By Anjan Roy
Britain gets a new prime minister alright, but that also means the country shows its true colour — a total right wing swing. The new prime minister has won by support of less than 1% of British voters, just by some 20,000 more supporters among the Conservative party members.
Liz Truss had travelled to Scotland to meet the British Queen at the Balmoral Castle, where she is spending her summer vacation currently and unable to travel to London to give audience to an incoming British prime minister at the Buckingham Palace.
Ironically enough, she had once pushed forward the campaign for abolition of the British monarchy. She had said: “we have had enough of it”.
She has been backed, as the commentators have taken pains to highlight, by older white and right wing elements in the party, as opposed to the more progressive, literate and informed members who opted for Rishi Sunak. At the end of the day, it was Rishi Sunak who was not a true blue born again Englishman, against the native Britisher.
Liz Truss, British prime minister, is the ultimate turn coat that politicians everywhere are. Like many well know Indian politicians, Liz Truss had turned many a full circles in her professed public stance on vital matters of the day to become the prime minister.
Liz Truss, Britain’s former foreign secretary, has been described as a “political chameleon” for the changing stripes of her politics which often involved taking a diametrically opposite stance of what she had once professed. Her start of the campaign was rather uncertain, marked by reverses.
The most devastating comment on her performance as a foreign secretary had come from her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who had described his meeting with her as “talking to the deaf”. She had listened but did not hear. She had also alienated Britain’s friends, like the Frech president, Emmanuel Macron, with her comments.
In the run up to the election campaign for prime ministership, she was clearly less informed in her public debates than Rishi Sunak, who was rated one of the best Conservative political figures. She was also less open to being examined on TV debates or dialogues in public, as commentators have widely reported. But then, the wider British public, the older and less educated sections, did fid her more acceptable to Rishi Sunak.
She was a Liberal Democrat when studying in Oxford for her degree in politics, philosophy and economics, or PPE, a course famously taken by people who have no evident interest or ability to pursue serious academics. She was, her in time, a hardcore critic of Britain’s move to exit European Union.
She is against the concept of a more open Britain. She began her campaign with the observations on imports by Britain. She said, “we import two-thirds of our cheese” and then after a prolonged silence had observed that was a disgrace. She was thus entirely to the idea of free trade. She had once urged for more liberal immigration laws to enable British to attract talent. Now she promised to change the laws to laws to control immigration into Britain. Her model is former Conservative British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. She reportedly dresses like her and imitates her in public.
Political chameleons rule the roost now a days everywhere. But Britain’s politicians seem to have recently taken a leaf or two from erstwhile colony’s crafty leaders. (IPA Service)
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