It is not easy to be British Prime Minister without your people throwing you into the trunk of history as soon as they detect that you are no longer good enough to win the next election. From Churchill to Boris Johnson through Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher, Cameron and May have been displaced by internal conspiracies of a party that rules and has power almost regularly in the United Kingdom.
Liz Truss entered the corridor to the cliff at the end of the tunnel on Monday by becoming the Conservative leader and prime minister. A British ruler always has in mind the removal truck that one day will quickly and quickly take his personal belongings from the mythical Downing Street residence.
Apart from the quick and expeditious liturgy with which prime ministers are changed in England, Truss's arrival in power is the continuation of the conservative revolution that began with Thatcher in 1979 and was finished off by Ronald Reagan in 1980. In his brief speech to the When the results were announced, she said it very clearly: "I have campaigned as a Conservative and I will govern as a Conservative."
Neoliberal conservatism has buried Keynes in all solemnity with a few simple but penetrating ideas, such as “less government is better government”, “lower taxes encourage growth” or “the market alone solves problems and creates wealth”. There are other iconic words like liberalize, privatize and remove rules.
In the case of the British Conservatives, we must add the withdrawal that Brexit has meant, an idea that, paradoxically, neither Cameron nor May nor Johnson believed, depending on the day. Liz Truss campaigned in favor of staying in the EU. But what else does she give her.
English jingoistic populism is inseparable from a people that might have reason to feel exceptional, unique and very well equipped to influence globally but has believed itself superior to any other country in Europe. Brexit contains strong supremacist doses that have consolidated Scottish nationalism and have opened up the hitherto unthinkable opportunity for the unity of all of Ireland.
Liz Truss is going to fight any European regulation that harms British interests, especially the treaty signed with the EU regarding Northern Ireland. She has to face the problems of the energy crisis, inflation, general discontent and the consequences of the war in Ukraine.
But it will have to do it alone because the links with the United States are not exclusive and the European Union, for now, is the fundamental piece for any resolution of the conflict that will necessarily arise one day at a negotiating table.
That conservative social revolution of forty years ago continues in many democracies and has caused crises originating in an unbridled individualism that is endangering the welfare state that holds up by fits and starts the main walls of what it claims to be a fairer and more equitable.
The creation of wealth by the hand of Rhenish-style social market capitalism is essential. But reducing inequalities will have to be a priority for Truss and for all democratic governments pending a warrior Putin who does not have to answer to anyone.
