Truss Out, Leadership Crisis Remains
Truss Out, Leadership Crisis Remains
The UK Is Not the Only Nation Hurtling Toward a Winter of Discontent.
I do think we’ve got an unbelievably bad crop of politicians.
Prime Minister Liz Truss presented herself as political heir to the mantle of Margaret Thatcher. Regrettably for Truss, the comparison rendered her cosplay cringeworthy.
Truss Is No Thatcher.
It’s entirely understandable that Truss would look to Thatcher for inspiration and instruction. The “Iron Lady’s” Labour successors at 10 Downing Street have expressed respect for her achievements.
Thatcher is unquestionably in the small circle of highly consequential British prime ministers and party leaders. She changed the political weather, in Churchill’s phrase. She swept away the postwar settlement that had slumped into an anemic, demoralizing, oppressive oligarchy over the course of three decades.
When stymied by the overweening power of unions in 1974, Edward Heath and the Tories called a snap election. Their slogan: Who Governs Britain?
The question didn’t elicit the response they were hoping for.
To the surprise of many, Harold Wilson and Labour edged back into office. His administration and that of his successor, James Callaghan, chose not to grasp the nettle of union power, lest it shatter their party coalition.
After the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79—marked by widespread privation and disorder, suffused with a fog of decline—Thatcher was swept in.
Out with the postwar settlement, in with the neo-liberal settlement, combined with renewed national place and purpose in the Cold War.
In 1990, after more than a decade in power, Thatcher faltered. She was defenestrated by her own party. The furies loosed haunt the Tories to this day.
That was the easy part. And it was not the essential point.
Thatcher’s significance arose from diagnosing oligarchic dysfunction and offering a vision of an alternative future. She possessed wide-ranging experience that equipped her to enact much of that vision in office.
The UK in 2022 awaits credible leadership in confronting the new oligarchy rising amid the fracture of the neo-liberal settlement.
Truss appears not to have grasped this imposing task. Her rapid, sheepish retreat will leave no footprints in the sands of history.
Nonetheless, Truss’s abbreviated tenure holds lessons—and poses questions—for the United States as well as the United Kingdom.
2022: Foretaste of a Great Reckoning?
—The Political Economy of Debt
Debt is the four-letter word that stalks the world.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, central banks intervened continously to reprice assets. In the midst of nearly four decades of a low-inflation global economy, they suppressed interest rates at artifically low levels.
Politicians were quite content to respect the “independence” of central banks in this respect. It fueled their capacity to spend and borrow without immediately apparent consequences.
Inevitably, asset price inflation ensued. Wealth was favored over labor; wealth was increasingly concentrated.
Inevitably, asset price inflation ensued. Wealth was favored over labor; wealth was increasingly concentrated. lnstability was marbled into even the most important long-term investments of citizens, including residential real estate, insurance, savings accounts, and pensions.
Truss may have persuaded herself that the astonishing, ongoing profligacy of American fiscal policy offered a template for the United Kingdom. Her error might be summarized: The United States maintains the world’s reserve currency. The United Kingdom does not.
Truss hadn’t noticed that in today’s debt-driven political economy, bankers hold the keys to the car. Politicians are just along for the ride.
Truss hadn’t noticed that in today’s debt-driven political economy, bankers hold the keys to the car. Politicians are just along for the ride.
Leaders with visions are rendered redundant by accountants with visors.
—The Bankers’ Hour
With the accession of Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Party has removed the intermediaries. Now a banker resides at 10 Downing Street.
This has had a reassuring effect on financial markets.
The political situation remains unsettled.
Will Sunak succeed as architect of a new government? The Tories have been in power for twelve years. Sunak, chancellor of the exchequer under Johnson, is the sixth prime minister of the roiling, post-2008 period.
—Breaking Norms Can Have Consequences
G.K. Chesterton offered an evergreen admonition: “Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.”
Truss, following the dubious example of Boris Johnson, violated norms with relish. In her case, that included bypassing cabinet government as she raced to release the “mini budget” representing her borrow-and-spend instincts and values. To smooth the way, her administration also fired a prominent civil servant associated with the Treasury orthodoxy.
Already hobbled by not having won the premiership in a general election, these steps were self-owns of a high order.
Having cut herself off from key inputs in crafting policy, Truss found herself isolated, bereft of credible support when the financial markets balked.
—Legacy Parties Disconnected from Constituencies
The UK electorate is changing. The legacy parties—Conservative, Labour, Liberal—are struggling to keep up.
Boris Johnson’s Tories achieved a stunning victory in 2019, breaking through the “Red Wall” of reliable Labour seats in the north. This followed trends indicated in the 2016 Brexit vote.
Labour has made inroads into the managerial, meritocratic class that was once Conservative bedrock.
Johnson was an electoral force. He appeared to have the potential to recast UK politics. With the failure of his administration, it remains to be seen if Sunak or Labour’s Keir Starmer will have the capacity or opportunity to anchor their parties within the contours of the evolving electorate.
—Outdated Worldviews
If the legacy parties are maneuvering amid demographic and cultural change, they’re also scrambling to comprehend unfamiliar, treacherous circumstances.
Neither Labour nor the Conservatives offer a clear worldview for today’s challenges.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, easy money from central banks, in a low-inflation environment, made goverance easy. Now, hard choices loom.
Since the end of the Second World War, party politics in representative democracies has tended to align around overarching philosophies of socialism or capitalism. In practice this has yielded mixed economies.
Today’s political economy of debt is something new. Though party politicians bring different instincts to the table, the realities of debt mean greatly foreclosed options and unforgiving deadlines.
For the moment, cultural issues are rising in intensity. To a great extent they’re prompting the political re-sorting.
Though such issues are distinct from economics and finance, they may not remain so. Today’s variant of identity politics—focused on race, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, citizenship status, and generation—may become salient in the looming decisions imposed by the debt crisis.
—Talent Crisis
As we forge ahead into a new era, a foundational problem is the oft-noted decline in talent in politics and governance.
Could it be that we harbor a roseate view of the past? Might it be the recurring proclivity of older generations to fret over the recklessness and fecklessness of the young?
No. It’s a real thing.
I really shouldn't say this, but I hope all those people that put Liz Truss in No 10—I hope it was worth it, I hope it was worth it for the ministerial red box.… I've had enough of talentless people.
Recent British prime ministers have exhibited an emollient mediocrity. Truss fit comfortably into this procession. Like American presidents of the past generation, they tend to engage the citizenry as entertainers, rather than leaders. They perform as mere masters of ceremonies of the Westminster show.
Truss may not have foreseen that she made a fateful decision, succumbing to the self-indulgence of selecting a lackluster cabinet. Not many likely challengers there. No “big beasts” who might require tending—but could also carry a lot of weight, inside the government and out.
Numerous American journalists among the Twitterati sought to explain her appointments within an identity politics frame. They saw commendable diversity in the gender, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds of the new cabinet.
Unfortunately, there was far too little diversity in perspective. The siren song of identity politics can lure its adherents to focus on inputs and slip into solipsism. The pronouncements of such office holders often lay undue stress on their personal stories, how hard they work, and their various accomplishments in office.
As often as not, rather than drawing ordinary citizens closer, such sentiments are received as distant or disconnected. Those of us in the general public are most concerned with the outputs of politics, how our lives and work and families and communities and the nation are affected.
When Prime Minister Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng sent the City of London into paroxysms, their “diversity,” in the identity politics frame, held little sway. So, too, it was cold comfort to millions facing energy poverty and sharply rising mortgage interest payments.
This has occurred in a moment when talented individuals are avoiding public service. In the United Kingdom the causes include: the rising costs of housing and other living expenses in the capital; unceasing scrutiny of the lives and work of politicians and their families and associates; the obliteration of any notion of private life in the iPhone-social media moment; exposure to the risk of violence; and frustation amid the dysfunction of government.
Negative partisanship—voting defensively against one party rather than positively for another—reflects and reinforces the widespread disrespect for politicians. The implications of negative partisanship are distasteful to the politicians themselves. Many if not most tend to keep their heads down and soldier on, the better to avoid internalizing the implications.
Opening the aperture, and returning to the vantage point of citizens, such trends appear to be self-perpetuating.
Negative partisanship—voting defensively against one party rather than positively for another—reflects and reinforces the widespread disrespect for politicians. The implications of negative partisanship are distasteful to the politicians themselves. Many if not most tend to keep their heads down and soldier on, the better to avoid internalizing the implications.
A Warning for America
A scarcely concealed schadenfreude has been evident in some American reactions to the British leadership crisis.
Some in the one-time colonies may find amusement in the evident distress and embarassment of the “Mother of Parliaments.”
And yet...an unblinkered glance at our own circumstances should be chastening. Many of the afflictions of UK politics are in evidence in the US.
The United Kingdom went through major convulsions in the Winter of Discontent of 1978-79. Amid the economic and financial warfare accompanying the bloody battles in Ukraine, numerous nations are facing multiple crises in the coming winter.
No matter what happens in the United States in the cold season just ahead, we may be heading into a metaphorical winter of discontent.
If so, it might increase our appreciation of an undoubted virtue of the British system: its capacity to hold a government to account in short order. It would be difficult to argue credibly that American government is superior or even comparable in this respect.
Image Credit | Prime Minister Truss and President Biden, The White House, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons; UK Inflation History, Wikideas1, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.