This week, Britain gained its third woman prime minister.
Liz Truss was chosen
by the Conservative Party, which by repute is sclerotic and averse to diversity but is the only party in the
United Kingdom
not to choose its top talent exclusively from an old boys’ network.
It was the Conservative Party, the most electorally successful in the history of liberal democracy, that chose Britain’s other two women leaders, Theresa May and, most notably, Margaret Thatcher. It now chooses women to lead as easily as it chooses men, despite the false image nurtured by its critics that it is a reactionary collection of tweedy buffers from the shires, suburban Philistines, money-grubbers from the City of London, and blue-collar vulgarians from “up north.”
The opposition Labour Party thinks itself broader-minded and modern but has never picked anyone other than a white man to lead it. (I have nothing against white men, being one myself, but it’s worth noting how sharply truth diverges from critical theory about conservatives.)
Truss’s new government is also unusual on the subject of race. It has no white men occupying either the premiership or the three great offices of state. A party whom detractors (aping the American Left in their insults) depict as white supremacist has formed an administration dominated by three people of African and Asian descent.
James Cleverly, whose mother is from Sierra Leone, is foreign secretary (equivalent to secretary of state). Suella Braverman, whose parents are from Kenya and Mauritius, is to be home secretary (roughly a combination of secretary of homeland security and interior secretary). And Kwasi Kwarteng (the son of Ghanaian immigrants) is chancellor of the exchequer (equivalent to treasury secretary).
To those who understand
conservatism
, this is unsurprising. Granted, the Truss government’s complexion is the result, to an extent, of the party’s tendency to shape-shift in whatever way seems necessary to win or hold power. But its multiracial mix is less the result of cynicism than of an open-minded willingness to do what works. The flip side of political expediency is that conservatives are freer than the Left is of ideology.
The principal virtue of modern conservatism is a belief in freedom (though putative conservatives often dishonor it in the breach). Nevertheless, as a group, they are more likely when in office to cut loose from ideology and political fashion than their opponents are. This flexibility is allied to their foundational conviction that individuals should be allowed to decide what is best for them in their circumstances and should not be dictated to by a central authority.
This, in turn, points to the most important challenge facing the new government in London — the challenge of abandoning the tomfoolery of modish policymaking and doing what works instead of what the Left demands. What undid Truss’s predecessor,
Boris Johnson
, was not his misbehavior (which the public repeatedly forgave) but his abandonment of sound policymaking, his impossible climate pledges and growth-restricting tax increases, which led Britain into immiserating inflation and an imminent winter of energy-starved discontent.
Truss has inherited a dysfunctional mess but has started in office by saying the right things, disavowing many of Johnson’s policies. She talks of cutting taxes and wisely preferring economic growth to the pusillanimous redistribution of a shrinking pie. She talks about boosting energy production with fracking on land and drilling offshore. She should also scrap Johnson’s pledge to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2035, and she should slash red tape that is hobbling the economy. She is free to do so in the wake of Brexit.
Most of all, Truss should do what the conservative premium on freedom does best, which Thatcher made real when she took over as leader of the Big-C party and then of the country two generations ago. That is, she should encourage the English, Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish to have faith in the creativity and energy that distinguished them as a fantastically dynamic people for generations.
In Britain, as in America and other Western democracies, these qualities are being smothered by a sneering and feckless ideology of failure. The British as much as Americans chafe under an ever-weightier burden of deleterious restrictions and self-doubt. People thrive when they are free to act in their own and their neighbors’ interests. But they dwindle and repine when individual effort seems futile or even impossible.
Truss will have only a very brief honeymoon in office, if any. She has no time to lose. Getting government out of ordinary people’s way will be painful. But it is the only thing — it should, indeed, be the only thing — that will get Britain back on its feet and allow its new prime minister to win her own mandate in the general election probably, like our own, in late 2024.
