Liz Truss became UK prime minister on September 6. Except that, she did so by channeling Margaret Thatcher so effectively, she became a meme.
Here is how I chimed in on the viral ridicule in the comments section to a July 17 report on her campaign in The Guardian:
Liz Truss is fashioning her campaign after Margaret Thatcher’s 1975 campaign for the Tory leadership – complete with channeling Maggie’s speech and wearing similar clothes. But some of us are old enough to say we knew Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher was on TV every day. Secretary, you’re no Margaret Thatcher.
This is why I stood practically alone not only in predicting this U-turn, but that Truss would not have the balls to own her own turn:
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng told the BBC the proposals, announced just 10 days ago, had become ‘a massive distraction on what was a strong package.’ ‘We just talked to people, we listened to people, I get it,’ he added.
However, pressed on whether it was her U-turn, Mr. Kwarteng added: ‘No, we talked together, I said this is what I was minded to do and we decided together, we were in agreement that we wouldn’t proceed with the abolition of the rate.’
(BBC News, October 3, 2022)
Why is Kwarteng the black sheep? Oh…
Of course, Kwarteng can be forgiven for coming across as dazed and confused. After all, he was thrown under the bus for paddling Ms. Truss and Britain’s already sinking ship of state into troubled waters. (Not quite the image of George Washington crossing the Delaware…)
But this is what even fellow Conservatives accused her of doing to him when the reverse Robin Hood tax cuts, the key feature of her proposed budget, tanked the value of the pound and incited unprecedented political backlash.
Now here is what I wrote last week (on September 28) in this regard – in “British MP Huq Criticizing Chancellor Kwarteng Is Like the Pot Calling the Kettle Not Black Enough”:
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[The white Conservatives Kwarteng tried so hard to impress] are clearly relishing being able to hail the white Governor of the Bank of England for coming in like a white knight. This, to rescue the British economy from the “unprecedented” troubled waters this black chancellor plunged it into. Is there no end to the white man’s burden…?
Indeed, perhaps you’ve heard them propagating the canard that, thanks to Kwarteng, Britain is suddenly being treated like one of its former Third World colonies. But this is why all that remains is for them to force Kwarteng to amend his budget in a way that makes Huq’s groveling apology seem haughty.
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In fact, if anything, I might’ve underestimated the extent of the groveling in store. According to News Flash, BBC political correspondent Rob Watson “talks politics to around 394 million people on a weekly basis.” So it speaks volumes that he called the apology Kwarteng ended up delivering at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham yesterday “utterly, totally, and profoundly humiliating.”
Incidentally, for the uninitiated, Thatcher sealed her Iron Lady reputation at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1980. During her rousing keynote speech, she included the phrase that defined her career, namely “The lady’s not for turning.”
It took Truss less than a month on the job to prove me right: she’s no Maggie.
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