Liz Truss: Britain’s Next Thatcher?

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The United Kingdom — via the malignant core at the heart of its body politic, the Conservative Party — is once more engaged in a contest to pick the latest in a long line of hapless and/or heartless leaders. The decision as to who will be the UK's next Prime Minister rests with just 0.3% of the population, a group largely composed of pale, stale, and male individuals whose intense longing for a past that never existed is matched only by a vicious contempt for a future many of them will not live long enough to see. The collection of geriatric maniacs that make up the Tory party membership must — on behalf of a captured and victimized nation — choose between the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and the current Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, with the latter being the overwhelming favorite to succeed Boris Johnson as Tory leader and UK Prime Minister.

If and when Truss comes to power, she will be facing into a set of circumstances not wholly unlike those faced by a previous leader of the Conservative Party. When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, the UK was facing a deteriorating economic situation characterized by slowing growth, high inflation, and widespread industrial conflict. While the UK in 2022 has yet to witness chaos on the level of the Winter of Discontent in 1978/79, the crisis of the coming months could yet approximate its scale. Truss, like Thatcher, will certainly have her hands full.

The comparisons do not end there. In recent years, Liz Truss has deliberately sought comparison with Thatcher, whose popularity among the Tory party faithful remains unsurpassed. Truss has even gone as far as dressing up as the so-called Iron Lady, in a sort of weird fancy-dress seemingly designed to make idiots think that she is in fact a reincarnated Maggie Thatcher. (One might argue that focusing on the clothing a female politician chooses to wear is somewhat misogynistic. However, please note that if Rishi Sunak donned a pearl necklace and a blue power suit/skirt combo in an attempt to cosplay as Margaret Thatcher, it would be remarked upon here as well).