British Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers her opening speech at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. /
The controversy over the reduction of taxes now passes to the updating of social subsidies
British Prime Minister Liz Truss tried to cement her governorship, closing the Conservatives’ annual conference on Wednesday with a speech reiterating her strategy. In the turbulent circumstances that have marked the first days of her mandate – her estimation of her among the public was in August 30% positive and 60% negative and now 13% and 73% – the leader chose to be brief and boring.
Liz Truss copied Tony Blair’s advertising style by promising members of the Conservative Party “a new Britain for a new era” (a new Labor for a new Britain, Blair promised) and a governance based on “growth, growth and growth” ( the former prime minister’s publicists also coined in 1997 a triune desire: “education, education and education”).
The prime minister affirmed a falsehood – that she is the first to arrive at 10 Downing Street after attending a non-selective school – and confirmed politically that she will extend the plan of expulsion of refugees to Rwanda, attempted by Boris Johnson, and will change the British law so that London does not have to comply with decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.
But his speech focused on his growth plan. It has three pillars: reduce taxes, fiscal discipline and eliminate regulations that hinder companies. The crisis that followed his mini-budget thirteen days ago was not mentioned, except to state that the abolition of the 45% tax on the highest incomes “became a distraction for most of our plan”, and that is why he abandoned it. .
The most disturbing distraction for Truss is the absence of MPs from her party at the Birmingham conference and the public squabbling of Cabinet members. Former Johnson ministers such as Michael Gove and Grant Shapps had already warned on Sunday that they would not support the budget when it comes to a vote in Parliament. They were followed by other deputies anonymously.
Complaints and grudges
Then enters the scene the Minister of the Interior, Sue Braverman, an advocate of cutting ties with the European Convention on Human Rights and now in charge of extraditions to Rwanda. She criticized colleagues who had disagreed with the prime minister over the tax cuts she wanted and called for unity. To achieve this, she accused them of “attempting a hit” to bring down Truss.
International Trade Minister Kemi Badenoch might be prime minister if Braverman had asked her supporters to vote for Badenoch, after she was dropped from the campaign to replace Johnson. But she asked them to vote for Truss. Gove’s friend Badenoch has now called Braverman’s language about coup plots “inflammatory.”
Who, with a seat in the rooms where the most important members of this Government meet, will have leaked to the press that Truss has rejected Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg’s proposal to eliminate the legal need for a cause to dismiss employees who win more than 57,000 euros per year? He seemed to have a sad air as he listened to his boss’s boring speech.
Minister Penny Mordaunt, responsible for relations with the House of Commons, has stated that the amount of social benefits has to rise in line with inflation. The complete budget that the Government will present on November 23 has to satisfy the extreme positions that are already being aired by members of the Cabinet. The fourth incarnation of this conservative era takes its first steps suggesting that the party has become ungovernable.