‘Jewish values are Conservative values’: UK Tory frontrunner Truss slammed

Liz Truss, who is favourite to be Britain’s next PM, revealed a simplistic and superficial perception of Jews in a recent interview.

In all likelihood, Liz Truss will become leader of the Conservative Party and the UK's next prime minister on September 5.

During the last few weeks, an increasingly fatigued British public has watched Truss and her rival for the leadership, Rishi Sunak, attempting to out-Thatcher the other in an unedifying road show around the British Isles. Both regard themselves as the rightful heir of the Iron Lady, though most polls and pundits give Truss victory in the vote by party members by a considerable margin.

Like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Truss has moved from liberal dissident to far-Right tribune over the course of several decades. Originally the president of the Liberal Democrats at Oxford University and a supporter of Britain Stronger in Europe, today she speaks of deeply held Conservative values and is an ardent Brexiteer. 

While all politicians do change their minds on important questions, she is posing as the radical insurgent to Sunak's high and mighty party establishment. Undoubtedly, she is seen by many in the Conservative Party as the Boris Johnson continuity candidate, without the boom and bluster — and unpredictability — of her predecessor and his penchant for a veneer of schmoozy slogans.

Yet she will face a dire economic situation: inflation at 10.1 per cent, the highest for 40 years, fuel poverty, no resolution of all the problems arising from Brexit, the Northern Ireland conundrum, a multitude of strikes from increasingly angry, impoverished workers — and almost certainly the prospect of civil strife. Britain is sinking into a winter of discontent.