I should be grateful to GB News. They appear to be the only news organisation that was willing to carry verbatim extracts from Liz Truss's speech to the so-called Popular Conservatives yesterday.
They report her as saying:
I believe the fundamental issue is that for years and years and years- and I think it goes back two decades - conservatives have not taken on the left-wing extremists.
These people have repurposed themselves. They don't admit they're socialists or communists anymore, they say they're 'environmentalists'. They say that they're in favour of helping people across all communities. They are in favour of supporting LGBT people or groups of ethnic minorities.
They also noted her saying:
They no longer admit that they are collectivists - but that is what their ideology is about. It's all about taking power away from people and families and handing power to the state or unaccountable bodies.
And the problem is, the conservatives have tried to appease these people. They've tried to triangulate.
[A]nd we've had pandering to the anticapitalists as well, in terms of regulating business, regulating landlords, regulating small enterprises.
Our shortest-serving ever Prime Minister has spoken. It is fair to say that the words she had to offer delivered an ugly and offensive message. Most will think them deranged. I think they are dangerous.
Truss is really saying three things.
First, she wants a white, male-privileged society that is focused on the supposed Christian values of the family, which is defined to exclude any LGBT people, and with the values and principles of any minority group being treated as aberrant and offensive and so to be subject to permitted prejudice.
Second, she wants to define all forms of collective concern, including for the environment and for society itself, as a threat to the right of the individual to exploit the planet and others.
Third, she wishes to end business regulation so it can exploit the consumer, the planet, places, tenants, and others without showing any apparent awareness that markets cannot function in the absence of regulation.
This is, then, an agenda that explicitly permits the powerful with a grudge to abuse anyone they wish with impunity. And anything that gets in the way, like democratic government and the rule of law, must be vilified or abolished.
This is beyond being called far-right ideology. This is fascism. It should be described as such because no other word in the political lexicon fits it.
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Good morning.
I just thought I’d let you know that the link from Mastodon takes you to a post on Liz Truss from September 2022.
I genuinely have no idea why
It’s the lack of a space after the url. What it says right now is “…anyone-they-wish-with-impunity/.Liz Truss…” and the “.Liz” is getting interpreted as being part of the link – you can see it’s missing from the text of the next sentence. If you edit it to add space “…anyone-they-wish-with-impunity/ . Liz Truss…” it should work.
It looks like the software that runs the blog tries to be helpful and redirects you if it can’t find the entry with the exact slug you ask for: try going to the url of this page in your browser and add “.First”, or “.Patronising” after the slash and press return, it’ll redirect to a blog entry with that as the first word in the title. “.Liz” just happens to pick that 2022 article.
I try to address that when posting. It is a Mastodon fault that it closes the space after I post.
Wholeheartedly agreed.
John Crace does a wonderful take down of her in the Guardian.
However, John needs to understand that what Truss has been saying is music to some people’s ears – and even worse – they may well have deep pockets too.
Her speech also indicates her ignorance of basic economics where topics such as public goods, externalities, monopolies are covered. Anyone with a basic knowledge realises that markets are imperfect and require a framework to operate in and where there are policies to deal with the imperfections. A totally free market is impossible.
No matter how right-wing and authoritarian society (well, the political or MSM norm/Overton Window) has become over the last 14 years, they always want more. It makes me wonder what kind of society these people would actually be satisfied with. Their repulsive views have gained so much ground already – indeed, that is probably why they feel emboldened to say these sorts of things. And so they push the envelope ever further. They probably think the BBC is still a hotbed of left wing activism! They probably think Keir Starmer is a socialist! And even if they know that is not true, they would still say it, to keep raising the stakes and keep gaining ground. If they keep it up liberals and progressives will be distracted from despair and protest at what we have already become, and be grateful that – at least – we don’t have the death penalty yet. At least, we won’t get arrested for disagreeing with them. Hold on……..what’s that knock at the door?
Too me, the Trust pop-cons seems to be saying:
1. You are left wing if you do not support us.
2. If you support Labour, then you are extreme left wing.
3. All barriers should be removed to enable Truss Tories to get their work down
4. No other group should be helped
The is consistent with the neoliberal paradigm that only Tory business entrepreneurs, are the saviours of the economy, and by extension, the British people.
What Truss is actually arguing is that, in spite of the Conservatives having been in power in Government for almost fourteen years, and for 29 of the last 44 years; in reality actually they are either so stupid or incompetent people to elect, they have been running a left-wing Government; and that must include Truss herself.
Of course, this is what Sunak does every Wednesday. Brought to Parliament each week to account for his Government, he turns that accounting at PMQs into an eccentric argument that everything he does, is actually all the fault of the Opposition; which, somehow are actually running this quite obvious failed Government. You work it out.
Truss is now running a demented Conservative faction trying to claim that the Party that advertises ostentatiously that it is the most successful operation in the whole democratic world; does so by winning elections but is literally incapable of governing when in power; because it can’t even stop a minority Opposition, who are not even in power from running the Government. That is the Conservative case. You work it out.
That is precisely how crackpot Conservative politics has become. There are now no less than six different unelectable sects which can’t agree with one another; trying to run the Conservative Party: the ‘five families’ (so called – ERG, NRG, One Nation, Common Sense, and the New Conservatives); and the new Popular Conservative, who are a highly self-selecting group of the least popular politicians in Britain – Truss, Rees-Mogg and others who are so popular nobody has ever heard of them, and I’ve forgotten.
Correct
Possibly 12 factions in the Tory Party.
Liz Truss launches new ‘popular’ Conservative faction | LBC – James O’Brien
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biN0PW_SXZE
The “five” families. Has the Tory Party modelled itself on the mafia?
So far I can see six factions. I included the PopCons (a well named confidence trick) in my comment; but that is today; tomorrow, twelve factions? Next week – 15, 20? Who knows. Every Conservative MP their own faction? Anything is possible in this mess. What is clear is that even Conservative MPs do not believe in Sunak’s failed Government, or such a trifling, insignificant cipher as leader; it was only the total, abject collapse of May, Johnson and Truss that made Sunak electable even to Conservatives – and even then, completely without conviction – and everyone, everywhere knows it – except Sunak.
There is a name for the Sunak’s behaviour you describe as “an eccentric argument that everything he does, is actually all the fault of the Opposition”. It describes narcissistic behaviour and abuse.
DARVO is an acronym that stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.
It describes a manipulative tactic often used by abusers to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and shift the blame onto their victims.
Deny
Someone adamantly denies being wrong and won’t acknowledge wrong behaviors. A person using this tactic will not only say they are not abusive but will minimize your feelings. If they tell you, “It’s not that big of a deal,” or “You’re making too much of this,” that’s another way to deny the wrong behavior and its impact on you.
Attack
The accused person becomes aggressive, arguing that they are not in the wrong. They also seek to cast doubt on you as the person who is questioning their behavior.
Reverse Victim and Offender
The abuser tries to switch roles, arguing that they are the real victim and making the victim look like the offender. The abuser may claim to be unfairly accused, then say that you are making accusations to cover up your own behavior.
Agreed
Kemi Badenoch has just aptly demonstrated DARVO in a tweet:
Every murder is a tragedy. None should be trivialised by political point-scoring. As a mother, I can imagine the trauma that Esther Ghey has endured.
It was shameful of Starmer to link his own inability to be clear on the matter of sex and gender directly to her grief. (1/2)
As Minister for Women and Equalities I’ve done all I can to ensure we have take the heat out of the debate on LGBT issues while being clear about our beliefs and principles.
Keir Starmer’s behaviour today shows Labour are happy to weaponise this issue when it suits them (2/2)
This needs contextualising. Sunak trivialised trans issues in the presence of Esther Ghey.
The problem really is that no-one in British mainstream media dare describe Mogg and Truss as far-right, let alone fascists. They won’t have problems describing Meloni as far right with her policies mostly to the left of Sunak’s, but can’t even imagine that UK ex-PM could be a fascist. We can’t have that. We are UK. We are different. Our fascists come only with shaved heads and tattoos.
Truss and Mogg might be farcical, but they keep moving the political discourse further and further to the right. And there’s no-one to say – this isn’t a legitimate political discourse anymore. This is highly dangerous.
I lived in the US in the 80s, before it became completely unhinged. One thing I never go used to was the closed-minded simplism.
This is greatest country in the world and it’s capitalist. Anything else is bad. Communism is the worst. Anything I don’t understand, don’t like, or that isn’t 100% capitalist (ie, in any way involves redistribution) is communism or the slippery slope to it. And hands off my social security!
Truss is mouth-breathing imbecile who thinks that the con of America’s gullible and uneducated can be reproduced in the UK. It can’t. Most Americans have never been abroad. Most British have been. Most already know the UK isn’t and is never going to be any kind world-bestriding colossus. Fundamentally, the appeal is once again to nostalgia, to a time when “other people” “knew their place”, leaving the privileged to get on with buccaneering.
Quickbuckaneers don’t want the state regulating their piracy so they must invoke culture war BS to con people that they will be freer and better off with a state with, as American conservative Grover Norquist put it, a state “small enough to drag to the bathtub and drown”. This is a non-starter in a society that venerates the idea of collective provision of healthcare and social solidarity generally, one far more readily outraged by systematic unfairness than the US.
Truss’s performative nonsense was to burnish her credentials with American funders of right wing think tanks, perhaps so she can evacuate herself to a US sinecure like Douglas Carswell. She never had any principles other than her own advancement. UK politics will be well rid of her.
The model advanced by Truss is based on an idea driven in part by the ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ model that was exploited to advance Brexit and its consequences for Britain. One leading advocate of this was Jeremy Hunt. In ‘The New European’ in 2021 Hunt wrote this: “”While the circumstances of Britain’s departure from the EU are different [to Singapore,………there could be few better instructions for us as we make our post-Brexit future” (I could not find the source directly, and had to rely on a secondary source for this); but it spreads much wider, including the Adam Smith Institute.
Britain’s debt-to GDP%, 2024 was 106%. Singapore debt-to GDP%, 2024? 168%.
The Conservatives have reduced economics to a neurotic ideological obsession that ties determination of its economic policies to a single, narrow objective that other advanced economies simply do not allow to happen; including the US (126%), and Japan (251%). All the debt-to GDP% calculations here are taken from the IMF website, 2024 simply to ensure a stable comparison.
Thanks
And each new faction gets endless time on BBC R4 ‘News’ (Today, PM etc) . Every twist and turn over the last two years covered in minute detail however far right or ultra it is – implying that only the internal Tory conversation actually matters.
The odd passing mention of the Labour ‘left’ with little or no time given to anyone to talk in detail about anything remotely ressembling the sort of analysis we get on here keeps on skewing the politics of the UK.
What Truss is coming out with is much the same as Trump now with almost the same messages and underlying method. With the same anti-democratic destination in mind. My sense is that most of the British public can see the flaws in Trump. However they have not yet recognised that just the same thing is happening here, fortunately without the guns.
A braver Labour (or the rest of the opposition) would be prepared to call it out for what it so obviously is.
The whole point of politics is collective power. And of national politics this is especially true. Being in power is not something Truss will ever understand.
Richard, are you able to define what a woman us, unlike Starmer and (seemingly) the majority of people on the left?
Yes.
But I have decided it is not a subject for debate on this blog.
What I can also do is identify grossly callous abuse. Sunak was guilty of that today.
I also know you are trolling.
Not a great response, suggesting you are another one on the left that seems to think that ‘Trans’ rights (whatever that means), are more important than women’s rights. Just like Starmer.
You’re not normally scared to offend people to make a point, so it’s somewhat strange that you are keen to steer clear of the issue, despite having effectively brought it up in the first place.
Have you noticed what this blog is about?
I will respect Richard’s decision that this is not a subject for this blog but I would point out there is an international consensus based on decades of debate and research among psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists (who listen to people) anthropologists , neurologists and endocrinologists that a percentage of people are ‘in the wrong body’ and that the issues can be tackled sensitively and successfully to enable them to live more happily without affecting anyone’s rights. Suggest you do the research.
Fair comment
But, this is not a topic for debate here
There are quite a number that are not
I wonder if, having been so summarily dismissed, Truss’s extreme right-wing pronouncements are more a case of ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ than reasoned politics?
Or is that just sexism?
I am not sure gender comes into it. It had not occurred to me.
Truss is framing things according to “strict father morality”, which is basically all about obedience to the father.
George Lakoff’s post explains this:
https://www.theframelab.org/p/why-taylor-swift-terrifies-republicans
If you can’t see that, the order of obedience is this:
1. God above man
2. Man above nature
3. The disciplined (strong) above the undisciplined (weak)
4. The rich above the poor
5. Employers above employees
6. Adults above children
7. Western culture above non-western cultures
8. America (or UK in our case) above other countries
9. Men above women
10. Christians above non-Christians
11. Straights above gays
And so on.
It’s all about obedience to the father and punishment and reward. Not nurturing and empathy, cooperation and support.
Arnold Kling’s book, Three Languages of Politics, also suggests that conservatism is framed as a battle: its mission is to maintain the “traditional” order (civilisation) against disorder/change from the barbarian hordes.
Whereas libertines (liberals) view the world as a battle between the freedom (to do whatever they want) and coercion (having to behave with other people’s needs in mind).
And progressives view the world as a battle between oppressor (perpetrator) and oppressed (victim).
You are right. Sorry, the saying is indeed sexist. Since we have seen that Hell certainly has no fury like Trump scorned, perhaps the saying should be de-sexed: ‘Hell hath no fury like a narcissistic, malignant bigot scorned’
Liz Truss’s policies read like a summary of the ideas set out by Ayn Rand.