Never give in, never give in, never, never, never.
That was Winston
Churchill’s famous mantra. Liz Truss, another Tory prime minister trying to
lead a battered Britain, could not follow that bulldog advice. She wilted
faster than The Daily Star head of lettuce gussied up to look like her.
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She lasted only
44 days before resigning. The storm did not even have time to gather. The photo
of Queen Elizabeth shaking hands with Truss at Balmoral Castle, as Truss took
over as head of the government, is epic in its symbolism.
Liz squared. The
longest-reigning monarch meets the shortest-serving prime minister. It was such
a swift fall that Truss was anointed by a queen and resigned to a king.
In years of yore,
I would have felt sheepish about a woman self-immolating so quickly.
When I covered
Geraldine Ferraro’s run for the vice presidency and Hillary Clinton’s
presidential run, it felt as if their fates were tied to gender. If they
failed, many women told me in interviews, there was an X through the whole X
chromosome, a blot on the female copybook. If not those women then, they would
say, what woman ever?
Although when
Sarah Palin flamed out in 2008, coming across as comically inept, it did not
reflect poorly on women in general. That was an important step for women.
Truss took that
step for Britain: Many consider the third woman to dwell at No. 10 incompetent
and hopeless, perhaps the worst prime minister in history.
She was a bad
communicator, a poor speaker and weak on camera. She did not understand that
you could not simply borrow money from the future. She managed to be a radical
ideologue and a lightweight at the same time. (Blimey, sounds very Trumpy.) But
no one believes Truss blew up on the launchpad because she is a woman.
She turned out to
be a stooge for a reckless, unprincipled Boris Johnson, who was no doubt
scheming to see if he could snatch back the reins.
The longest-reigning monarch meets the shortest-serving prime minister. It was such a swift fall that Truss was anointed by a queen and resigned to a king.
Gavin Barwell,
chief of staff for Theresa May when she was prime minister, predicted that
Johnson — who has been trying to write a book on Shakespeare for years — would
haunt Truss like Banquo’s ghost.
“The moment she
gets into political difficulty,” Barwell told The New York Times’ Mark Landler,
“there’s going to be a bring-back-Boris movement.”
And here we are
at that moment.
“It’s incredibly
funny if you’re not English,” Henry Porter, a British writer, told me.
“It’s humiliating
if you are. Boris is Boris Karloff, the monster who comes alive again, after
you thought he was buried.”
Many think Johnson
planned this from the start. By backing Truss, he was able to defeat Rishi
Sunak, the ally who stabbed him in the back, “Julius Caesar”-style. Johnson
threw his support behind Truss, knowing that she would be so mediocre that he
would look good in comparison.
Just like Donald
Trump, Johnson may think if he gets back into office, he can squash the
investigation into his chicanery. He is enmeshed in an inquiry into whether he
misled Parliament about his Downing Street get-downs during the pandemic.
The outcome was
foggy as Johnson rushed back from a vacation in the Caribbean. In some vote
estimates, Sunak was ahead, but Johnson was winning support as well. James
Duddridge, a Parliament member who backs Johnson, told the British press: “I’ve
been in contact with the boss via WhatsApp. He’s going to fly back. He said,
‘I’m flying back, Dudders. We are going to do this. I’m up for it’.”
Tory lawmakers
are split. Half are morally outraged by Boris, and the rest are worried that
without the riveting spectacle of Boris, they will lose their seats in two
years.
British
conservatives are becoming as shameless as American conservatives, willing to
put up with any outrage to keep their posh offices and perks. The “good chap”
principle in England, the tradition that sometimes you have to leave office for
the greater good, seems passé.
“One of the
glories of the traditional Conservative Party used to be its readiness to place
country before party,” Peter Oborne, a British journalist, wrote in the Times
recently.
Churchill set
this standard before stepping down as prime minister in 1955: “The first duty
of a member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and
disinterested judgment is right and necessary for the honor and safety of Great
Britain.”
Oborne asserted that
“today’s Conservatives, by contrast, cling to power for power’s sake,” and
“their obstinacy is ensuring the ruination of Britain.”
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