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FR
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FR'The book was not written to win over opponents like me.' (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
She can’t win hearts — or mindsWhat roles do reason and emotion play in politics? Is success a matter of winning over hearts, or about changing minds? To solve this conundrum comes a memoir by someone who apparently can do neither very well: Ten Years To Save The West by Liz Truss.
The ex-Prime Minister has tried to put renewed shine on her political career, culminating in a reappraisal of decisions that almost crashed the economy and foreshortened her premiership. But a bit like The Wizard of Oz, the book also invites readers to consider some intriguing counterfactuals, at least inadvertently: would the eventual political outcome have been any different, had our protagonist only had more brain or more heart?
As far as the former goes, Truss seems unable to defend the Reaganite values she espouses by giving intellectually persuasive reasons for them. Her favourite word is “instinctively” — as in “I see myself as an instinctively anti-establishment figure” and “I am someone who instinctively wants to shake things up”. There’s little attempt to put rational flesh on the basic neoliberal bones. At one point it looks like she might try — “politics has to be about… the conservative values of patriotism, freedom, and family” — but then immediately retreats into gut feeling again: “We know instinctively why they are better than those of our opponents.”
Throughout her career, colleagues are always gently taking her aside to suggest she should approach issues in a less pugnacious, more collegiate spirit, but she flatly refuses (“they are never going to agree, so it is pointless to try to persuade them”). In place of thrashing out complex ideas, she prefers “ideology”; without which politics “is like trying to navigate a hazardous mountain range in the dark without a compass”. Translation: she has found a few simplistic mantras that appeal to her, and by God, she is going to stick to them. Again, there is no attempt to argue with sceptics: “you either believe in big government running everything or you don’t; you either believe in low taxes stimulating economic growth or you don’t”.
And just as she has no interest in arguing about why she is correct, when it comes to her ideological opponents — Leftists, educationalists, environmentalists, Tory wets, the legal establishment, the Westminster blob — she is equally uninterested in explaining why they are wrong. Everything she disagrees with is basically the fault of Michel Foucault, who she “discovered while taking a course in political sociology”.
In place of rational justification comes a deluge of contemptuous invective. Left-wingers are lily-livered do-gooders, wracked with liberal guilt and self-loathing; educationalists advocating for child-centred play in nurseries are “so-called experts”; environmental campaigners are “watermelons” (green on the outside, red in the middle); world leaders “pontificate” at “jamborees” and “shindigs”; the media is essentially trivial and personality-obsessed; Tory dissenters to the Truss doctrine have forgotten what real Conservatism is; and so on.
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SubscribeShe sounds like a Tory Hillary Clinton.
Thats flattery, believe it or not.
A good book reviewer is there to read bad books so her readers don’t have to. Prof. Stock has fulfilled her task admirably.
We discover that Truss really doesn’t have a clue. She has not done her homework: to dissect exactly what has gone wrong, to sketch out a better way forward, and how to get from here to there. Homework involves reading books, talking to people all over the world, and it takes years of intellectual effort.
It’s clear Truss is no Thatcher. She might have had a short lived stint as a junior minister in a Thatcher government, but that’s all. A modern-day Edwina Currie, perhaps?
Liz Truss is a person who would watch someone perform a task, say repair a cabinet with a hammer and nails, and then when asked to repair a car would pick the same tools because that was what worked previously.
She would then try to knock the hammer in with one of the nails.
A bit unfair on Edwina Currie, with whom I spent 48 hours when she visited Finland in 1987 to look at approaches to reducing heart disease through diet, and who was (i) on top of her brief and (ii) an empathetic person it was fun to be around.
And forced out of office unfairly?
Truss should have focused on de-regulation, not fiscal policy. There’s not much point in cutting taxes on small businesses if you are going then to compel them to spend billions on pointless exercises like GDPR (which cost £8bn to implement).
It’s been obvious for many years that Truss doesn’t have a clue. The mystery remains how she got to occupy so many high positions, to let us know it: in every dimwitted response to a print or broadcast journalist. A walking Spitting Image puppet of neoliberalism.
I assumed that after her humiliatingly short time as PM, Truss would retire to the lecture circuit, make money, and fade from the public consciousness. But perhaps I share her inability to understand other people, because, instead of blending in with the wallpaper, she’s back clamoring for attention. I suppose if a solid dose of ego got her to the political top, the same ego will drive her to somehow redeem her failed PMship.
As an aside, I saw her interview on The Spectator website. She is not a gifted or charismatic speaker. She’s Maggie Thatcher minus the overwhelming personality.
I believe there might be a job coming up at the Post Office.
“Left-wingers are lily-livered do-gooders, wracked with liberal guilt and self-loathing;”
Really, because the milder one’s I’ve come across are far more wedded to Ms Rayner’s ‘Tory scum’ or Aneurin Bevan’s ‘vermin’, while the angry one’s prefer a ‘put them all up against the wall’ retort.
“Left-wingers are lily-livered do-gooders, wracked with liberal guilt and self-loathing;”
Really, because the milder one’s I’ve come across are far more wedded to Ms Rayner’s ‘Tory scum’ or Aneurin Bevan’s ‘vermin’, while the angry ones prefer a ‘put them all up against the wall’ retort.
She doesn’t care about her political career. It’s a case of you can bring a dummy to water, but you can’t make them drink.
Yet again the tired Thatcher “quote” about “society” taken out of context…
It’s a bit like Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech. S/he may not have said it, but should have (at least in the view of their enemies)
Well she did say it, but if you read it in contest it was an entirely sensible, reasonable and empathetic. Full quote below
‘I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.’
A fancy way of saying the government is washing its hands of its responsibilities towards its citizens basically
Not what she said at all.
Suggest you re-read it.
To paraphrase “the government isn’t going to help so you’ll have to sort yourselves out”
But with a bit of self help sugar coating!
The government is not a dustbin into which we an dump all our responsibilities
That’s correct. A government’s main purpose is that of defense which includes protecting its national borders, a role most Western countries have abandoned.
Who says? The idea that any society simply lets its citizens just get on with it (apart from being deeply unattractive to most people) has never actually existed ever anywhere. Just a theory like communism. Bizarre that supposedly intelligent people take it seriously.
Funny that as big buisness seems to see govt as an endless source of grants and rescues. Oh and they rely on it for educating their workers, healing them when sick, and providing the transportation systems to get them to work, while all the time working out hwo to not pay for all that.
If you are receiving a lot of handouts from the government you will believe they are helping you. Ask yourself where the money is coming from. Also remember what Thatcher said about that – the socialist will keep spending until they run out of our money.
Yes – no more state pensions, no more universal credit (a high proportion of which goes to private landlords), no more NHS. Not sure you would find this popular.
Welfarism is destroying our economy and our values … the present direction of travel is unsustainable … taxes at an all time high and debt at an all time high and rising £2.5 Trillion
And no more bank bail outs
I let out a flat and 15% of the rent goes to the agent, 45% to the government in income tax, 6% on service charges, about 4% on maintenance and the remainder to the mortgage lender. I personally see none of the rent at all.
I’m keeping the flat in case my daughters need it, because thanks to the above lunacy, it’s now almost impossible to rent.
The amount of the rent that goes to the government in income tax is a function of your overall tax position and nothing to do with the flat. Someone else could find that less than 20% of the rent went in income tax.
‘No more NHS’ – well given it’s current state that would be a good thing.
One of the foundational lies of the NHS is that there was no effective health care prior to its introduction. This is of course rubbish, there were friendly societies, provident societies, charitable hospitals, (all the great hospitals were founded well before bevan was born), religious hospitals for the poor (think Barts), Hospital Contributionary funds etc. Bevan himself as a young kid had his healthcare provided by the Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society. What offended the socialist sensibilities of bevan and his ilk was that it wasn’t centrally controlled and organised by ‘the State’.
And in any case all this has to be paid for it doesn’t come ‘free’ as some people think. it is all paid for out of general taxation; whereby central government takes your money (under threat of prison if you don’t comply), wastes a significant proportion of it through internal inefficiency and then provides you substandard services in return. Wonderful. I’d rather pay my way.
Much of the healthcare supplied is best practice. That isn’t the issue. It is the inefficiency of the bureaucracy that makes it too expensive. And along with the voting block of government workers that feel they can vote in governments that will reward them.
Watch out what you wish for. In my extended family in the US , which includes examples at a wide range of income levels, more than half have had their assets laid to waste by health costs in each generation. Despite the public and private insurance arrangements they subscribed to.
I am a US citizen and I call BS on your claim. I am middle class, have lived here all my adult life and I don’t know of anyone who have had “half their assets laid to waste by health costs”.
And did Mrs Thatcher abolish state pensions, welfare for the less fortunate, or the NHS? No. All went up, often significantly, under her premiership. This is also because she realised that unless you get the economy right (not least by undoing the appalling damage wreaked by decades of socialism), you can’t afford to pay for much.
The problem with quoting Thatcher is that she eventually ran out of state owned assets to sell to mask her economic incompetence. Her tenure was a crash, a boom then another crash, with growth averaged out at around 2% per annum. When you consider this coincided with a North Sea oil boom, the selling off state owned utilities and housing as well as women starting to enter the workforce in much greater numbers it’s a rather pitiful return
thatcher inherited a country still suffering the fallout of WW2 and wrecked by 35 years of socialism
Yes, Billy Bob. Because the country was in such great shape in 1979.
I’m no fan of Thatcher but you do know, I hope, that ‘the government’ is a noun itself made up of citizens & that ‘it’ only has money to spend on ‘its responsibilities’ because of the collective effort of all citizens via taxation. Ie there is no welfare unless citizens who work fund it. I believe in welfare, I’m just checking you get how it works.
I suspect Billy Bob thinks the government has it’s own independent money supply that comes from somewhere other than tax payers.
Shorn of all the latter day intrusions into peoples lives, States have very few core responsibilities: defence of the state, enacting laws to govern the behaviour of citizens, enforcing those laws. The rest of the edifice of government is an optional choice.
Is the down vote for reproducing the actual quote?
probably, as that is the correct quote but many still refuse to believe it preferring the version that is misquoted to defame Margaret Thatcher even further
Thanks for providing this needed context. Makes me nostalgic for leaders of the past and leaves me longing for modern leaders of similar character and outlook.
There may be no such thing as society but there are powerful cartels, ‘deep state’ cliques etc.
You could push that further and say that the denial of “society” removes the ordinary persons counterbalance to those cliques and cartels.
She didn’t deny society. She said that it actually consists of all other individual men and women and families besides you, i.e. it’s not some big amorphous, anonymous blob. So when you dump all your problems onto “society”, what you are actually doing is costing other individuals, because they make up and fund “society”, and your demands have a cost that they bear. You are inflicting yourself on other people.
Indeed and they all have their hands in the public pocket
Basically quoting Wittgenstein. Big government sorts like thinking the milk of human kindness comes from big government. It doesn’t. It comes from individuals.
Or perhaps, basing their view on history, some people just think charity isn’t enough.
It’s an understandable but incoherent mishmash of similar appearing statements about different things. We all know that governments, like all other organisations of people, act by concerting individual actions. You don’t then say governments, or businesses, don’t exist or are meaningless abstractions. ‘Society’ is a bit different. One is entitled to ask what are its actual manifestations or means by which ‘it’ can have effect. There’s an array of answers to that in a Jane Austen novel, let alone courses in any social science.
But here, Thatcher equates government and society, an understandable elision for a Prime Minister, you might say. But that’s her undoing because it shows, and underlines, ways that society exists with observable concrete effects on individuals by other individuals.
So the polemical point of making this elision, which is to claim that governments shouldn’t do certain things in relation to certain individuals, is just left there floating in the air. Less rather than more supported by her self contradictory statements about government and society, except for those who don’t won’t look under the lid because they’re happy with what’s written on the tin.
A prime example, then, of a misunderstanding that becomes memorable because it was meant to bemuse politics and avoid directly confronting the costs and benefits of policy alternatives.
Well I’m sure you thought you knew what you meant
I entirely agree with every word of that extract ; individuals, for the most part, are architects of their own successes and failures and should bear the responsibility of their actions without recourse to a charitable State.
Yes; more than a little disappointing from Kathleen Stock (who i greatly admire) but especially in the context of an article which seeks to take someone else to task for falling short of intellectual rigour.
Never forget she’s a malevolent lefty. Just because she’s on the right side of one particular internecine feud of the left, that doesn’t mean she’s rational on anything else.
Rowling same thing.
Silly, arrogant, self-aggrandising post. My money is on KS rationality rather than yours. Disagreeing with you doesn’t automatically make someone wrong!
Pot and kettle I am afraid
Absolutely agree
I agree that the splenetic tone was rather different to her normal style. Perhaps she has been forced to exercise incredible self discipline in her utterances since she was forced out of Sussex University and progressive debates. If so, I imagine now that she find herself vindicated there must be a pleasure in writing exuberant, less inhibited or even vitriolic pieces. Understandable. Hopefully, she will revert to her well informed hyper rational approach in future essays.
Just what I thought and I stopped reading at that point. I wasn’t impressed with Truss as PM or when I have seen her speak since. However, I thought she made a lot of sense when Farage interviewed her recently.
Sure but Thatchers actual destruction of society – our industry, our communities, social housing and critical national institutions – illustrates that she believed it all too well
Oh really. “Actual destruction of society”. You mean allowing people to own their own homes? Selling commercial businesses that have no place in public ownership? And how was industry destroyed when we make more now and export more then ever before? And destroying communities? You mean she closed summer coal mines? And?
Nearly half of the social housing sold under right-to-buy has ended up in the hands of private landlords, which has contributed to the current housing crisis. Water – total disaster, Energy – same. Trains – joke.
And the availability of low rent non-stigmatised social housing acted as a dampener on house prices.
Another dishonest lefty post that talks about a housing crisis without mentioning mass immigration.
Private landlords like Angela Rayner . . .
Do you like Britain as it is today? Millions of people running as fast as they can to earn as much as they can and damn they rest. Homeless people and beggars everywhere. Mass immigration as millions are sick or not prepared to work for pennies. Communities where no ones knows they neighbours. Pubs shutting all the time, let alone all the 1000s of libraries, youth centres and institutions that held society together. British institutions like the Post Office and Royal Mail and especially the NHS in chaos, and utilities a massive rip off. Shareholders taking money and not reinvesting in Britain but off shoring their cash. And the industry that was the backbone of the country, steel then coal then manufacturing disregarded. Most of what is wrong with this country is a consequence of Thatcher and the Tory, and then Labour’s, adoption of neo-Liberalism.
Its undeniable! And as a result Britain is just not the sort of country it could, and should, have been. Even many of those who can afford housing will be making it their life’s work to buy a house inferior in every way to the council house I grew up in.
You are still mentally trapped in that council house, and you did not grow up. There is no escape, ever, from leftist poverty of mind.
Oh dear!
Deluded
Even in a successful Steady State Economy there’s continual destruction, and renewal. But after 40 years of ridged state run ‘enterprises’ there was much to renew after WWII. But many didn’t want to change, anything at all: working practices, for example. And even the ‘paternalistic’ with the Tory Party prefered to sail on pretending we had guarrenteed sales, the workers had job security and there was plenty of money for the state to spend. And then we had the Winter of Discontent.
It’s going to be much worse now, as the Rest of the World has caught up, and the West have forgotten what it takes to be successful in the big industries, where much wealth can be generated. Yet the current ‘Tory government’ appears to support the no growth, no renewal, option.
At least Truss wanted fraccing! Why is it OK to buy ME Oil & Gas, yet developing our own is beyond our imagination?
Britain had started to lag behind Germany from 1870 and the USA from 1900. We came out of WW2 with a massive debt, vast over manning of un and semi skilled jobs and unions refusing to update technology which could reduce employment of un and semi skilled jobs. Innovation, quality and delivery were inadequate because of strikes and un and semi skilled unions not understanding that we had to compete in World Markets. Japan learnt to construct 100K T merchant ships from the late 1960s which meant we lost shipbuilding, much steel production and coke production . 75 % of mines were unecomic; we produced coal at 42/t when the world price was £32/T. We vastlly expaned humanities education post 1960s , not applied science and enginering needed to modernise our industry.
Pre mid 1960s welfare was based upon helping hard working honest people fallen on hard times , not a lifestyle for those discinclined to work.
In 1976 J Callaghan noted something was wrong with our education system.
The beginning of cutbacks took place under Callaghan from 1976-1979.
If the labour Party had realised what Britain needed to create a fully modernised industry in 1945 and the 1964,perhaps Thatcher would have never beeen voted in.
For the tree of knowledge to bear fruit it has to be pruned and watered. By 1979, Britain needed drastic pruning and a redesign of a garden which did not require a vast unskilled workforce to maintain but a small highly skilled one.
This article is a reminder that while conservatives might look kindly on Stock because she is correct about trans lunacy, she’s still a lefty who is doctrinaire and wrong about pretty much everything else.
Unlike the vast majority of politicians, she seems to have the courage of her convictions. Bully for her.
So far as this review goes, it doesn’t seem to look at what she is saying charitably, as Stock puts it “…perhaps the book was not written to win over opponents like me.” One cannot successfully review a book if one is it’s complete antithisis, indeed, one must be open to what it has to say in order to see past the beam in ones own eye.
Anyway, anyone who hates Foucault that much can’t be all bad.
The courage of her convictions, an underserved confidence and complete lack of self awareness. She’s almost a parody of a politician
She’s almost a parody of a person!
Asperger’s is frequently under -diagnosed in women and girls, and this ‘condition’ is the reason for her ‘oddness’.
I have to say, my money was on narcissism.
No that would be you
That wasn’t very nice?
It wasn’t was it. Obviously a few feathers getting ruffled.
I was just playing Catchphrase
Yes. Along with my wife suffering from this, it does put a fine point on those who would claim compassion, but fail to show it, such as some in this thread.
Does your wife plan on becoming prime minister?
You may well be right.
BTW, it’s now called Autism Spectrum Disorder.
I always thought Lembit Opik was the most hilarious MP. For a man who spent his life in a position of scrutiny he was blissfully unaware of the term public image, breaking his back paragliding and squiring one of the Cheeky Girls.
I think Truss takes his crown now, but she does it in a completely unintentional manner when her abilities are almost in complete opposition to her confidence in them
Dunning – Kruger in action!
Somebody that despises the job? Sounds like the perfect politician.
Unfortunately in her case it is entirely unwarranted.
Yes and on the ‘convictions’ issue – she was a Remainer. Until her political calculus and ambition got her to change. She’s not a conviction politician. She’s just seen one way to get ahead.
Yes, because, obviously, anyone who has the temerity to disagree with you must be operating in bad faith, eh?
Err I’m not sure if you are disagreeing with me here HB? The positions you adopt can be confusing as I sense you are tripping over yourself to insult before you’ve properly collected your thoughts. Why do you think Mad Liz was a Remainer, until she wasn’t? And why was she in the first place if such a conviction politician?
Believe me, you can both hate the paedophilic Foucault & the gibberish industry he spawned & hate walking neocon Godzillas like Truss at one & the same time: political horseshoe. I didn’t realise till now that Truss’ parents were environmentalists. Her irrational, delayed-pubescent rebellion against no-brainer attempts to conserve a tiny bit of British wildlife only make sense in that context.
There’s a picture of her as a kid at a Greenham Common demo. Moral is: parents shouldn’t assume that their kids share the same views that they do!
Ha,Ha – I didn’t understand why anyone would be upset by the chap who discovered the pendulum etc, then I looked up and found out that there was another Frog who did philosophy, of a sort that seems to irritate people on here – he can’t have been all bad then! I don’t know why and I have no intention of wasting time finding out!
The good news is Tory party is starting to fall into the habit of choosing unelectable leaders, after Boris Johnson. Everyone thought Sunak was a safe pair of hands, but he is now reaching Truss levels of unpopularity. Let’s hope they keep this up so we can completely forget about them for a generation.
‘Hates Foucault’? Yes, but come on, who thinks she’s actually read anything by or about Foucault other than some lecture notes or a study guide?
This is poor. Truss asks an important question: is it possible for democratically elected politicians in our current settlement to enact their policies in the face of institutional resistance? Stock, like many other commentators, ignores that and prefers to make cheap jokes and snide remarks.
Stock is behaving like a typical modern day opponent in that respect. But you’re right, we’re tied up in process, and institutions have values and beliefs that may prevent progress.
But if there is a person able to cut through that, it seems very unlikely to be Liz Truss.
I can’t see any one person doing it: it’s going to take a team. And probably several waves, with different skills.
In 1939, a bureaucratic oligarchy( BO ) came into power, first in Britain, then the UN an EEC/EU.It recruits largely upper middle class suburban humanities graduates into office. In return for obedience it gives rank and reward without responsibility. Remuneration is adequate for comfortable secure life and more importantly, retirement. When pensions started in 1905, few men lived to the age of 70, most were worn out by the age of 68 years. Now comfortable office workers will live to 85 to 90 years which with retirement at the age of 60 years means index linked final salary pensions lasting 25 years are very valuable items.
For the BO, decline of a country is unimporatnt provided their salaries and pensions are paid.
She’s asking all the right questions….but not necessarily in the right order. Probably because she’s completely tone deaf.
But, when considering her authority to ask that question, bear in mind that the only demos that elected Truss as leader was the membership of the Conservative party and that the policies she sought to enact were not the ones put to the wider electorate in December 2019.
That is a concern, though I didn’t see anyone running on dealing with a pandemic either.
Yep, on the money there.
But let’s not let those who elected her off the hook either. The reason she got the keys of No.10 is because the majority of the Tory membership is the same combination of stupidity, selfishness, self-importance and ignorance. A large chunk of the UnHerd regulars daft enough to have backed her too. The reason she’s still out there is these clowns still exist and lap up her twaddle.
You can only choose from the candidates on offer (you might call this the Clinton-Trump dilemma – or the Johnson-Corbyn one). Tory MPs and members were probably looking for the person who’d perform best in the forthcoming election. Whatever Sunak’s qualities, it doesn’t look like election campaigning is one of them – and I think that was clear at the time.
Again, you persist with this bizarre “the electors are stupid” narrative. It’s nonsense.
JW’s not as clever as he likes to think he is.
Nobody is as clever as they think they are.
Ok, I was being kind. I’ll call him stupid instead.
I don’t know. Is it stupid to support someone simply because their half baked ideas coincide with your own? I think with “stupidity, selfishness, self-importance and ignorance” JW has pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Missing the point.
Not everyone who voted for Liz Truss actually agreed with all her policies. Most probably didn’t. They just found her less objectionable than the alternative.
I think you’ll find that “swing voters” decide most elections and these are not at all the people you’re out to diss here.
This binary thinking which assumes that everyone who votes a certain way must believe exactly the same things is frankly bizarre. But hold on – there’s a name for this, isn’t there ? Identity politics.
Swing voters decide elections because most people don’t swing!
Very good!
Err, well maybe just this group of electors are stupid perhaps. A choice like Mad Liz takes some doing.
Now on the facts – the Tory MPs selected who went before their membership. They will have been listening to who members supported and positioning themselves for patronage benefits to follow. They had other options. Then 81k members voted for her. There was no discernible signal from the membership they didn’t welcome her or Sunak via high proportion of spoilt ballots or no vote at all.
Bojo of course supported her because he knew she’d be a disaster.
Now to not take responsibility for one’s actions/choices is a bit Woke isn’t it? Would be much more mature to accept suckered and susceptible to too much red meat in one’s diet wouldn’t it?
I think you’d find that most of the voters here would consider it their responsibility to actually vote rather than abstain. That’s certainly how I felt at the last election (didn’t want to vote for anyone, but felt it was my duty to make a decision).
I tend to the view that the irresponsible option when faced with a difficult decision is to abstain. We see this with alarming frequency in the House of Commons.
And the voters are not responsible for the actions of politicians. The politicians are. Certainly not when they start doing things they either said they wouldn’t do or never mentioned. Which is frequently the case.
You don’t really believe this stuff, do you ? Hence the comic book language (“Mad Liz”, “Bojo”).
“I think you’d find that most of the voters here would consider it their responsibility to actually vote rather than abstain. That’s certainly how I felt at the last election (didn’t want to vote for anyone, but felt it was my duty to make a decision).”
Most people think like that but it results in getting poor, unrepresentative candidates, as the candidates as a whole can count on getting votes from people that don’t actually want to vote for any of them.
I now refuse to vote for anyone or any party I have major concerns about, or I will pick a candidate/party with no chance of winning on the basis of a single issue I agree strongly with.
Why give your vote to someone you mostly disapprove of?
The lesser of two evils still results in evil?
Who said “mostly disapprove of” ? Not my words at all.
If you’re not happy with the candidates on offer, stand yourself. Or find someone who will. Simply abstaining solves nothing.
Abstaining IS voting. You’re saying you don’t support either option. This is a perfectly healthy response to 2 terrible choices, surely much preferable & _more_ responsible, not less, to adding your vote to one of them?
Where did I say “2 terrible choices” ? I actually meant “couldn’t vote with any enthusiasm or great conviction, but still had a preference and chose the least worst option … felt uneasy about it, but would have felt worse if I hadn’t exercised the responsibility of voting”.
It’s rather like the argument that says that if you have two identically qualified candidates for a job, you should prefer the one who ticks some minority grouping box. I’ve yet to meet two identical candidates for a job. There’s always a difference.
Abstaining is – by definition – not voting.
The guy who can only argue through see through fallacies, maybe you have more in common with “Mad Liz” than you think.
I do appreciate AR that explaining how on earth the Right came up with Mad Liz quite a challenge. It certainly has it comedic element as you and others pull contortions to avoid association.
Another fallacy JW, I find Liz Truss’ proclamations just as ludicrous as yours.
But the suspicion AR is you only found them ludicrous in hindsight.
JW all your posts have been laughable from the begining.
With respect, you sound like the proverbial clown.
Oh, the irony of seeing you accuse others of “stupidity, selfishness, self-importance and ignorance”.
I remember reading an article on UnHerd when it looked all but certain that Truss would be the next PM about whether the shock-tactic economic policies were going to work. It was by a renowned economist, maybe Barry Eichengreen, I can’t remember. Anyway – while everyone else of note was saying “don’t do it, this is mad”, Eichengreen actually dared to strike a positive note. Yet even that “positive” note boiled down to this: if A, B, C, D, E, F and G happen (which is rather unlikely), then Truss’s ideas have a slight chance of working out”.
I have no head for economics at all, but I read that and thought “uh oh”.
Well, the Truss premiership was good for one thing: I had several quite entertaining conversations with my dad (a former manager) about Kwasi Kwarteng and why it is that he always tried to avoid employing people with PhDs.
General view of many employers:
Masters = good degree, can be trained.
PhD = permanent student, unemployable
Great review. Thank you.
When looking at political leaders (leaders of any sort really) I default to the following quote:
‘I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief’.
(Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord)
Great quote. Clearly the lazy, stupid people aren’t up yet, or the anti-Truss comments would be getting more down votes.
Oops spoke too soon. They’re up now!
Very tolerant!
Again with the irony. Since you’re up early yourself, you qualify as diligent, and judging by the rest of the daft remarks you’re making here, stupid is a distinct likelihood.
So, the extent to which anyone should pay attention to your views is given in this thread, and ironically by your own hand.
T E Lawrence said leaders need to be capable of the irrational tenth. T E Lawrence persuaded Auda and the Howeitat to march through the Nafud, cross The Anvil and take Aquaba. Nelson put the telescope to his blind eye and ignored the order from a superior. Shackleton saved his crew by sailing across 900 miles of the Antarctica Ocean and then climbing across the glaciers of Georgia.
R Jenkins said most politicians react to the weather, a minority change the weather. I would suggest a leader needs courage, imaginatioon, initiative, ingenuity, fortitude, endurance, duty ; they achieve what others consider impossible and inspire others to to do likewise.
Today the World is run by a bureaucratic oligarchy( BO) who hate and fear individuals of the calibre of Nelson, Lawrence and Shackleton. The Bureaucratic oligarchy hate and fear the independent individual who treats their rules with ridicule. The BO exist because they create a complex web of rules which they understand and so gives them rank and reward but they never accept responsibility for their mistakes. Great leaders risk their lives for others. The BO sacrifice others lives to save themselves. I give you the Horizon/ Post Office, Mid Staffs Super Bug, Transgender and Grenfell disasters as the results of the BO in action.
It is not that they understand the rules, they don’t. It is the fact that they are in charge of selective enforcement and the rules mean whatever they need the to mean at any point in time.
You forgot Covid
Covid once again a result of panic. Those who have endured combat, tend not to lose their nerve. I remeber growing in a village where the Distruct nurse was an ex Army Nurse who had served at Benghazi, Tobruk and El Alamein. She said on several occasions she had to throw herself over a patient as shells were landing around them and the surgeon was operating.
The Bureaucratic Oligarchy may be as you say, but I do remember in the first few decades of my adult life, at least they were reasonably competent. All my run-ins with them in the last few decades were down to their bungling INCOMPETENCE.
I think this was experience of combat. D Healey said being a RE Beach Master at Anzio taught him much practical leadership. By mid 1980s those with WW2 combat experience had retired.
Always worth remembering this when wondering why our current politicians seem so thunderingly idle and incompetent.
Yes. Quangos.
Rotherham too.
True.
Excellent post!
Thank you.
Politicians nowadays delusionally believe their job is to change the weather, which is stupid beyond all belief. But I get your point.
Which is Truss? Stupid and diligent imo.
If she was diligent, surely she wouldn’t be so ignorant. And relying on “instinct” is about as lazy as it gets.
And yet you could make a perfectly good case that politics is so ineffective in the UK because there are too many people who have bought into the mindset that any substantial change is ‘too difficult’ and for ‘legal reasons’ that are seldom articulated.
Liz Truss may or (probably) may not be the champion that we need… but someone needs to unpick the Tony Blair World we have been living in. He locked us in, deliberately I think, to a judicial and bureaucratic world that wouldn’t make any significant changes without huge effort.
It takes a certain sort of person to recognise a political Gordian Knot, and another sort of person to cut through it.
OK, she’s tried the Gordian knot trick. Didn’t go well. So what next?
The sword was blunt. C Northcote Parkinson wrote about is his books on Parkinson’s Law in the late 1950s.
Out of interest – for all our problems where would you sooner live?
But will that still be the case in 10 or 20 years
I guess the question then is where would your money be on?
Perhaps here, but in the 1980s when the question ‘who rules Britain?’ was asked.
I thought Heath asked that in the early 70s and received the answer, no you
It’s in the nature of ‘social democracy’ that, as government becomes larger and more centralised, so it attracts more parasites – until, eventually, it ceases to have any function beyond serving the vested interests. At which point genuine democracy (aka ‘populism’) rides to the rescue. Or not.
I admire Kathleen Stock for her bravery and resilience.
Sadly for me, this scathing review of Liz Truss’s book has weakened my admiration of Kathleen’s ability to approach a subject with intellectual impartiality – which is surely a pre-requisite for a good reviewer? It seems that her political sympathies have overcome intellectual rigour.
Liz Truss is like all politicians – a mixture of good intentions, self-confidence and narcissism. She is not the vacuous numbskull portrayed in this review. Her political career has been marked by highs and lows and she is doing her best to salvage it with her book, which I have never had any intention of buying as I am not drawn to her particular slant on capitalism. She is right, however, on the question of our economy desperately needing to grow. Maybe just not at any cost.
Name some highs? And name any kind of acknowledgment of the lows? Or any kind of self-awareness shown at any point?
I think KS is rightly pointing out the major intellectual flaws in Truss’ ‘thinking’: that her ideology is irrational, ‘instinctual’ only, & she can’t be bothered even to try to justify her beliefs to herself, let alone others. If this book is an attempt to claw back political power we will need people like KS to point out that irrationality + ambition + contempt for anyone who doesn’t, instinctively, agree with you is a really dangerous combination in a leader.
Basically she’s running on emotion and feeling which she takes to be giving her direct access to truth. She’s a narcissist.
Nah, the hypocrisy is Kathleen’s.
Have you read the book? I haven’t, just a few extracts. I’m not a huge fan of Liz Truss or her politics, but nor am I a fan of crude character assassination.
No I haven’t, but we’re discussing the merits or lack thereof of KS’s review. I don’t read it as a character assassination, I read it as a critique of Truss’ lack of critical thinking, which you are for some reason ascribing to political bias. Stock is a brilliant former lecturer whom I’ve read many times playing devil’s advocate against her own position for the sake of a philosophically tight argument. I can tell by the quotes she includes in her review that Truss probably doesn’t understand what a critical argument is let alone its importance. As a lecturer myself, I mark essays based on how well argued they are, backed up by evidence, not whether I agree with the student’s opinion…
But would you just get someone else to do your marking rather than making your own decision about an essay?
That’s a straw man argument. Truss isn’t an anonymous student: I have actually encountered her ‘work’ before. More importantly, we were arguing about the merits of Stock’s writing. I’m not grading or even reviewing Truss’ book.
Yes, KS is a wee bit out of her depth here, I too am a fan but was uncomfortable with this piece.