There’s no denying that the new prime minister inherits a political background more akin to those in the game when Thatcher first took office in 1979 than to face anyone else who has stepped into the No. 10 in the intervening years.
Of the two candidates, Truss was the closest to Thatcher hug. In her 12 months as foreign minister, she’s flooded social media
much ridiculed image in which she
apply Thatcher styleposing almost identically in her gorgeous fur hat and famous bow tie blouse.
This relationship with the UK’s first female prime minister means that as she prepares to be crowned for the third time, no comparisons should be made between the pair, as with the second, Theresa May, who has always dismissed the pair. analytics like
“lazy.”And so two questions naturally arise: after in office, did Truss really seek to introduce Thatism Part Two? And if so, to what extent will the prescription introduced more than four decades ago be successful in addressing the, however similar, problems of 2022?
The second question may require some economics degree and a crystal ball to solve; but there are plenty of clues about Truss’ background and career so far to make the first decision.
Born in July 1975 in Oxford, a professor of mathematics and a nurse who, like Thatcher, Truss was a genuine thinker from an early age, but unlike her heroine did not pursue politics of her parents.
Both Trusses seniors are on the far left of the spectrum, and her mother, Priscilla, once took her to a protest march at Greenham Common in the English countryside, where Thatcher caused controversy. when she allowed her friend US President Ronald Reagan to place America’s nuclear weapons.
Shoes have
speak that while her mother will probably vote for her now, she will struggle to win the support of her father, John.
Thatcher learned the values of thrift, self-sufficiency, and living right with her father, a grocer and peddler. Truss awarded such attributes through a more coherent route.
At Thatcher’s alma mater in Oxford, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics (Thatcher pursued a more practical chemistry degree), Truss was president of the university’s Liberal Democrats, a party At that time it was the soft center of politics.
That means in the mid-1990s, Truss endorsed policies that would make Thatcher wince, including
legalize marijuana and abolished the monarchy.
But not long after graduating, while working as an accountant for oil giant Shell, Truss turned to the right, meeting her husband, Hugh O’Leary, at a Conservative Party conference. The couple went on to have two daughters.
Truss joined Congress a few years later following in the footsteps of a very incompetent Thatcherite
scandale: a relationship with a Conservative MP that led to her local Conservative association
consider her a candidate on the grounds that she had not assessed their relationship during the selection process. (She later
sorry to the association claiming it was a mistake and “water under the bridge”).
Her career has survived, as has her marriage, and she has made steady strides.
Like Thatcher, Truss found support for membership in the European Union for the British until the sands moved and she did not. Both campaigned on the Left side of a referendum,
Thatcher in 1975 and
2016only to emerge as fervent Europeans.
Unlike Thatcher, Truss was not at the forefront of the transition to European Skepticism, moving long after peers like Boris Johnson and former Conservative leadership candidate Michael Gove had made the jump, but it was probably a similar journey: she saw the EU in action and
feel it is no longer relevant to modern Britain.
In Johnson’s Cabinet and later as a leadership candidate, Truss raised an eyebrow at her because Thatcherite had now decided to believe that the solution to the country’s economic problems was not the handout but the
tax cut – let the public keep more of their money and trust them to know the best thing to do with it.
She became a thinker after such things were obsolete – a politician full of conviction when all around are now pragmatists.
But perhaps most strikingly, there isn’t too much of a similarity in the views of Truss and Thatcher – the drug they believe an ailing Britain must swallow to cure its public finances (and only time will tell). know whether the patient recovers quickly or not) – because it is determined that they hold those views.
It’s clear that Truss can and has changed her mind. But like Thatcher, she does so on her own terms: she won’t naturally be beaten or bullied, resisting any pressure to promise to splash the public’s money for
emergency living expenses fueled by the energy crisis.
Like Thatcher’s ghost in the past, it’s clear that this woman too
not for spinning.
