Liz Truss's resignation is a warning for Republicans
The resignation of British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday morning puts an end to a month of economic and political turmoil. Republicans should take note of her mistakes if they want to avoid a similar debacle after the midterms and in 2024.
Truss’s first mistake was to push a radical economic agenda she did not campaign on. Her personal views supporting a low-tax, smaller government were telegraphed years ago in her book, “Britannia Unchained.” But she did not campaign for the premiership on that agenda. She had promised some modest tax reductions and offered rhetorical backing for deregulation. But those were far short of the sweeping tax cuts she and her chancellor of the exchequer unveiled in their now-infamous mini-budget proposed in late September.
Failing to prepare public opinion for her proposals meant there was no widespread support for them in any segment of British society. Conservative MPs who championed fiscal stability were gob smacked at the prospect of widening deficits as far as the eye could see. The broader public backed more spending and taxation, not less. And investors who had made calculations about the British economy based on her public statements were blindsided, sending interest rates soaring and pushing the pound to historic lows.
Republicans are at risk of making the same mistake if they retake control of Congress. The GOP’s midterm messaging focuses on inflation, crime and immigration, but the party is not telling the public much about what it would do to combat those ills. That might be good politics, but it also means they would have no mandate for significant departures from the status quo. Using the national debt limit next year as leverage to force significant spending cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare, as has recently been rumored, would be as politically disastrous for the GOP as Truss’s supply-side tax cuts were for the Tories.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/20/truss-resignation-british-republicans/
Liz Truss’s fall is a warning to populists everywhere
“I am a fighter and not a quitter!” British Prime Minister Liz Truss thundered Wednesday in the House of Commons. “I am resigning,” she said Thursday, in a less bombastic tone of voice. Let’s hope conservatives here and around the world learn a lesson about both policy and populism.
Truss’s announced departure after just 45 days apparently marks the shortest residence ever at 10 Downing Street. She made so many mistakes in so little time that it’s hard to list them all. But the most needlessly self-destructive was trying to impose simplistic right-wing economic policies that work only in theory, never in practice.
To a nation suffering through 10.1 percent inflation, alarmed by the war in Ukraine, worried about energy shortages this winter and struggling with myriad disruptions caused by Brexit, Truss offered massive tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations. Her brief tenure should be remembered as the hyphenate premiership: all-in on supply-side, laissez-faire, trickle-down economics.
The only way to pay for this huge giveaway was through equally massive borrowing. She and her first chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, gambled their futures — and the well-being of the country — on their blind faith in the wisdom of free markets.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/20/liz-truss-populist-warning/
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