The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Nile Gardiner on Who Is Liz Truss and How Will She Govern as UK’s New Prime Minister?

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

The United Kingdom has a new prime minister. Liz Truss, a member of the Conservative Party, officially became the U.K.’s newest head of government Tuesday. But who is Truss, and what does her rise to power signify for the U.K. and its relationship with the United States? Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about how the new prime minister is likely to govern. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, September 7. I'm Doug Blair. And today, we have a question. Can you trust new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss? That's the question. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has stepped down and his replacement, well, we don't really know a lot about her. So to figure out what exactly is going on with our new Prime Minister across the pond, we spoke with Nile Gardner.

He's the director at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom here at the Heritage Foundation, and he knows a little thing about British politics. So what is her policy? Is she going to rule conservatively? Find out during my interview with Nile Gardner after this. We've reached a critical point in American history. Capital Hill has become ground zero for pushing back against the left and we want to equip you for a career there. Our ready set Hill program prepares you to not only find a job on the Hill, but advance conservative principles and impact public policy. It's just a two-day commitment and we're currently taking applications for August, September, and October. Get more info and sign up at heritage.org slash training. Just look for the ready set hill program.

My guest today is Nile Gardner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom here at the Heritage Foundation. Niall, welcome to the show. It's great to be here, Doug. Thank you very much having all the show. Absolutely. Well, exciting news from across the pond as Liz Truss has just become the new British Prime Minister replacing Boris Johnson. Let's get a quick bio on her. What is she like?

What are her policies? How is she likely to lead? Yeah, actually, so I met this trust number of times. In fact, we've hosted her at Heritage on a couple of occasions. She was the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. She's held multiple cabinet roles, including also International Trade Secretary. She's a very experienced politician. She actually started off on the left, in fact, as a liberal Democrat and later became a conservative.

She also didn't start off as a Brexit supporter either. And in fact, she began. originally opposing Brexit, but she is now, of course, a very staunch Brexiteer. And in fact, I would describe Liz Truss as one of the most devout Brexiteers in the UK today. And so she is determined to lead Britain into the Brexit era, following, of course, the premiership of Boris Johnson, who just stepped down today. And Liz Truss actually is ideologically a very Thethrite politician, even though she began began her journey on the left many decades ago. She is now a staunch ideological conservative

Thatcherite. She's a committed tax cutter. She believes in limited government. I would describe her as a very robust, strong, tough politician. She's not a particularly, I would say, showy politician. She's not one for spin. She's very down to earth. And she is also a also someone, unlike Boris Johnson, she doesn't come from a sort of upper class background, actually. In fact, she was educated at a comprehensive school in the UK. And so she comes from, you know, a more sort of humble background. She is a big admirer of Margaret Thatcher, my former boss.

Of course, there's only, you know, one Margaret Thatcher in history. But, you know, Liz Truss, I think, out of all of the candidates who could have become Prime Minister, I think she was the most Thatcherite of all of the candidates. So, you know, I'm very optimistic about her leadership. It's a very tough situation that she faces in Britain today. I mean, immense challenges. But I think that, you know, she is the best person for this job right now. Excellent.

Well, that is actually sort of a next question is that, you know, Boris Johnson left certain issues unresolved, obviously, in his retirement. Trust basically mentioned that one of the first things she wanted to attack was the energy situation in the UK. What are her plans for that specifically? Yeah, so the energy crisis is, it's real, it's very big in the UK, and it's the result, I think, of decades of failed energy policies, basically. And so the UK is not in a position that is as bad as, say, that of Germany or France or Italy or the big European Union countries who are very heavily dependent on Russia. So the UK isn't dependent upon Russian energy, but what

you have had in the UK over the course of many decades has been a failure to develop alternative sources of energy. British administrations have not supported fracking, for example. They have not strongly backed nuclear power. And so as a result, energy prices today are rising very significantly in part due to the war in Ukraine and the Russian invasion, but also because of longstanding failures, I think, in strategic thinking with regard to energy independence and energy development. So Liz Trust has to address all this as Prime Minister. And the British public faces a rise in energy prices from about £2,000 a household per year at the moment to around £3,500 or $4,000, actually, in real terms. So that's a lot of money for British households.

So Liz Trust has to address that. I hope she will use free market solutions to do so, but there's already talk, of course, of an energy cap being introduced. Not ideal, I think, for a conservative prime minister to be bringing that in, but that's a sign of just how desperate the situation is. But she has ruled out a windfall tax on energy companies. That's a good move. So she's not in favor of any new taxes, but you may see some kind of price cap on energy. And that works through a sort of a credit fund that is established backed by the British Treasury, but is actually put in place by private banks in the UK.

So it's a complicated process, but it does avoid, though, actually introducing taxes on energy companies, which I think would be very destructive. Liz Truss has ruled that out. Okay. So it sounds like she's planning on leading a lot like Maggie Thatcher did. So I guess my next question would be based on that. Maggie Thatcher and the United States had a very close relationship. Obviously, Reagan and Thatcher were very good friends, and they kind of viewed the world similarly.

Do we see that trust is probably going to have a similar type of transatlantic relationship as Margaret Thatcher did? Yeah, that's a great question. Clearly, she greatly admired Margaret Thatcher. She would like to emulate Margaret Thatcher. I would say, though, that Margaret Thatcher would not support price caps and that sort of thing. But the British government is in such a desperate state. that they're considering that. But that's not something that Margaret Thatcher would have necessarily supported in any way.

But in terms of the overall transatlantic alliance, you know, Liz Trust is a big supporter of the U.S.-UK. Special Relationship. But at the same time, she's acutely aware of the fact that Joe Biden has been very difficult on British issues. In fact, he's tried to undermine the UK over the Northern Ireland Protocol issue, lecturing the UK on this issue. He's been very bad on Brexit. that Joe Biden has been, in my view, a disastrous U.S. president on the world stage. And there are many British conservative MPs who share that view that the Biden presidency has been absolutely disastrous in terms of its international leadership or lack of it.

And so Liz Truss, I think she will approach the U.S. presidency with a very clear-eyed stance. She will not be afraid to stand up to Joe Biden and she will stand up for British interests. and I think she will be a lot less willing to defer to Joe Biden as opposed to Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson really always like to avoid any conflicts and he didn't want to pick a fight with Joe Biden over Northern Ireland, for example. I think Liz Truss would be willing to stand her ground a lot more. And that's what she should do. She shouldn't be listening to lectures from Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi about British, policy on Northern Ireland and Brexit.

It's none of their business. Right. And I expect trust will be tougher than Boris Johnson has been, which is a good thing. So should Americans be expecting maybe a split between the UK and the US? Well, I mean, I think that, so Liz Trust will be coming to Washington and New York in late September. She'll be speaking at the UN General Assembly. There will be certainly a meeting with Biden, I think, at the White House. the US UK partnership is incredibly important and there will be close cooperation over issues such as Russia, Ukraine, for example, and a joint US-British position in confronting the Russian threat.

But trust, I think, will tell Joe Biden not to interfere over British policy on Northern Ireland. And I think she'll get that message loud and clear across to Joe Biden. And if Biden wants to, you know, pick a fight over it, that's his issue. But I think trust is going to be robust here. And that's the right approach because, you know, Joe Biden really has a lack of respect for U.S. allies, I think. And he needs to be told to back off. Definitely. Returning to more domestic British issues, there were a couple of high profile departures from the UK government as she took over,

which included Home Secretary Pretty Patel. Is that a normal kind of thing that happens when a new prime minister takes over, or was that a sort of indication that we're shifting in policy? It's normal for a new prime minister to bring in an almost entirely new cabinet. And I suspect that the new cabinet will be very different to the Boris Johnson cabinet, with the exception of, I think one or two people will still be in place. Ben Wallace's defense secretary probably stays in place. But there are big changes. And if you look at the three high offices of state, the host. secretary, foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer, they're all going to be new, I think, appointments.

So Priddy Patel, a very good friend of Heritage who gave a big speech here in November. She has just stepped down as home secretary. You will also see a new foreign secretary and chancellor of this checker. The new home secretary is expected to be Suella Braverman, who's been attorney general, who's actually very good, I think. James Cleverly is expected to be the foreign secretary and the new chancellor is expected to be quasi-quivor. Quarteng, who's currently the business secretary. So these are all very strong Thatcherites. I think a new cabinet will be great, but some old friends will be stepping down,

including Pretty Patel, who's been a tremendous friend of the Heritage Foundation over many years. But it doesn't sound like the policy direction necessarily will be changing too much? No, no. I mean, I think policy remains broadly the same. The UK has a big immigration challenge. illegal immigration challenge. And you've seen tens of thousands of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel from France over the course of the last couple of years. And the new Home Secretary has to address that.

And it's a huge issue in the UK. It doesn't help that you've got Emmanuel Macron in office as a French president who deliberately tries to undermine Britain at every opportunity. So, you know, Macron is a big part of the problem. And it's striking that you have large numbers of illegal migrants from France escaping France to get into the United Kingdom. But they're not coming over illegally. I mean, they are illegal migrants and they have to be stopped. And trust has acknowledged that that it's something that she's going to face. She's a very hard line on this issue as she should be.

And securing Britain's board is a very top priority for the new administration. Absolutely. In terms of social issues as well, we've seen that trust has kind of fought back against, maybe woke ideology or things like that. So she was asked last month whether trans women were women during a debate. And she said pretty explicitly that, no, trans women are not women. How has she responded also to maybe the other rising tides of wokeism in the United Kingdom? Yeah.

So Liz Truss is very anti-woke. And she has spoken on the campaign trail a number of times about her determination to defeat wokeism. and she really has to put that into practice because I think, you know, the woke left have taken over so many of Britain's institutions. And even if you look at Britain's civil service, there's wokeism running right through it, for example, and the use of pronouns by a lot of British civil servants that you'll see on their emails and so on. I think that Liz Truss would like to stamp that out. And the British government, one of the big positives I think about the Boris Johnson administration, on the cultural war front was their determination to root out critical race theory in schools. And so Kemi Badernock, in fact, a minister under Boris Johnson, was a key figure in banning CRT in British schools.

So I expect the Liz Trust government is going to double down on that. So CRT is regarded by the British government as unwelcome and fundamentally racist. So you will not see that in British schools, definitely under a Liz Trust administration. So I think on the cultural war front, very positive. The messaging that Trust is sending on CRT, sending on the trans issues well, you know, trans women are not women. And that's a common sense reality that the British government acknowledges. Complete difference to what the Biden administration is saying. And the Biden presidency is far woke left.

The British government is very, very conservative on these issues. And that's a big difference between the two. Absolutely. I'm curious as well, because you mentioned that trust started. out as a liberal Democrat and that she sort of transitioned into a position where she was more conservative. When did we see that change happen and do we think it's going to stick? Yeah, I mean, that happened many decades ago.

I mean, she was a liberal Democrat activist in her youth and her student days. It's not uncommon actually for, you know, for some conservatives start off on the left. Right. And even Ronald Reagan started off on the left. So, you know, so Liz Truss. I mean, she's a very, very strong, solid conservative now. She's been a strong conservative for many decades. But also very importantly, she's a very, very robust Brexit supporter.

She didn't start off that way, but she is now. And she has pledged to make Britain a real world leader in the Brexit era. So I'm very optimistic, positive about the Liz Truss Premiership, but I'm under no illusions with regard to just how immense the challenges are. And also some things need to be fixed. the environmental green agenda, the Boris Johnson administration, was fundamentally unhelpful for Britain. And so Liz Trust really needs to rethink all that. And, you know, the net zero strategy is very destructive for the British economy.

And I do hope the new administration is going to walk that back. But we'll see what happens on it. Right. Actually, to that point, there were some criticisms of the Johnson administration that he campaigned from the right and then governed from the left. It sounds like from what you're saying that's not really a concern with Liz Trust, at least in what she's demonstrated as of right now. I think with Boris, he was a very mixed sort of, you know, mixed bag in terms of overall policies. And, you know, Boris instinctively conservative. But if you look at a lot of the environmental agendas left wing, actually. And in some areas as well, there's too much government spending under Johnson taxes rose.

Economic freedom declined. All of that has to be addressed and reversed. But Boris was great on Brexit. He was great in standing up to Putin over Ukraine. So there are a lot of positives for Boris Johnson, but some big negatives as well. So Liz Truss, I think, is ideologically more of a conservative prime minister, but she's got to live up to that. And she will be held to account by her own conservative supporters who put in power. Sure.

As one final question here, as we're talking about Boris Johnson, his government was seemingly taken down by a series of scandals. There was Partygate. There was that thing with the member of parliament who was accused of sexual assault. Do we anticipate any of those scandals sticking to trust as a result of her being from the same party? I don't think so. I trust is a lot more, I think, disciplined in terms of how she's going to manage things in Downing Street. I think Partygate is becoming a little distant memory, really.

But ultimately, you know, Boris Johnson should have dealt with all of these issues much earlier. And his failure to do so was a big part of it. and is Dowell. And I think Liz Trust's down the street is going to be very different actually. And it's also going to be more, I would say, more solidly conservative. You look at the advisors around Liz Truss, very, very good people. And I think that they're very high expectations for this administration. I think with Boris Johnson's government is a mixture of conservative, some liberals as well.

So it's different with Liz Truss. And this is a very solidly conservative administration. Excellent. Well, we look forward to seeing what new prime minister trusts will do. That was Nile Gardner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom here at the Heritage Foundation. Nile, it's always a pleasure to have you on. It's my pleasure. Thanks very much, Doug. And that'll do it for today's episode of the Daily Signal podcast.

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