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EDINBURGH,
Scotland — These are trying times for the British, as I am finding on a
visit to Scotland with a brief foray south into England. All isn’t
right with their world, and there are expectations that the winter will
be the hardest to bear since the long-ago days of the end of World War
II.
The price of everything is up with inflation at 10 percent and predicted to top that by as much as double.
Compounding
that, there is a sense that nobody is in charge. The new prime
minister, Liz Truss, has had a disastrous beginning with a revolt of the
rank and file of her own Conservative Party. She has had to eat her
words and, according to the New Statesman, has had the worst imaginable
beginning for a new prime minister. Truss seems to have abandoned
traditional conservative principles and that, together with her own
wobbly trajectory, has the party worried.
The
centerpiece of doubt about the prime minister is a mini-budget that her
chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, introduced just after she
was elected to the leadership. It called for more spending and a cut in
the top income tax rate from 45 percent to 40 percent.
This
was supposed to encourage business, but even diehard conservatives
couldn’t justify a lot of new spending — needed to ease the burden of
energy costs — while slashing revenue. Rather than making businesses
happy, the proposal sent the pound into a free-fall and the markets into
turmoil.
According to her many critics, Truss did a U-turn, a maneuver she has done often in her career.
Another
misstep happened as the Conservatives assembled in the central English
city of Birmingham for their annual party congress: The prime minister
refused to guarantee that social spending would be linked to the cost of
living.
Complex social obligations in Britain are lumped together under the rubric “benefit.”
“No, no, no,” cried the party, including cabinet members. Benefits had to be indexed to the cost of living.
But
not all of the mess is of Truss’ making. Things were in sorry shape
when the party sacked the previous prime minister, the notoriously
articulate but incompetent Boris Johnson.
The
economy was faltering, labor unrest was building, and issues such as
education, health care, immigration and the Northern Irish border
demanded strong, deft leadership.
The
result has been that the Tories, as the Conservatives are called, are
between 14 and 30 points behind the opposition Labor Party in the polls,
and they are expecting a drubbing in the next election in two years
unless Truss can pull things together. The somber mood in Birmingham
suggests that gloom will turn to doom.
The
Truss government is set to subsidize heating costs this winter, which
promises real hardship across the board, from pubs closing at a record
rate to middle-class households digging out the woolies.
The
primary fuel for making electricity and home heating is natural gas,
which has increased tenfold over historical levels because of Russia’s
war in Ukraine. The subsidy isn’t disputed, but it will take British
borrowing to new levels even as interest costs are soaring — an ugly
combination.
Another
open issue is how to fix Britain’s beloved National Health Service,
which has fallen into institutional disrepair. Waiting lists are longer
than they have ever been, even for minor procedures, and successive
management shakeups haven’t solved the problems. Yet the health service
remains the most popular government program in Britain, and Truss will
have to produce something more than Band-Aids for the NHS if its
failures aren’t to be, albeit unfairly, laid to Truss.
Another
headache for the embattled prime minister is that organized labor is on
the march again. Strikes, euphemistically called industrial action in
Britain, are back. The railroads are being hit, and there is some sense
that the bad old days when Britain was the Sick Man of Europe, before
Margaret Thatcher, may be returning.
There
is a backstory that isn’t being aired much in the largely Conservative
British newspapers: the huge, self-inflicted wound of Britain’s
withdrawal from the European Union, known as Brexit. Its effects are
everywhere, and there is a complicity in not pointing this out: We voted
for it, and we own it. It wasn’t a party vote, so Brexit remains a
common guilt.
Long
after Truss has gone, Brexit will remain the guiding fact of Britain’s
place in the world. A place less certain than at any time in its long
history.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS. |