OPINION: New PM Liz Truss Staying The Course
Liz Truss is now Britain's prime minister, taking the reins as the country slumps into its worst state and highest rate of inflation in nearly 40 years. She promises policies that will crack down on union action, punish protestors, increase military spending, and make life harder for the LGBTQ+ community; but it's just so difficult to care.
We've been here before, every prime minister promised change despite supporting the policies of their predecessor, and we're left with business as usual.
David Cameron kicked us off, promising austerity in his manifesto insisting that everyone had tighten their belts. He went on to deliver some of the harshest cutbacks to public spending in decades after he was elected.
As head of the Home Office, Theresa May deported at least 83 British subjects who had every right to be in the UK as part of plans to relieve pressure on our public services. She then oversaw the resulting Windrush scandal as PM.
As foreign secretary, Boris Johnson said that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran teaching journalism; damaging efforts to ensure her safe return to the UK which would eventually come in 2021 where she could meet him in his new role as prime minister.
Regardless of prior wrongdoings, once in office, each prime minister has followed the same flow of reducing taxes and applying austerity.
It doesn't matter how cruel the driver is when the car is on autopilot. In a long line of cold-hearted leaders, Liz Truss unfortunately just fits right in. Ever-present in the Tory cabinet, Truss has had a hand in every conservative government in the last decade.
This might lead you to believe she would spend some time in her leadership campaign defending her party's policies or being forced to apologize for others in order to make way for her own vision of Britain's future. She could barely bother doing that. The fact is, when it comes to policy, Truss doesn't seem to have had a strong view in her career.
Every stance she's taken, every opinion expressed has at one point or another been clawed back and flipped around to streamline her career goals of climbing higher and attaining status. A few months ago, a video surfaced of her aged 19 at a Liberal Democrat conference preaching to her then peers of abolishing the monarchy to a round of applause. A view that couldn't fly in any role as a Conservative party member, she revised events recently, confirming she 'almost instantly' regretted the remarks.
As Environment Secretary under David Cameron, Truss was staunchly anti-Brexit, tweeting in 2016: 'Leave cannot name one country we would get a better trade deal with if we left the EU.' An opinion many in parliament thought was popular at the time, this too would be revised in 2017 after her core voters made it clear that they would be backing any pro-Brexit politicians willing to echo that single issue.
It was so easy to worry about past prime ministers. They made promises, the scariest of which was "business as usual" and we had no reason to believe that wouldn't be followed through on. When it comes to Liz Truss, you just can't assume that any of her policies will have any kind of impact whatsoever.
It feels as if at any given moment, a life-long rock-solid moral value of hers can be flipped on its head and thrown out the window to appease a Conservative party that might grant her a few more precious minutes of feeling important and accomplished.
Now after 12 years, four leaders, and a campaign of dog-whistles and revisionism, apathy is setting in. Truss can promise to do as much harm as she likes, but regardless of any promises she's made, one unspoken promise will overshadow her career.
Business as usual.