By Christina Lu Liz Truss Becomes British Prime Minister

 

SEPTEMBER 06, 2022 | VIEW IN BROWSER

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By Christina Lu  Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at Britain’s new Prime Minister Liz Truss, Chile’s rejection of a new constitution, and the U.N.’s warning of famine in Somalia. Have tips or feedback? Hit reply to this email to let me know your thoughts. Liz Truss Becomes British Prime Minister Liz Truss will begin her term as British Prime Minister today, replacing a controversial predecessor, Boris Johnson, whose stormy three-year tenure at 10 Downing Street produced numerous scandals and left the economy in a precarious state. Truss will be taking the reins during a turbulent period as spiraling energy prices and record inflation throttle Britons and strikes become more frequent. “I campaigned as a conservative and I will govern as a conservative,” she declared on Monday. “I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy.” But Truss hasn’t always been a conservative, with a political record full of ideological U-turns. A former centrist Liberal Democrat at university, she once called for the end of the British monarchy and ardently opposed Brexit. She has since transformed into a Brexit cheerleader—a drastic shift that helped her secure support in the Conservative Party and ultimately defeat her rival, Rishi Sunak.  “It would be easy to make one of two mistakes about Truss: either she doesn’t believe in anything or she believes everything she’s saying at any one time,” Ben Judah, a journalist and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote in Foreign Policy. “She’s a more complicated mix of chameleon politics over a solid framework of belief—especially on geopolitics.” From the war in Ukraine to China, Truss adopted hawkish stances while serving as foreign secretary. Judah describes her as a hard-liner who is always seeking a “Thatcher-Reagan solution.” Truss “has a taste for even greater action on the world stage after being foreign secretary during a European war,” he wrote.  But she will have her hands full with Britain’s mounting domestic troubles, which range from a deepening energy crisis and skyrocketing inflation—energy bills are set to spike by 80 percent this fall—to growing backlogs for medical treatment. Gallup has found that almost two-thirds of the British public lack confidence in the government, while Truss herself is even less popular, according to YouGov. While campaigning, Truss pledged to slash taxes, diverging sharply from Sunak, who said the government should first curb inflation. Her promises proved to be more popular among the roughly 141,000 dues-paying Conservative party members who cast ballots for the country’s next leader, but it’s unlikely that the other 99.7 percent of registered U.K. voters will see her policies the same way. As Truss begins her term, she may be guided by her longstanding view of politics as “philosophy in action,” as FP’s Amy Mackinnon wrote in a profile of the leader last year. People close to Truss characterize her as “a conviction politician,” Mackinnon reported, or someone whose global outlook influences their policy choices.  That could come to define Britain’s future. “I think people have always underestimated her,” Garvan Walshe, a former security policy advisor to the Conservative Party, told Mackinnon. “People make fun of her voice, people make fun of her enthusiasm, but what they don’t realize is that she is a very smart politician who has been making her way up the ranks of the party for the last 15 or 20 years.”