Adrastos, British Politics, Malakatude

Malaka Of The Week: Liz Truss

Former British prime minister and foreign secretary Liz Truss has published a book. It’s full of lies and Trump style self-pity. And that is why Liz Truss is malaka of the week.

Truss’ book is called Ten Years To Save The West. According to those who have read it, it’s 320 pages of MAGA style gloom and doom. She thinks that only she, Boris Johnson, and the MAGA Yippie can save the West whatever the hell that means. Talk about delusional.

Repeat after me: Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump are destroyers, not builders.

Truss was prime minister for a mere 49 days and left a trail of wreckage that the Tory party is still trying to clean up. Her reign of error is one reason why the Conservative party suffered staggering losses in recent local elections. They’re on track to lose in a landslide in the upcoming general election after winning in a landslide in 2019. Boris Johnson was a rotten prime minister but a good campaigner. Of course, he was running against hapless Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

The reactions to Truss’ tome were scathing. This headline on a Guardian column sums it up: The Greatest Mystery Of Modern Politics? Liz  Truss’s Self-Belief. Ouch. The American counterpart is Donald Trump’s belief that he’s a winner with a very good brain.

Since Truss’ ideological nostrums aren’t selling back home, she did an American book tour. It was a minor disaster as opposed to the major disaster of her premiership. Her performance led one pundit to compare her to the zany comic character Mr. Bean:

There is, however, one thing that may work to Truss’s favour in the US. British critics of Tony Blair used to hammer him for a smoothness that struck some as pseudo-American, and which contributed to his currency – or at least legibility – in the US. Margaret Thatcher’s strident persona had about it a force that, particularly since she was played by Meryl Streep in the movie, has been claimed by some in the US as “American” in flavour.

 

But Truss has something that can land equally well coming from British people trying to break the US: an effortless, almost Mr Bean-like social awkwardness that invites in Americans a rival condescension, and is frequently utilised by British people abroad. Truss’s odd syntax, lame jokes and occasionally unnerving eye contact may stand a better chance of landing in the US as charming eccentricity, or an extension of the standard-issue bumbling Brit.

Double ouch.

After the publication of Truss’ tendentious tome, The Guardian had a did she really say that in her book quiz. This is my favorite question and response:

“What does Truss say she thought when was informed that Queen Elizabeth II had died?

“Bloody hell”

“This is so unfair”

“Why me? Why now?”

“I have no black dresses in Downing Street

 

The answer: “Why me? Why now?” Truss wrote, “To be told this on only my second full day as prime minister felt utterly unreal. In a state of shock, I found myself thinking: ‘Why me? Why now?'”

It’s Liz’s world. We just live in it.

A reminder of the funniest running joke about her time at Downing Street:

Liz Truss thinks that Trumpifying the Tory party is her path back to prominence. Once again, she’s kidding herself and the rest of the world. Lettuce say that is why Liz Truss is malaka of the week.

Repeat after me: Liz Truss was prime minster for 49 days. The last word goes to CSN:

Leave a Reply