Posted on 09/05/2022 6:46:37 AM PDT by FarCenter
...Who is 47-year-old Liz Truss and how did she manage to overtake her rival Rishi Sunak in the race to succeed Boris Johnson?
With 57.4 percent of the vote in the Conservative Party leadership contest, Truss can savour a comfortable victory over ex-chancellor Sunak. The outgoing foreign secretary's success is all the more satisfying because her challenger was initially the bookmakers' favourite to be the next prime minister. Truss's triumph can be explained by some strategic moves on her part that have played to the party faithful, but also by mishaps in the campaign of her rival.
When the scandal-plagued Johnson resigned as prime minister in July, Truss was by no means a shoo-in to replace him. She arguably received a boost when Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, seen as a likely frontrunner, announced he would not be standing. Once the field was whittled down to two candidates by Conservative MPs, Sunak was in the lead. The 42-year-old was seen as a political heavyweight who steered the British economy through the Covid-19 pandemic as finance minister.
But in the end, Sunak proved to be no match for his former colleague. During the leadership campaign, Truss, who was educated at state school, stressed that she does not come from a traditional Conservative background. On the contrary, her left-wing parents took her on anti-Thatcher protest marches in the 1980s. As a student, she joined the centre-left Liberal Democrats, before switching to the Conservatives in 1996, the year she graduated.
Truss successfully underscored her less privileged upbringing. "I was somebody who was not born into the Conservative Party. I went to school in Paisley and Leeds, I went to a comprehensive school. My parents were left-wing activists, and I've been on a political journey ever since," she said during an ITV televised debate July.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
Well she has chance to prove me wrong. We shall see. If she halts immigration, ends Johnson’s neo-con crap, and balances budgets, I’ll happily say I’m wrong.
The good news for her is low expectations, unlike Johnson.
I wouldn't read too much into an election where less than a third of a percent of the British electorate are eligible to vote.
With the new prime minister chosen by Conservative Party members, who make up just 0.32% of the British electorate, both Truss and Sunak had to do their best to appeal to the party faithful.
And why not?
She will be far better than Johnson, who had no self discipline.
Truss is far tougher and much more disciplined than Johnson ever was.
One of her first public statements was to reaffirm her support for net-zero. So, I’d guess yes.
Representative democracy is certainly at work in this choice, albeit indirectly. Remember that the 357 Conservative MPs, from whom the Prime Minister must be chosen, were directly elected by the people, and elected as the largest party in Parliament. Those directly elected MPs in turn elected two candidates eligible to be their leader. Only the choice between those two was in turn put to the very selective electorate of Conservative Party members
This is comparatively recent. At one time the Tory MPs themselves made the choice, without any reference to the Party outside Parliament. Arguably in that arrangement there was a rather cleaner line of democratic accountability.
There have been plenty of British Prime Ministers who haven't been English, but Sottish or Welsh. And there was a Jewish Prime Minister (Benjamin Disraeli) in the 19th century.
When the two candidates to be put to the Conservative Party membership were chosen by the 357 Conservative MPs, it was actually Sunak who led the vote by a significant margin. And it's those MPs who see both of them at close quarters, and are in a rather better position than the party membership to judge their relative qualities.
Sunak is a third-generation immigrant, who has been brought up with a classic British Establishment education - Winchester, then New College Oxford. How many generations do you imagine ought to pass before somebody is no longer considered an immigrant?
Sottish = Scottish
How many generations has Sunak’s relatives been Indian?
BREAKING: Priti Patel resigns as Home Secretary
Does she at least comb her hair?...
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