Current Affairs Liz Truss

Status
Not open for further replies.
This is one former Conservative MP's view on Truss:

So to the choice facing Tory members now pondering whether to vote for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as — effectively — our next prime minister. Truss is reported to be the likely victor. We ringside commentators love struggles for power, and admire politicians who show flair in its accumulation. But ability to acquire power has never entailed an ability to exercise it.
In Times columns I’ve offered my first impressions of this candidate. They were that she was intellectually shallow, her convictions wafer-thin; that she was driven by ambition pure and simple; that her manner was wooden and her ability to communicate convincingly to an electorate wider than the narrow band of Tory activists was virtually non-existent; that she was dangerously impulsive and headstrong, with a self-belief unattended by precaution; and that her leadership of the Conservative Party and our country would be a tragedy for both. “There’s nothing there,” I wrote last December, “nothing beyond a leaping self-confidence that’s almost endearing in its wide-eyed disregard for the forces of political gravity.” I likened any decision to follow Johnson with Truss to the doner kebab which, after a night on the tiles, momentarily seems like a good idea — until you open the bread pouch.
If these, my first impressions, were expressed extravagantly, they nevertheless reflected a judgment expressed more soberly by most political commentators — and, I suggest, felt by the majority of her fellow Tory MPs, for whom Sunak was plainly the preferred candidate. There was incredulity as to how she had got to where she was.
I have noticed since that some are revising their first impressions. MPs and ministers are cleaving to her, some doubtless out of naked opportunism but others persuading themselves they’ve now spotted talents they perhaps missed when Truss was further from power. Journalists, meanwhile, some of them simply reaching for something new to say, but others seriously thinking again, are venturing the thought that there may be more to her than meets the eye: a resolute, “steely” strategist, perhaps? A woman with a quirky but shrewdly Trumpian eye for connecting with voters? A hard worker (unlike Boris) and someone who can be talked out of mistaken plans if an intelligent effort is made? Hell, she’s going to win so maybe she’s a winner? Shouldn’t we at least give her the benefit of the doubt?

No.

Ignore those whispers of precaution. Stick to your first impressions. Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down. Her biggest job has been foreign secretary. Does she join her new best friend, Tom Tugendhat, in condemning the UN security council for its criticism of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory? Does she really want to “review” (as she’s suggested) Britain’s decision not to join the Americans in moving our embassy to Jerusalem? What did she mean by saying Britain’s civil service culture “strays into antisemitism”? These explosive hip shots are only indicative.
And now that she moves her attention to domestic politics, does she really believe that “freedom” and deregulation will help red-wall England? Mansfield isn’t being held back by big government; it’s being held together by it. What are her instincts — not the corrections she’s been forced to row back to, but her personal instincts — on help for the poor, on Theresa May’s “good that government can do”? I think we know.
I’ll wager that at the outset most readers thought Liz Truss a bit weird, curiously hollow and potentially dangerous. This summer a short period will see such rushes to judgment revised. Then government will descend into a huge effort to contain and defang an unstable prime minister; and we shall revert to our first impressions. Save yourself the detour and stick with them. She’s crackers. It isn’t going to work.

— Matthew Parris, The Times
 
Aberblue said:
This is one former Conservative MP's view on Truss:

So to the choice facing Tory members now pondering whether to vote for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as — effectively — our next prime minister. Truss is reported to be the likely victor. We ringside commentators love struggles for power, and admire politicians who show flair in its accumulation. But ability to acquire power has never entailed an ability to exercise it.
In Times columns I’ve offered my first impressions of this candidate. They were that she was intellectually shallow, her convictions wafer-thin; that she was driven by ambition pure and simple; that her manner was wooden and her ability to communicate convincingly to an electorate wider than the narrow band of Tory activists was virtually non-existent; that she was dangerously impulsive and headstrong, with a self-belief unattended by precaution; and that her leadership of the Conservative Party and our country would be a tragedy for both. “There’s nothing there,” I wrote last December, “nothing beyond a leaping self-confidence that’s almost endearing in its wide-eyed disregard for the forces of political gravity.” I likened any decision to follow Johnson with Truss to the doner kebab which, after a night on the tiles, momentarily seems like a good idea — until you open the bread pouch.
If these, my first impressions, were expressed extravagantly, they nevertheless reflected a judgment expressed more soberly by most political commentators — and, I suggest, felt by the majority of her fellow Tory MPs, for whom Sunak was plainly the preferred candidate. There was incredulity as to how she had got to where she was.
I have noticed since that some are revising their first impressions. MPs and ministers are cleaving to her, some doubtless out of naked opportunism but others persuading themselves they’ve now spotted talents they perhaps missed when Truss was further from power. Journalists, meanwhile, some of them simply reaching for something new to say, but others seriously thinking again, are venturing the thought that there may be more to her than meets the eye: a resolute, “steely” strategist, perhaps? A woman with a quirky but shrewdly Trumpian eye for connecting with voters? A hard worker (unlike Boris) and someone who can be talked out of mistaken plans if an intelligent effort is made? Hell, she’s going to win so maybe she’s a winner? Shouldn’t we at least give her the benefit of the doubt?

No.

Ignore those whispers of precaution. Stick to your first impressions. Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down. Her biggest job has been foreign secretary. Does she join her new best friend, Tom Tugendhat, in condemning the UN security council for its criticism of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory? Does she really want to “review” (as she’s suggested) Britain’s decision not to join the Americans in moving our embassy to Jerusalem? What did she mean by saying Britain’s civil service culture “strays into antisemitism”? These explosive hip shots are only indicative.
And now that she moves her attention to domestic politics, does she really believe that “freedom” and deregulation will help red-wall England? Mansfield isn’t being held back by big government; it’s being held together by it. What are her instincts — not the corrections she’s been forced to row back to, but her personal instincts — on help for the poor, on Theresa May’s “good that government can do”? I think we know.
I’ll wager that at the outset most readers thought Liz Truss a bit weird, curiously hollow and potentially dangerous. This summer a short period will see such rushes to judgment revised. Then government will descend into a huge effort to contain and defang an unstable prime minister; and we shall revert to our first impressions. Save yourself the detour and stick with them. She’s crackers. It isn’t going to work.

— Matthew Parris, The Times
Click to expand...
Spot on. And Matthew Parris is someone who will usually crawl over broken glass to make excuses for the Tory Party.
 
Rita_Poon said:
Laughing stock position, like head of complaints department at Auschwitz.
Click to expand...

As an aside, the story of how the Nazi government actually did investigate crimes committed at concentration camps is both incredible and insane:

My investigations in the concentration camp of Auschwitz were triggered by a small package in the military mail. It was a somewhat small packet, long rather than short, an ordinary box, which had probably come to the attention of the postal service because of its enormous weight, and the customs investigators had confiscated it because of its contents. It contained three lumps of gold.

It was high-carat dental gold that had been crudely smelted together. It was a very large lump, perhaps the size of two fists; the second was considerably smaller, the third less significant. But in any case, it was a matter of kilos … I knew that the dental wards of the concentration camps were tasked with collecting the gold that accumulated from the burning of bodies and send it to the Reichsbank.

And a gold filling is only a few grammes: 1,000 grammes, or several thousand grammes, thus represented the death of several thousand people. But not everyone had gold fillings in that impoverished time, only a fraction. And depending on whether one estimated that one 20th or 50th or 100th had gold in their mouths, one had to multiply the number, and so this confiscated shipment represented as it were 20- or 50- or a 100,000 bodies.
Click to expand...

Konrad Morgen, SS Judge investigated Corruption within the SS - www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.holocaustresearchproject.org
aeon.co

The Nazi judge who sought justice in the system | Aeon Essays

Konrad Morgen prosecuted his fellow Nazis, but not for the Final Solution. How should history judge him?
aeon.co aeon.co
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Welcome

Join the Everton conversation today.
Fewer ads, full access, completely free.

→ Log in 🔑 Register
🛒 Visit Shop

Support Grand Old Team by checking out our latest Everton gear!
Back
Top