Liz Truss looks to be winning a decisive victory for cold-eyed conservatism. A victory for I went to the school of hard knocks and university of real-life conservatism. For I never asked for charity and worked for every penny conservatism. For public-sector workers are lazy and benefit claimants are scroungers conservatism. For get on your bike and get off my land conservatism. For no one ever said that life was fair and have you seen how many holidays teachers get conservatism.
Most people can be provoked by the waste of public money into thinking like that for some of the time. Liz Truss appeals to people who think like that all of the time. That is say, she appeals to the only people who matter in the UK today, a majority of the 150,000 or so members of the Conservative party, who look set to make her our prime minister.
Last Friday she said her response to average fuel bills hitting £4,000 by January would be to ‘do things in a Conservative way of lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts’.
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