Review: Ten Years to Save the West, by Liz Truss

In the late Daniel Dennett's memoir I've Been Thinking, the philosopher of mind ends his book with a chapter titled ‘what if I'm wrong?’ Dennett did not think he was wrong, but he asked himself the question. Indeed, throughout his philosophical career he did so, seeking a thorough understanding of the arguments of his critics, that being a sure way of identifying weaknesses in your own arguments and improving them. Liz Truss, prime minister of the United Kingdom for forty-nine days in 2022, does not ask herself whether she might be wrong in her Ten Years to Save the West. Nor does Truss show any understanding of the arguments of her critics. How typical of a politician, one may think. Yet, while politicians routinely defend their judgements and decisions, they do sometimes still ask if, on the big questions they tried to answer, they were wrong. And they reflect on the consequences of their decisions.

Truss does neither. While recognising things did not go to plan in her brief time as prime minister, the closest things the reader gets to a concession are political clichés, versions of the ‘nobody is perfect’ defence and that Truss and her team did not communicate her (correct) ideas well enough. The Treasury press office is criticised for the reception and aftermath of the infamous ‘mini budget’, not enough people who understood Truss's economic ideas were on TV, and so it goes. On the ideas themselves, however, Truss is adamant: her approach was needed and is still needed. Truss concludes the book by coming back to the question of things a leader might have done differently. Her answer is astonishing: she wishes she had got to work on her ideas even earlier.

Where to begin? Ten Years to Save the West follows a standard political memoir structure, albeit with more content on the pre-Downing Street years, obviously. Much of the book is framed by Truss's well-known critique of an ‘orthodoxy’: a left-inspired outlook on life (mainly felt in economic policy) that has seen ‘the West’ take ‘a turn to the left’. The British part of this story seems to rely on Tony Blair and Gordon Brown having vanquished neoliberalism, with David Cameron and George Osborne following this left-wing consensus to the detriment of true conservatism. Austerity is alluded to in the book when Truss notes she was against cuts to the prisons budget and to selling off Foreign Office properties around the world. Truss is pro-small government, of course, and does not seem to think the austerity programme was conservative enough, but does think it was damaging to some of the departments she led. The contradictions soon stack up.

On education policy, Truss is concerned about a left-inspired move that says schools should not teach children facts, favours a traditional approach to teaching and simultaneously suggests that parents should have more power over what goes on in our schools. Presumably parents would, then, agree with the direction of Truss's very top-down view on controlling education policy—aside from the parents who hate the teaching of facts. Maybe these parents can be safely ignored, seeing as they most likely do not exist.

On Brexit, Truss adopts the increasingly marginal view that success for Britain could have been achieved only through aggressive tactics. On the EU, ‘the only thing they understand is pain’, she writes. Britain had options and—with Boris Johnson in charge—Brexit could have happened quickly enough. Incredibly serious, existing issues like the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are, unsurprisingly, not given the serious consideration they deserve.

There are many strange—indeed horrifying—moments. Speaking to a Trump administration trade negotiator about the removal of whisky tariffs on the phone, Truss recalls him mentioning ‘in passing that the street was full of people with huge American flags walking towards Congress. Little did I realise how seismic that event would turn out to be’. It was 6 January 2021. Truss does not add anything more. She should, surely, have added some additional words to describe that attack upon American democracy.

Truss suggests that furlough (the job support scheme initiated during the Covid pandemic) was too generous and stymied innovative free market responses on the part of individuals. On foreign policy, her reading of the New Labour years was of politicians ‘generally apologetic about Britain's place in the world’, seeming incredibly far away from Blair's worldview (other criticisms of Blair's foreign policy can, obviously, be made). Truss partakes in the culture wars, discussing history—the practice of researching and writing about the past—and statues, confusing the two. She makes her own mistakes about the past: future editions of Truss's book are being corrected to remove a fake antisemitic quote (BBC News, 19 April 2024).

Approaching the end of the book, Truss argues that for conservatism to triumph globally, it needs conservative leaders in the United States, Australia, Canada and ‘across the free world’. Truss notes that she became used to being the ‘only conservative in the room’ during her time in international roles. This is a strange argument, overall. When Truss was trade secretary, Trump was in the White House and Scott Morrison prime minister of Australia. Her experience is of a C/conservative being in power and seeing the consequences (often) of political projects inspired and led by the right. Yet she tells a different story. The general, very positive approach to Trump and his politics in the book may have one eye on the political culture of the American right—something Nigel Farage enjoys, while Truss appeared on US media to promote the book.

Finally, we arrive at the mini budget: an inflection point in British politics and the downwards trajectory of the Conservative Party in the opinion polls, though you would not necessarily know that from reading Truss's account. Here is the final, big contradiction in Ten Years to Save the West. A view of markets as natural with an unchanging logic emerges strongly. Yet, the market response to the mini budget culminated in Truss's second chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, telling her she needed to quit for the UK to restore market confidence. This was, according to Truss, the ‘last twist of the knife from the market-whisperers’. The former prime minister still does not see that launching tax cuts, with no independent forecasting and only a rhetorical commitment to a future spending review, broke the expectations of the market. Truss did not and does not understand the thing she reifies.

There is a defence of Truss that says at least she cares about ideas and believes in a clear direction. That, so goes the defence, is at least refreshing. But this is to mistake dogma for ideology. Critics of ideology typically confuse it with dogma when seeking to bury ideology. Truss confuses ideology with dogma while seeking to praise ideology. Having a clear political map is good. Guiding ‘ends’ are necessary. But if your ‘means’ blow up in your face, you should ask yourself if there are alternative ways of reaching your goals, based on your context and priorities. That's ideology. To continue thinking you were right all along is dogma.

Ten Years to Save the West, by Liz Truss. Biteback Publishing. 320 pp. £20.00