British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss won the election as leader of the Conservative Party and will become the country’s new Prime Minister.
Britain has a new prime minister. Boris Johnson will be replaced by current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Truss, 47, wants to be seen as the new Iron Lady, promising to cut taxes and calling for Putin to be stopped. What can Ukraine expect from such castling?
How is it chosen?
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss received 57.4% of the Conservative Party vote, her rival Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak 42.6%. The winner of this election, in which only members of the current ruling party vote, automatically becomes the head of the British government.
After an apparent first female prime minister in Britain’s history as Margaret Thatcher, it is only natural that successors or opponents also try her nickname “Iron Lady”. He was also tried by a typical party functionary, Theresa May, who was prime minister from 2016 to 2019. It didn’t fit.
Liz Truss, more than May, resembles the determined and ideological conservative leader Thatcher, and Truss herself tries to evoke this similarity.
iron image
Now the British press noticed how she was photographed in a tank in Eastern Europe or how she went to TV debates in a blue blouse – all these are reminders of Thatcher’s media image.
Subordinates in the Foreign Ministry say that Truss manages his own social networks, independently and personally creating an image. The matter is not limited to external details. In speeches and articles, Truss appears to the public as an ideological politician, who has not led Great Britain in the last thirty years, since the time of Thatcher – a true Tory, a right-wing liberal.
Not the liberal that began to be called that in recent decades, first in the United States and then in Europe, not essentially the left, but a primordial liberal – those for individual freedom and business freedom. At the same time, Truss did not go to church and voted for the legalization of same-sex marriages – such is modern British conservatism.
“At least in the eyes of his supporters, he is the tax heir of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan,” the Times wrote of Truss in June, at the start of the election of a new leader.
EPA
Rhetoric about Ukraine
There is a war going on in Europe, Great Britain – with the person of Truss – is actively helping Ukraine. Truss as head of the Foreign Office in relation to the war became one of the most prominent opponents of Russia among Western politicians of the second plan.
Before Russia’s attack on Ukraine, he, like Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, Boris Johnson, spoke, warned, threatened consequences. I went to Russia to talk to Sergey Lavrov. After February 24, like many other European politicians, he started saying that Putin should be stopped.
“If we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, other countries will be under threat: the Baltic countries, Poland, Moldova – and this could end in a conflict with NATO. We don’t want that. That’s why it’s so important now that make sacrifices,” Truss said in one of his public speeches in April.
“The era of engagement with Russia is over. We need new approaches to European security based on resistance, defense and deterrence,” Truss continued.
Truss promises that under his leadership, Great Britain will definitely make its contribution to increasing Europe’s defense capability: one of the points of the Truss program is to increase military appropriations from the current 2.1% to 3% of GDP. True, only until 2030. Today Britain spends about 60 billion dollars for military needs, and this is more than any other NATO country, except, of course, the United States.
In addition, Truss has promised that Britain will take an active part in rebuilding Ukraine after the war, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be the first foreign leader he calls after he becomes prime minister.
Source: korrespondent
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.