Susan Crabtree
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.
Liz Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, takes snickers about her quick stint at #10 Downing Street in stride.
“In historical terms, it’s unmatched,” she quipped during a spirited talk at Pepperdine University late last week with Jim Gash, the college’s president.
Blunt and witty – a fiery mix of Thatcher and Trump – Truss is too focused on existential threats to the Western world to worry about cheap-shot slings and arrows. The stalwart conservative has been called a “human hand grenade,” a “strutting martinet,” and “confrontational,” though she prefers the terms principled and unbending.
Truss wholeheartedly endorsed Donald Trump for president before the release of her book, “Ten Years to Save the West,” last month and is urging all conservatives to stop worrying about decorum and losing the mainstream middle under the theory that the very future of Western civilization is at stake.
Call it her “Make the West Great Again” tour.
“To be a conservative these days, in order to protect our way of life, you need to be a radical,” she argued. “If you believe in the status quo, and you just want to keep things where they are, which you might see as a small-c conservative route, you’re not a conservative. You’re actually a liberal.”
In shorter Trumpian absolutism: Moderation is for losers.
Trump, she said, is “somebody who wants to challenge the establishment, and that’s exactly what needs to happen.” At 48, Truss continues to serve as a member of Parliament representing the Conservative Party. She was prime minister for roughly a month and a half in 2022, sandwiched between scandal-plagued Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, England’s first Asian leader and current prime minister.
She contends that the myriad problems within the British government, which she blames for forcing her out, are only getting worse.
“What I want to tell people is how big the problem is, and how the book catalogued the frustrations and battles I had, and why you need a system change in order to deliver conservative policies,” Truss told the crowd gathered in Pepperdine Law School’s auditorium.
A massive and destructive administrative state and far-left ideology, akin to Trump’s claims of the federal government’s “deep State” bureaucracy, led to the failure of her economic program and rapid political downfall, she said. Now, it’s coming for the pillars of Western civilization. The British people are growing increasingly frustrated, she said, citing a recent poll that found that the majority of Britons believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
“The world was safer when Donald Trump was U.S. president because he was feared by adversaries like China, and Iran, and Russia,” she told RealClearPolitics in a brief interview after the Pepperdine talk. “I don’t believe that’s true now. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’ve seen the invasion of Ukraine and also the attacks on Israel and the belligerence of China.”
Trump, she said, rightly insists that Europe needs to step up its payments to NATO.
“The fact is that European countries haven’t been spending enough on defense, with the exception of countries like Poland,” she said. “It’s in the interests of our enemies to see us question ourselves and our own society … and I think we’re getting close to a tipping point.”
While Truss lauds Trump’s foreign policy chops, she minimizes their biggest differences. Truss is a strong proponent of spending more to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s invasion and sidesteps questions about MAGA Republicans’ opposition to more funding.
“I was at the CPAC conference recently, and I didn’t meet a single person who wanted Russia to be successful,” she said. “I think people understand that if Russia is successful [in defeating Ukraine], that would be a disaster for the United States.”
Such an outcome, she said, would empower President Xi and allow Russia to continue pushing into the Baltic states. Truss argues the West has not done enough to confront China because of corporate business interests and greed.
“Western governments have been criticizing China on the one hand, and on the other is sending delegations of business people to China to get more [business],” she told RCP. “That’s just a mixed message, and we wouldn’t have sent that message to the USSR during the Cold War.”
Deep divisions in the Republican Party over Ukraine spending are only natural because conservatives in both America and Britain are engaged in a battle over their priorities, Truss asserts. American friends, she said, used to tease her about in-fighting and her country’s quick prime minister successions.
“And now I’m able to say to them, ‘Look at the House of Representatives, look at what’s going on with your speakers,’ because it’s exactly the same dynamic that’s going on with the House of Representatives and the U.K. Parliament,” she said. “Both of our parties are facing a battle about what the future of conservatism looks like.”
When it comes to domestic internal unrest over the war between Israel and Hamas, Truss said she admires America’s First Amendment, but it has its limits.
“There is more protection in the United States for free speech, and that is a fundamentally good thing,” she said. “Now, when that spills over into incitement of violence, that is obviously problematic. I’m very pro-free speech, but ordinary citizens in Britain and America must be allowed to go about their daily lives. And if you can’t go into central London on a Saturday because you’re Jewish or you can’t study at university because you’re Jewish, that is absolutely appalling and disgraceful.”
Truss argues the proliferation of protests on college campuses and support for “terrorists” is an outgrowth of the “New Left,” a dangerous ideology that includes anti-capitalists, advocates for transgender rights, extreme environmentalists, and anti-colonialists who are “actively interested in the destruction of our society” – movements that Truss said conservatives must defeat.
Truss also took aim at global organizations that are “sucking out the ability of nation-states’ self-determination,” such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, and the International Monetary Fund.
“We have such bodies tolerating egregious abuses by member states such as China and the absurd sight of Iran being invited to chair the U.N. Human Rights Council,” she said.
The Brits have gotten some things right, she said, including the Tory-led Brexit and their commitment to retaining the monarchy, which she said she still strongly supports despite the decision by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, known in America simply as Harry and Meghan, to decamp to Santa Barbara.
“I think it works,” Truss said of the monarchy. “I don’t think there’s any appetite for a change. King Charles is very respected. Some of the more problematic elements of the royal family have all gone to California. You’re dealing with it. Thank you for looking after them.”
“When we look over the pond to America, and we see what your system looks like, it’s not obviously superior,” Truss parried.
“We can possibly say the same about yours,” Jim Gash replied with a smile.
Despite the dire warnings in her book, Truss insisted she remains optimistic about both countries’ futures if politicians and the public start acknowledging the dangers.
“I do believe things can change, but what I’m saying to people is that it’s a big change that’s required,” she said. “There has to be more soul-searching in the Conservative Party, but also in the country, about the scale of change that’s required.”
“I didn’t put myself up to be prime minister because I wanted to spend time in No. 10 Downing Street,” she continued. “If you read the book, you’ll see it’s flea-infested, so really, there are a lot of better places …”
Instead, Truss said she took the job because she wanted to shake things up.
“That’s how I see myself. I want to be an agent of change, and I will do whatever it takes,” she said.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
