There will be no white man in the three most important ministries of the State, those of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Interior
British Prime Minister Liz Truss will present her plan on Thursday to cushion the alarming rise in energy prices, but has advanced in Parliament that she will not pay for it with special taxes on energy companies. To implement her plans, Truss has formed a Cabinet of loyal MPs, who supported her candidacy.
The leader of the Labor opposition, Keir Starmer, asked his new rival if the deficit caused by the planned price freeze – which will mean an annual payment of 3,000 euros for average consumption households, according to the British press – will be borne by the taxpayers or if it will assess the increase in profits from energy companies, estimated by the Treasury at 196,000 million in the next two years.
The first scuffle between Truss and Starmer was loaded with ideology. The prime minister confirmed her belief that tax cuts are essential to generate investment and reproached Labor that “she doesn’t understand the aspiration.” The new leader’s estrangement from the more eclectic politics of her predecessor, Boris Johnson, and her rival and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is her hallmark.
Lawyer Starmer counterattacked, reproaching him for his faith in ‘trickle down’ economics, associated with Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher, based on the idea that the increase in wealth of the rich creates a beneficial trickle of income to the poor, and better than state transfers. Labor criticized Truss for scrapping Sunak’s tax hikes, and pointed to the privatized water supply sector as one of the beneficiaries.
Polls say that Labor is ahead of the Conservatives and that the majority of ‘Tory’ voters are in favor of the nationalization of electricity and water supply. But the trend could change if Truss is able to mitigate this Thursday the social alarm before winter. Starmer has placed himself in an eclectic position as leader of his party and will try to undermine the ‘Tory’ leader for being attached to orthodoxy.
Liz Truss, this Wednesday in her first speech in the House of Commons as Prime Minister, flanked by the Ministers of Finance, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Foreign Minister, James Cleverly /
His new finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, is also ideological. Extraordinary student of classical languages at Eton, fellow at Harvard, doctor from Cambridge with a thesis on the great mess of the minting of new silver coins at the end of the seventeenth century, he is a neighbor of Truss in London and they have collaborated together in the publication of texts of the libertarian current of conservatism.
purges
Kwarteng, new Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and Home Secretary Suella Braverman voted, unlike Truss, for Brexit in the 2016 referendum. But they have been celebrated as the dark-skinned responsible for the three great ministries of the British government. At least one of those ministries had always been occupied by a white man.
The majority of Britons see this novelty as the normalization of immigrant integration processes. Statistics from the European Union showed, before Brexit, that the integration of immigrants in the United Kingdom was higher than in the countries of the Union. “Why do you think all three female prime ministers have been conservative?” Theresa May also asked Liz Truss from her seat.
Truss welcomed the question and promised to consult with May, whose relationship with Boris Johnson has a criminal flavor. The new prime minister said that she does not understand why Labor does not have the capacity to have women in charge. “Or that their leaders are not from North London,” she added. Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Blair lived in the same neighborhood, Islington. The seats ‘tories’ floated by pure joy.
But only Tom Tugendhat, the new Secretary of State for Security, with responsibility for economic crime, emerges from the Cabinet list as distant from Truss. The ex-military man stood for election to replace Johnson, claiming before the voters that he had not served in the government of the ousted man. When he was eliminated, he supported Truss.
Four prime ministers in six years. Only Liz Truss has survived in Cabinet since Cameron’s in 2016. Johnson purged EU supporters and Truss has purged Rishi Sunak supporters. Conservative deputies will follow with great interest the appointment of Secretaries of State and Deputy Ministers to see if the purge also affects the lower echelons, with less salary.
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