With Liz Truss, we’re getting our third-ever female Prime Minister. So girlboss, right? Maybe she’ll let us drink our sewage water in glittery pink cups to celebrate this win for feminism.
The problem is, that Truss has proven herself to be antithetical to not just feminism but pretty much every other progressive social cause. The one thing the statistically more anti-capitalist Gen Z and more right-wing electorate can agree on is that Truss is essentially ‘Thatcher 2.0’ – but given the widespread damage Thatcher’s policies inflicted on underrepresented groups and the economy as a whole, this is hardly a compliment.
On the surface, Gen Z’s derision of Truss shouldn’t be so shocking – only 21% of young people voted for the Conservatives in the General Election, while 67% want to live in a broadly socialist system. But as a 24-year-old Gen Z-er myself (Gen Z is typically used to refer to those born after 1997), I can confidently tell you that our distaste for Truss isn’t just the blind Tory-hating and “wokeness” that our critics often accuse us of. We have good reason to be distrustful.
She's Britain’s third woman prime minister.
First of all, as the comedian Joe Lycett appearing on Laura Kuessenberg’s flagship politics show possibly suggests, it’s literally impossible to take the woman seriously. She has no solid plans or ideas about how to get us through the worst recession and cost-of-living crisis we’ve seen since 2009. First of all, despite housing inflation rising to 20%, a 12.6% rise in food inflation, and energy bills for the typical household rising to £3,549, Truss assured us that it’s not a “crisis.” It’s just the special snowflakes being silly again.
There’s been vague mentions of an energy price freeze and cutting taxes, but the latter will only positively impact the richest in society, which Truss insisted yesterday is “only fair.” After all, at a time when an estimated 1.7 million people are set to be pushed into homelessness this winter because of the cost of living, can’t someone think of the rich? Thank God for Liz.
But it’s OK guys; Liz will also sort out the energy crisis for us by bringing back fracking, despite a summer heatwave showing that global warming is already at a crisis point. This is because she’s a forward-thinking person. So forward-thinking, in fact, that she’s ready to tackle our broken NHS by… consulting a Health Secretary from a Cabinet that doesn’t even exist yet.
If her disastrous interview with Laura Kuenssberg is anything to go by, the future of the country looks bleak, but if she doesn’t destroy the country through fracking and famine, she may do by getting us blown up. During her time in the Foreign Office, she directly contradicted the Defense Chief over Britons heading to Ukraine to bear arms and managed to inflame an already-volatile situation so much, the Kremlin started making thinly-veiled threats of nuclear war in the West.
Is this the person we really want to be navigating one of the most volatile wars Europe has seen since WWII?
56% of young women are worse off than last year, a new survey reveals.
Maybe I’m being unfair. When she isn’t ranting about cheese, she is participating in important votes in Parliament. The only problem is that her voting record shows that she’s voted consistently against raising benefits even, at the very least, in line with inflation, consistently against more financial aid for disabled people unable to work, but always voted consistently for cutting benefits further.
It’s also important to note that her voting record shows that she’s done nothing to help and support Gen Zers like me. She voted in favour of raising tuition fees and raising the cap to £9,000, voted against financial support/schemes for school-leavers, against lowering the legal voting age and also voted against schemes that guaranteed jobs for young people who have been unemployed for extended periods of time. Who exactly is it that would be levelling up under Truss? Because it certainly wouldn’t be young people.
Some might say it’s unfair to judge Liz Truss on her past voting record, but when it comes to supporting Gen Z and minority groups, she was in the perfect position to do so as Women and Equalities Minister. So, what has she actually done in this role, at a time when sexual harassment among Westminster and concerns around women’s safety were at an all-time high?
The answer is, she did absolutely nothing except provide pathetic soundbites about “wokeness” and “identity politics” to pander to those who actually believe in this completely manufactured culture war. And let’s not forget the damage she caused to trans people with her Gender Recognition Act reforms and lack of action over the continuation of trans conversion therapy.
It’s easy to frame distaste for Truss as being an exclusively left-wing, Gen Z problem, but the truth is, even Gen Z Tories are turning against her. Among UK adults of any age, her approval rating is only 19%.
Ultimately, I think that it is important that we don’t become blindsided and misguided by the fact that our new Prime Minister is a woman. Although it's been a hard year for us with women’s safety and Roe v. Wade, it’s crucial that we remember that gender representation means nothing when the representative themselves is entirely hollow. With her dubious track record on women’s rights, make no mistake. Liz Truss only stands for one person, and that's Liz Truss.
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