What can the election of Liz Truss teach us?

Liz Truss. -Reuters

THE election of Liz Truss as the UK’s next prime minister calls to mind a noticeable trend worldwide of electing heads of government who aren’t, shall we say, what all would consider the sharpest tool in the shed.

Donald Trump is, of course, the most prominent recent example. But this trend may go as far back as George W. Bush (whose reputation appears to have improved, by sheer virtue of Trump being considered so much worse).

There are a number of videos on Truss online - some featuring possums and memorable quotes about cheese - demonstrating what can at best be described as a person who not only lacks erudition, but seems to be clearly struggling with basic articulation.

Having got that off the chest, today’s article will not be focused on denigrating Truss. There is a chance she will be perfectly capable of doing that herself in good time.

Instead, this may be a good opportunity to look at what I would argue are structural failures of the British political system.

Such an assessment may be particularly useful because even though we recently celebrated the anniversary of Malaya and Sabah’s independence from the British, we appear not to have become independent or sufficiently detached from the political infrastructure and culture they left behind.

Learning from our own mistakes is as necessary as it is painful and hard. Learning from the mistakes of others can be thought of as a similar lesson for a somewhat cheaper price.

Perhaps the first thing we should examine is the larger arc of British politics since about 2015.

General elections were held in the UK in 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2019.

There has been an obvious shift in stability - going from the more standard 4-5 year terms, to suddenly a stretch of general elections every two years.

The current ruling party, the Conservatives, have won every election since 2015, but have had four different PMs in those seven years.

David Cameron was ousted and replaced by Theresa May, who was ousted and replaced by Boris Johnson, who was ousted and replaced by Liz Truss.

Not to be outdone, Malaysia has had only one election since 2018, but three PMs (and counting) since then.

The fundamental question that should be asked is: are these frequent changes of leadership good or healthy for the country in general?

A core tenet of democracy is, of course, that voters should be able to kick out leaders we feel are not performing.

Is that what has happened in either the UK or Malaysia in these last few years though?

Instead of normal voters controlling who is or isn’t in power, sitting PMs were all ejected by MPs in Parliament.

The UK has 650 parliamentary seats and 67 million citizens; in Malaysia, there are 222 seats and 32 million citizens.

PMs are ousted on the whims of the 650 and 222 MPs, in a manner in which normal voters have absolutely no say.

Those MPs decided that it was better to plunge the country into leadership crisis after leadership crisis, rather than focus on working together for the good of the nation.

Would voters have decided differently? We can’t say for sure, because they were never asked nor given a chance. That’s simply not how the system works.

It is also worth looking at how Truss was ultimately chosen.

The mechanism of the Conservative Party elections can be found in Wikipedia.

“Under the new rules for the 2022 contest, in the first round, on July 13, candidates will require 30 votes from MPs to avoid dropping out. In each subsequent round, from July 14 onwards, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated.

“Finally, when only two candidates remain, Conservative Party members will vote to decide between them on a one-member-one-vote basis. The candidate who receives the most votes wins the contest.”

In other words, Truss was ultimately elected by about 140,000 Conservative party members, out of a population of 67 million in the UK.

Worse yet, even before those 140,000 had a say, a mere 358 people reduced the options members could vote for to only two people.

I believe it reasonable to conclude then, that the person ultimately chosen as PM is pandering primarily to the needs of 358 people, and to a lesser extent, the needs of 140,000 people, as opposed to the needs of 67 million people.

This, I would argue, is the severe dysfunction of Westminster democracy on full display.

Another factor worth close scrutiny is the time, energy, and resources that are spent on these internal political battles, and the "destruction" that is left in its wake.

In most endeavours, we ask ourselves the question: are the resources we spend worth the results we achieve?

No corporation would invest in something that loses them money. Yet, in politics, that seems to be all we do.

We spend all our time bickering, tearing each other down, and trying to step on each other’s heads (and in many countries, unbelievable sums of money) as we struggle to reach the top of an odious pile.

As Truss’ victory was announced, several Cabinet members announced their resignation.

To an extent, I can respect this as the right thing to do, rather than working for a leader you disagree with.

In the bigger picture though, this phenomenon highlights the zero sum nature of our political systems.

Instead of recruiting the best and brightest and finding ways for this incredible talent pool to all work together and contribute to the nation, we insist on dividing them up into camps where only one camp at a time can be meaningfully contributing.

Within and across these camps, we emphasise and reward skills that revolve around being able to curry favour among rich supporters, bash your opponents, and rile people up against each other.

Leaders who are actually true experts in their field, and skilled at building consensus and erecting bridges are all sidelined in favour of those whose sole expertise seems to be burning those same bridges.

At the end of the day, the system determines the quality of leaders we get, and the quality of our leaders determine the quality of our every day lives.

If we want better lives, we should hunker down and get to work on better systems.

NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant. He can be reached at [e-mail].