American Thought Leaders - Former Prime Minister Liz Truss: Britain’s Democratic Process Has Been ‘Outsourced’

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

“Currently, the government spends 45 percent of GDP in Britain. You know, that is a pretty astonishing figure. It’s 36 percent in the United States, so you’re not that far behind. But in Britain, it’s 45 percent, and I don’t think that represents a proper free market economy.”In this episode, I sit down with Liz Truss, former prime minister of the United Kingdom. We dive into the reality of mass immigration and net-zero climate policy in Britain and discuss how parliamentary powers are being supplanted by unelected bureaucracies.“Even though we left the European Union, most of the European laws are still on our statute books. So, it’s a bit like getting divorced and still living in the same house as your ex-husband,” says Ms. Truss. “We’ve reduced carbon emissions, but that’s because we’re importing more goods from countries like China, who are building coal-fired power stations. So, there’s no net benefit to the planet. All that’s happened is we have empowered our enemies, and we’ve damaged our own industry.”We also talk about the anti-Israel protests sweeping Britain, and Islamist threats targeting members of Parliament.“There’s clearly a basis of self-loathing. The people who are on the streets chanting in favor of Hamas or saying ‘capitalism is evil’—they don’t like Britain. They don’t like the British way of life. They don’t like our values,” she said. “A lot of conservatives just think this is a normal political fight. It’s not a normal political fight. This is an enemy within our own country.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Currently, the government spends 45% of GDP in Britain. You know, that is a pretty astonishing figure. And I don't think that represents a proper free market economy. In this episode, I sit down with former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss. We dive into the reality of mass immigration and net zero climate policy in Britain and discuss how, in her view, parliamentary powers are being supplanted by unelected bureaucracies. Even though we left the European Union, most of the European laws are still on our statute books. It's a bit like getting divorced and still living in the same house as your ex-husband.

We've reduced carbon emissions, but that's because we're importing more goods from countries like China who are building coal-fired power stations. So there's no net benefit to the planet. All that's happened is we have empowered our enemies, and we've damaged our own industry. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janje Kellek. Liz Truss, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Great to be here. I was listening to you speak last night at this CPAC International Summit,

and you said something astonishing. A lot of people in the U.S., and frankly, in many liberal democracies around the world, are concerned about the rise of the administrative state. And people here were complaining, you know, there's only 3,000 elected positions in this administrative state of millions. And you said something like, well, let me tell you our situation in Britain. We've got a hundred of those. And I think the room went quiet for a moment.

Tell me about that. That is right. So in Britain, we have a permanent civil service who are career civil servants. We then have 100 special advisors. And just to be clear, those people don't run departments. Those people advise ministers. So the entirety of the state, all the government departments in Britain, is run by the Permanent Civil Service. Plus we have a thing called Quangos, which are quasi-non-government organizations. It's things like the EPA in America. We've got the Environment Agency in Britain. And those are all independent of democratically elected ministers.

So the situation is that a lot of power has essentially been outsourced from the democratic process into the so-called independent process. And I think that's a problem for democracy. What you're describing is a situation where essentially career bureaucrats run the show. Well, tell me a little bit about your experience. I mean, you were the prime minister, ostensibly the highest office in the land. And how much power did you actually have? Well, as prime minister, I set out a very clear agenda.

And I was supported by the party membership in becoming the leader of the Conservative Party to deliver that agenda. Cutting taxes, cutting the size of government, taking some of the power back from the unelected bodies that I've talked about. And when I put those policies through, what I found was there was leaking going on about my plans there was briefing in the press and there was a lack of support from those bodies for the policies which they made pretty clear and that made it very very difficult for me to deliver in what were quite volatile economic times. You know, I've heard all sorts of things in, you know, what I would call the legacy media. And also, you know, we have our own reporting about what happened towards the end of your, you know, your role as prime minister. How do you view what happened at the end there? What I found was that the forces of the bureaucracy and essentially the establishment in Britain

were just too great to take on with the amount of political support I had. I mean, that's the bottom line. There was not enough support from Conservative MPs to really change these things. And that is why I am now determined to build up the support, because I think we need these policies in Britain. Currently, the government spends 45% of GDP in Britain. You know, that is a pretty astonishing figure. It's 36% in the United States, so you're not that far behind. But in Britain, it's 45%. And I don't think that represents a proper free market economy. And it's not giving people the opportunities they need. So that is why I think we need to deal

with the bureaucracy and the establishment resistance to change. And all these people are protecting the status quo. They're protecting their vested interests. And that is not what the people of Britain want. The power is supposed to come from the people, right? This is in every liberal democratic constitution. This concept is enshrined. But somehow it's like under the noses of the British people, a lot of this eroded. That's your contention, right? Our constitution has been watered down and undermined. So the core concept of the British constitution is parliamentary sovereignty, that the MPs elected in the House of Commons have sovereignty over decisions. And that is what the prime minister is. He or she represents the leadership of parliamentary sovereignty. What's happened is those parliamentary powers have been outsourced.

A lot of this happened under the Tony Blair government when the traditional role of the Lord Chancellor was abolished and he created a new Supreme Court. We didn't have the separation of powers in Britain. So previously, the legal system was accountable because the Lord Chancellor sat in the Cabinet. That is now gone. And instead, you have an independent Supreme Court. We also saw the development of lots of agencies. I mentioned the Environment Agency. We had the creation of the Office of lots of agencies. I mentioned the environment agency.

We had the creation of the Office of Budget Responsibility. The Bank of England was given independence. And the Bank of England governor was made pretty much unsackable. And if you've got a Bank of England governor that's unsackable and a prime minister that is sackable, then that changes the balance of power. So that is what's happened in Britain. And it's crept up on us over the years. So you've seen more and more agencies develop. You've seen these powers taken away from the Lord Chancellor.

You've seen the creation of international law as well. And the ECHR has proved to be a massive issue when we want to deport illegal immigrants. So all of these things have built up. And what they have done is they have denuded Parliament of its sovereign role. Let's talk about Brexit for a moment, because Brexit was viewed as this kind of incredible coup against the establishment. Certainly it was viewed that way here in America. One of the core issues I understand was part of Brexit

was this issue of this unchecked immigration, right? But once the Brexit was achieved, it didn't strike me that things changed all that much. No, in fact, immigration has gone up. So we have record immigration this year. But there are two points I would make. First of all, even though we left the European Union, most of the European laws are still on our statute books.

So it's a bit like getting divorced and still living in the same house as your ex-husband. We've done the bit of leaving the EU, but we've still got all that bureaucracy in Britain. And this is one of the things that the administrative state doesn't want to let go of. They don't want to let go of that closeness to Europe. They don't want to let go of that regulation. Bureaucracies like regulation. It gives them power. So you've got all that still in place. And on immigration, because of the extra powers that have been given to the legal system and taken away from politicians, the left are able to thwart immigration policy through the legal system. So they're using every trick in the book to try and stop conservative policies being delivered. And I mean, this parallels some of the scenarios that

we see here and frankly, in my home country of Canada, actually, I would guess in many countries. What's happened is the left aren't succeeding at the ballot box in Britain. So they've expended all their energy in trying to take lawfare to stop Conservative policies or to use the administrative bureaucracy to stop Conservative policies. What I'm hearing right now, though, is that the Conservatives are expected to be trounced in this coming election. Is that accurate? And why would that be, given what you're just saying? The opinion polls are not looking good. That's certainly true. But if people think things would get better under a Labour government, they are completely wrong. Look at the Labour Party. They're currently backing these protesters on Hamas and they're not strong on defence and foreign policy and also they want more power to the bureaucratic state. So we

will have the current situation on steroids if if Labour get in but I think what you're talking about is a frustration of the public that the things they want to be delivered like like proper control of our borders, isn't happening. And what I'm saying to Conservatives is we need to be bolder, we need to actually change the institutions, we need to restore parliamentary sovereignty, we need to get rid of these quangos that are stopping Conservative policies being enacted, and I think we need to demonstrate to the public we're prepared to do that and we understand there's a problem. Because if we don't do that, then the danger is Labour gets in power

and they do even more of this. So, I mean, you're also advocating some sort of internal reform among the Conservatives, I think. Do I understand that correctly? Well, what we're doing is we've got a movement called popular conservatism, and it's about advocating these policies. We're saying it's not enough just to have conservative policies. It's not even enough just to get the position of power. Unless we change the system, we're not actually going to be able to deliver the policies. And that's why I think the situation is quite similar to here in the US. You do have a huge administrative state.

So the problem isn't just which party's in power. The problem is that the system has become antithetical to change. And that is true in the UK. So, you know, one of the things that we see here in the US that I actually covered quite a bit is this sort of I mean we've discussed this a little bit but this erosion of the power from the legislature into the administrative state or these agencies in your case it would be the quangos but the the thing is, Congress isn't that unhappy with that because then the Congress can say, well, it wasn't us, it was the agencies. And then the agencies say, well, it wasn't us, it was Congress.

And that creates this frustration. Ultimately, people are going to say, well, what's the point of you? If you don't actually make any decisions in the House of Representatives or the Senate. What's the point of you? And that is my worry for democracy. People elect us to make decisions. And we are meant to represent the people of our constituencies or districts in the case of the US. And if all these powers, because we're too afraid to make decisions, have been outsourced to these bodies.

What's the point of us? And I think that is a threat to democracy. I'm very worried about that. You know, we could repeal the acts that took away, that created the Supreme Court. That's what we should be doing. We've got all this legacy legislation that has essentially tied politicians' hands.

And we need to be bold and change that. And that's what I'm advocating. I'm saying that we've got to explain to the public what's gone wrong. That rather than politicians being courageous and making difficult decisions, it's been palmed off and it's not working. But the first step, and I think actually in some ways understanding of this is better in the United States, people have to understand the administrative state's a problem. And it's not just politicians being hopeless.

It's also that they can't actually do things because their hands are so tied. On a couple of policy things. We were talking about immigration. As I understand it, when you talk about immigration, you're talking about unchecked immigration, not immigration writ large. So we need to reduce the number of legal migrants, and we also need to deport illegal migrants as well. We need to do both of those things. The other part is, I want to talk about net zero because it seems there seems to be almost a consensus on these net zero policies. There really isn't because

when it actually comes to things like banning oil boilers, which there was a threat of last year, which the government has now postponed, my constituents got very angry about that because they didn't want to have to replace their oil boilers with a heat source pump. People are angry as well about energy bills being too high and the reason energy bills are so high in Britain is we're not doing things like fracking because it's banned because of net zero. So people don't like the effect of the policies. And what we have to communicate is this effect is being caused by this net zero legislation. And I think people understand now with the war in Ukraine, how important it is to have your own energy independence.

And Britain is a net energy importer. We could be a net energy exporter if we built more nuclear, if we got on with fracking. And those are the arguments we have to make. There's growing concern about what the cost is. The problem is we legislated first and then looked at the cost later. And what's going on in Britain is we've reduced carbon emissions, but that's because we're importing more goods from countries like China who are building coal-fired power stations. So there's no net benefit to the planet. All that's happened is we have empowered our enemies and we've damaged our own industry. It's fascinating that you're saying that because another way to say that is we've outsourced our emissions, right? But like you said,

to our enemies, which is bizarre, right? It is bizarre. And I think what the left have been very successful at and the environmental movement is making everybody think they're nice. But actually what it has been is a Trojan horse for collectivism, taking away power from sovereign nations and instead giving it to these international bodies. And I think that's a big problem. The left no longer make traditional socialist arguments. They don't argue for control of the means of production and things like that.

Instead they say, well, we've got to be kind to the environment. We've got to be kind to transgender people. And if you don't agree with these policies, you're a nasty person. It's like you've just described the weapon, right? The weapon is basically kind of slander in a way. Everyone hates being slandered, but it's been such an effective weapon somehow. It is, and it's a weapon used against conservatives. And I think too many conservatives accept the premise. They accept the premise that somehow it's nice to advocate these policies no it's not what we're

effectively doing is we're making people poorer because they can't afford energy you know we're exposing our young people to dangerous you know dangerous irreversible treatments you know isn't that's not nice so we need to talk about what the actual consequences of those policies are. It's like performative empathy or something like that, right? Yeah. Politics is full of performative empathy. And it's one of the things I dislike most about it. And it is difficult being in the age of performative empathy and trying to make a rational argument but we have to show people what the consequences are of these left-wing policies and why it's wrong and what it

is essentially about it's about taking power away from individuals and families to make decisions and instead putting power in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats or international authorities. And that is collectivism. It's collectivism by the back door. And I think it's particularly the English-speaking democracies where I see the problem at its most acute. United States, UK, Canada, Australia. The left have been very effective at mounting these long-term campaigns like on the environment, like on transgender rights and spreading it and I think the whole development of social media has helped spread

that leftist ideology as well. Now, what's really interesting, though, at the same time, you could argue that social media was probably very important in Brexit or this unexpected 2016 election of Donald Trump. That's true. That's true. But I'm trying to explain why it has spread in such a way across the free world. And some of these, I mean, for example, in Britain, we ended up having protests about Black Lives Matters. And we had people taking the knee, including the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, took the knee.

This was an issue about the US, nothing to do with us and yet people in the UK had become involved, they'd become in my view indoctrinated by their overall narrative of Black Lives Matter which we know essentially has Marxist roots, you know we know that. But that wouldn't have happened 40 years ago. That stuff would have spread. And of course, you're right. Good ideas spread as well. And what we have to do is make our ideas more contagious than the left's ideas. And Brexit is a good example of that type of movement. And you've also got, you know, malign regimes pushing some of these messages, funding some of these organizations, a bit like how the Soviet Union used to fund

left-wing organizations like the CND. You now have a modern version of that, and these people being funded by our enemies. So in the UK, one of the things that I observed is that there's this, you know, these incredible mass rallies. I think there are like 500,000 people sort of pro-Palestine, but under closer scrutiny. Sometimes people see it's actually pro-Hamas. That's happening everywhere. But there's the scale of it. Why do you think the scale of it's so great in Britain in particular? As you say, it's happening across the world but what we haven't seen enough in Britain is the police actually cracking down on some of the vile anti-semitism that's taking place at these rallies so I think we have an accountability problem and we have an enforcement

problem in Britain but it's a very small minority of Brits who actually think that way. But what is happening is it's getting oversized attention because of the extreme tactics of those demonstrators. And the most worrying thing recently is MPs are being threatened. MPs are being threatened to change their vote in the House of Commons because of these vile extremist demonstrators. And that is where we need to make sure our laws are properly enforced. Did one step down?

You're right. A member of parliament stepped down because his office was torched. There was an arson attack on his office. He represents a very strong Jewish area in London. And over the past 10 years, two MPs have been murdered. So MP security is a real issue in Britain. That's astonishing. What are the steps today that we can take? Again, not just in the UK here.

What's your message to participants here or the American people or Canadians for that matter? We need to be brave advocating conservative values. We need to be proud of our countries. And we need to not compromise with the left. When I said in my speech earlier, you can't triangulate with terrorists. You can't compromise with communists. They want to destroy our way of life. And I think these people on the left who advocate this point of view,

they're after the destruction of Western civilization. And too often, conservatives don't understand that that's the aim. These people are not trying to be helpful. They are actively trying to undermine our way of life. And that is why we need to be brave at taking them on. And we need to make sure that our institutions are properly democratically accountable so they cannot be captured by these extremists. Because I've seen too often in Britain, whether it's corporate organisations, universities, government departments have been captured by this ideology because there's not enough pushback. There's clearly a basis of

self-loathing. The people who are on the streets chanting in favour of Hamas or saying capitalism is evil, they don't like Britain. They don't like the British way of life. They don't like our values. A lot of conservatives just think this is a normal political fight. It's not a normal political fight. This is an enemy within our own country. Well, Liz Truss, any final thoughts as we finish? No, it's been fantastic to be on the show. Well, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Great stuff.

Thank you. Thank you all for joining former British Prime Minister Liz Truss and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.