center For Freedom is no better than the alphabet soup of Astroturf lobby groups here in the UK. So Liz Truss is an ideal speaker for them: blaming all the usual suspects for her own shortcomings, pushing flat earth economics, embarking on a non-existent comeback, while in reality just shouting into the void.

Liz Truss was for a time, but not for all time. Just rejoice at that news.

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