HAIL THE NEW P.M.:  Britain now has a new prime minister, succeeding Boris Johnson.  She is pro-American conservative Liz Truss,  the current foreign minister, and I am eager to see her do her Margaret Thatcher stuff.  From Reuters: 

Liz Truss will become Britain’s next prime minister after winning a leadership race for the governing Conservative party on Monday, vowing to press ahead with promises of tax cuts and to deal with a growing energy crisis.

After weeks of an often bad-tempered and divisive leadership contest, Truss, currently the foreign minister, defeated former finance minister Rishi Sunak in a vote of Conservative Party members, winning by 81,326 votes to 60,399.

“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” Truss said after the result was announced. “I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills, but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply.”

Truss takes over as the country faces a cost of living crisis, industrial unrest, a recession and war in Europe, where Britain has been a leading backer of Ukraine. She appeared to rule out another national election for the next two years, saying she would win a great victory for her party in 2024.

She succeeds Boris Johnson, who was forced to announce his resignation in July after months of scandal saw support for his administration drain away.

He will travel to Scotland to meet Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday to officially tender his resignation. Truss will follow him and be asked to form a government by the monarch.

Long the front-runner to replace him, Truss will become the Conservatives’ fourth prime minister since a 2015 election. Over that period the country has been buffeted from crisis to crisis, and now faces what is forecast to be a long recession triggered by sky-rocketing inflation which hit 10.1% in July.

Foreign minister under Johnson, Truss, 47, has promised to act quickly to tackle the cost of living crisis, saying that within a week she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills and securing future fuel supplies.

She signaled during her leadership campaign she would challenge convention by scrapping tax increases and cutting other levies in a move some economists say would fuel inflation.

That, plus a pledge to review the remit of the Bank of England while protecting its independence, has prompted some investors to dump the pound and government bonds.

Kwasi Kwarteng, widely tipped to be her finance minister, sought to calm markets on Monday, by saying in an article in the Financial Times newspaper that under Truss there would need to be “some fiscal loosening” but that her administration would act in “a fiscally responsible way”.

Asked if he would be finance minister following Truss‘s victory, Kwarteng told Reuters he didn’t know.

Truss faces a long, costly and difficult to-do list, which opposition lawmakers say is the result of 12 years of poor Conservative government. Several have called for an early election – something Truss has said she will not allow.

Veteran Conservative lawmaker David Davis described the challenges she would take on as prime minister as “probably the second most difficult brief of post-war prime ministers” after Conservative Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

COMMENT:  My main concern is her foreign policy, and I think we can be confident that she'll maintain a strong bond with the United States. However, there is instability in the British government, with many observers giving Truss only a small chance of surviving politically in the next two years.  The dread fear is that the far-left Labour Party might win an election, placing the British-American alliance in serious peril.

On the other hand, with the United States giving the appearance of weakness, wokeness and foolishness, it is possible that Truss, no pushover, could emerge as the de facto leader of the free world.  Margaret Thatcher never reached that status because Ronald Reagan was such a strong president.  But Thatcher was a firm ally who gave additional strength to the Reagan Revolution.  Right now, there's room at the top of the free world. 

September 5, 2022