THE GUARDIAN – EDITORIAL: The prime minister’s mask has slipped. Her naked case for greed and selfishness will make enemies inside as well as outside her party
Political speeches can influence voters or MPs; they can honour ideals and celebrate membership of a party. Liz Truss chose none of these in her address to activists at the Conservative party’s annual conference. She preferred instead to defend her unpopular policies that promote growth at any cost, and blame a decade of anaemic economic expansion on those who – rightly – counsel caution about the trade-offs involved. The prime minister’s speech shows the extent to which she sees politics as civil war, where everything boils down to loyalty. The new “enemies of enterprise” is just a Trussian rebranding of the toxic “enemies of the people” rhetoric.
Ms Truss wanted to battle opponents outside the Tory party, not those within it. She has been on the losing side of that fight all week. Instead she chose to define her enemies in the country and seek conflict with them. But Britain’s poor economic performance is not down to an “nti-growth coalition” of podcasters, trade unions and thinktanks. Surely if one wants to view success through the lens of growth then those guilty of failing to produce it were sitting in front of the prime minister in the conference hall. With video » | Editorial | Wednesday, October 5, 2022
This woman is a disaster! – © Mark Alexander
