Jon Hartley and Liz Truss discuss the former UK Prime Minister’s upbringing and her early interest in economics and politics, her pro-growth policy vision for the United Kingdom, her premiership and the 2022 UK gilt crisis, the state of free speech in the UK and the anglosphere, the Starmer Labour government, the role of the UK and its allies in the world amidst the rise of China, and the future direction of politics and the economy in the UK.
Recorded on July 21, 2025.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics.
For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[MUSIC]
>> Jon Hartley (00:00):
This is the Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century
podcast, an official podcast of the HooverInstitution Economic Policy Working Group
where we talk about economics,markets, and public policy.
I'm Jon Hartley, your host today.
My guest is Liz Truss, who served as PrimeMinister of the United Kingdom in 2022,
(00:24):
as a Tory MP from 2010 through 2024,where she served in a number
of cabinet positions, various Conservativegovernments, including Foreign Secretary.
She's also most recently the authorof Ten Years to Save the West.
Welcome, Ms. Truss.
>> Liz Truss (00:39):
Great to be on the show.
>> Jon Hartley (00:42):
Well, I wanna start with your early life and
it's a real honor to have you on here.
You were born in Oxford.
Your father was John Truss,who's a professor of mathematics at Leeds.
And you also studied at Oxford,like many British Prime Ministers, and
you studied philosophy,politics and economics.
I mean, at what point do you first decidethat you like politics and economics and
(01:04):
that you actually want to do this fora living?
Was this something that was just destined,given that you were born in Oxford, or
was this something thatyou came across over time?
>> Liz Truss (01:15):
So I was always quite interested in politics and
Politics in the 80s was veryinteresting and exciting and
of course there was a bigbattle between the US and
the USSR who was gonna win the Cold War.
And my parents were on the leftwing side of politics and
(01:37):
my mother actually campaignedagainst nuclear weapons.
She was pretty anti-American actually, and
certainly anti the policies ofthe US administration at the time.
I think one of the first political peopleI heard about was Caspar Weinberger,
which must be quite unusual fora child growing up in the 80s in Britain.
(02:02):
And when I got a bit older andI saw what was actually happening and
the role that Mrs.Thatcher successfully played in bringing
to an end the Soviet Union andbringing to an end the Cold War,
I sort of thought, well, actually,disarming wasn't the right strategy.
(02:25):
It was the right strategy toactually call out the Soviet Union,
talk about how there was a huge problem.
It was obvious whenthe Berlin Wall fell and
all the people were tryingto get into the west,
it was obvious that the Soviet Union wasnot an aspirational model of the world.
Yeah, I think my mum in particular wasslightly misty eyed about what happened,
(02:50):
even though she'd spent a yearin Warsaw in the 1970s.
So she knew perfectly wellthat the model didn't work.
So that's, I guess, my first exposureto politics and talking about politics.
And then I joined the Liberal Democratsand people were saying, why did you join?
(03:12):
What was not the Conservative Party.
But the answer is my parents were veryleft wing and almost being a liberal
was the acceptable face of being rightwing where I was in Leeds at the time.
And it was only really when I got touniversity and met Conservatives that
I decided I was a Conservative andI joined the Conservative Party.
>> Jon Hartley (03:38):
That's amazing.
And yeah, I feel like certainly collegeand universities can be one of those,
I think, transformational periods,I think for a lot of people and
discovering sort of what they believe in,that's quite interesting.
So I take it Thatcher has sortof been your North Star for
you from the beginning.
>> Liz Truss (03:59):
So I think the thing that really sort of started me on the road to
being on the right of politicswas actually experiencing
what happened at my school.
I went to a comprehensive school in Leeds,which is in the north of England, and
it was very politically correct.
There were lessons on racism,there were lessons on sexism.
(04:21):
And I just thought,this is a load of rubbish.
Why are kids being taught about thisstuff when some of them in the school
weren't actually very good at reading andwriting?
And that was my first exposureto kind of left wing ideology.
And it was that that reallyput me on the road, I think,
to being a conservative and wanting tolive in a country that was successful,
(04:45):
not a country that was justmaking excuses the whole time.
And the places I grew up soPaisley in Scotland and Leeds in England,
frankly, the,their better days were behind them.
They had been pioneers ofthe industrial revolution.
They'd been huge manufacturing hubs and
(05:07):
they were now full ofdisused factories and
derelict buildings because they'dlost a lot of their purpose.
And I just thought,why does it have to be like this?
So it was more being in quite a leftwing place and just thinking,
these left wingers,what are they actually talking about?
(05:30):
Their solutions don't seem to work.
And when I got to university and startedstudying economics and I almost arrived
at economics by accident, I'd actuallygone because I was interested in politics.
And the degree course was politics,philosophy, and economics.
So economics was a bit of an afterthoughtonce I started studying it and
(05:52):
saw everything from free tradeto how free markets work,
I've begun to understand why it wasthat these places that had been so
successful had beencompeted out of business.
The policies that the British governmenthad adopted of nationalizing industry,
(06:12):
this is,
I'm talking about the sort of post warAtley government hadn't been effective.
And I became very concerned aboutBritain joining the Euro because which
was being pushed by the laborgovernment of the time,
because I could see that havinga sort of free floating currency was
(06:32):
one of the ways that a country couldactually adjust its economic policy.
So all of those things I then started tolearn about and I built that worldview.
>> Jon Hartley (06:45):
Well, I think it's rare for, I guess, politicians in general and
members of Parliamentto be numbers oriented.
Obviously you grew up in a familywhere you have some very amazing
mathematical minds in your own family anddoing philosophy, politics,
economics and working as an accountant anddoing all these things.
(07:09):
I feel like that's just a rare skillset for politicians in general.
And I mean, it does seem like there was,I guess this rift in the late 80s too,
between the Thatcherites andJohn Major and the role of UK in Europe,
I think was a big part of that andthe euro was a big part of that break.
(07:31):
So to me, I see that as sort ofbeing one of these key moments,
also setting Hong Kong onthe course that it's been on.
So I guess, fast forward a goodnumber of decades later here,
you come in as Prime Minister in 2022,
you have a firmly pro growth agendaat the outset of your premiership and
(07:55):
you wrote a book, in fact,ten years prior called Britain.
Britannia Unchained, Global Lessons forGrowth and Prosperity.
So I think economic growth has beensomething that I think is always been
front of mind for you, is my sense.
You co-authored this withfour other Conservative MPs,
including your Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
(08:17):
And I'm just curious one,can you describe to me, I guess,
what this growth sort of thinking andplan has been for a long time?
Obviously you've been thinkingabout it for a long time, but
how badly in your mind does the UnitedKingdom need pro growth policies and
sort of a revamp on economic growth?
(08:38):
We can talk about what's going on now andthe Starmer premiership,
and many things are going in the worstdirection, in an opposite direction.
But I'm curious what's beenyour vision as far as growth
United Kingdom over the decadesgoing into your premiership?
>> Liz Truss (08:56):
Well, so
the reason we wrote the book is we feltthat Britain was on the wrong track,
even though at the time we were juniorbackbenchers in a Conservative government.
So we felt that the policies the countrydesperately needed weren't happening.
And that is why we wrote the book.
(09:17):
Looking at how do economies actuallysucceed, what does it take?
Cuz Britain was already stagnating.
It was already stagnating by the 2010s.
It had been going on for some time.
You could argue that itreally started in the 1990s
with the coup against Mrs. Thatcher.
(09:40):
That's where it started.
But that is only the recent historyof Britain's economic failure.
In fact, it goes way back tothe end of the 19th century,
the development ofthe permanent bureaucracy,
the failure to really take on theAmericans and Germans in manufacturing.
Britain was a country that ledthe Industrial Revolution.
(10:03):
But the fact is that we got overtaken, and
we got overtaken due toa variety of factors.
You've talked about the lack ofpoliticians who've got numerical skills.
I could make that more general point.
Across the population,
Britain is not done enough tocompete in areas like manufacturing.
Even though we've had great universities,
(10:25):
we've not been good at translatingthat into economic success.
And what we've had is a very,very powerful bureaucracy.
We've had elements of socialism inour country for a very long time.
Of course, those were introducedat the start of the 20th century.
But if you look at the Attlee governmentnationalizing huge swathes of industry,
(10:51):
creating the National Health Service andthe welfare state,
we're now in a position where the Britishgovernment is spending 45% of our GDP.
And even, back when we wrotethe Book Britannia Unchained,
it was still up in the high 30s,it's now got even worse since then.
(11:13):
And at the same time, we've just got hugelevels of regulation on our economy.
Partly that is driven byour membership of the EU,
where lots of regulations were added,but a lot of it is domestic.
The Town and Country Planning Act makes itpretty much impossible to build anything
anywhere in Britain.
We've got incrediblyexpensive house prices.
(11:34):
Our energy costs are four times whatthe energy costs are in the United States,
partly because ofthe environmental agenda,
partly because fracking has been banned.
But on every possible measure, [LAUGH] weare economically very uncompetitive and
we now have the fastest rateof millionaires leaving
(11:55):
the country of any nation in the world,apart from China.
But what I'm saying andwhat we say in Britannia Unchained is
the seeds of that are verylongstanding in Britain.
It's a cultural issue.
There's an anti success culture, sort of.
(12:16):
We call it the tall poppy syndrome ofthe tallest poppy gets cut off an entry,
entrepreneurial culture.
So if I'm to compare us to the UnitedStates, there's much more of a fail
fast culture in the US and peoplerespect people that build up businesses.
I think that's less, less true in Britain.
So these were all the thingsthat we were trying to address.
(12:37):
And it does go back to what I wassaying about the places I grew up in.
I want to see them be successful.
I think it's incredibly depressing.
A country that's declining andliving in a country that's
economically declining leadsto all other types of decline,
(12:57):
whether it's high crime rates, drug abuse,
social unrest,all of those things result or
are correlated with a poorlyperforming economy.
So to me, that was the number oneissue that we, we had to deal with.
>> Jon Hartley (13:15):
Absolutely.
And yeah, I mean, it's amazing tosee what's happened to the UK so
over the decades.
I mean, obviously World War II UKbeing bombed out,
I mean, had a huge impact onBritain's growth trajectory and
the US in many respects overtakingthe UK is having the world's
reserve currency becomethe world's largest economy,
(13:39):
in the post war period being almosthalf the world's GDP at that point.
Obviously, many other players are, are,are growing now, China and many others.
So I wanna talk about early in yourpremiership we have on September 23rd,
your Chancellor Kwasi Kwartengdelivered a Ministerial
(14:02):
statement titled the Growth Plan andit proposed to reverse
an increase in the corporate rateincreases that were scheduled,
also a cut to the personal income tax.
A proposal to essentiallyimplement many of these.
I think great ideas alignedin Britannia Unchained and
(14:23):
really I think a pretty standardsort of pro-growth agenda,
like in the US largely, in part deficitfinance, then all hell broke loose.
I mean, I'm curious->> Liz Truss: If I could cut into this
deficit finance thing thatit wasn't deficit financed.
The fact is the deficit in Britainwas huge and the debt was huge.
(14:45):
But my view was if we'd done nothing,taxes would have gone up because
that had been legislated for andtaxes going up were actually going
to result in a worse deficit becausecertainly over a period of five years.
And a lot of independenteconomists agree with me on that,
(15:06):
that if you raise corporation tax somuch you damage economic activity,
businesses stop, stop opening andcompanies leave the country.
Which is exactly what's happened.
And it's the idea it was deficit financedas opposed to all of the spending
increases which have now beenallowed under the Labour government.
That is a leftist talking point andit's a point that's being used against me.
(15:30):
But I would argue that what we weredoing was not deficit financed.
It was actually creating the growthwould have helped pay off the deficit.
Now that the policies I putforward were not implemented,
we've got the counterfactual and thecounterfactual is the debt has gone up.
(15:54):
So it wasn't deficit financed.
Yeah and I think I'm with you in that the media, I think,
portrayed a certain narrativethat does incorrect at the time.
And I think a lot of economists hadsort of gone back to this period.
And there was this big spike in30 year gilts that moved from
(16:16):
33.5% to 5% in only a few days.
And I think in hindsight now,I think a lot of economists now look
at this as in part being sortof a confluence of factors.
So things like liability driven investmentstrategies, employed by pension funds,
because they have to matchthe duration of their liabilities,
(16:39):
even a small jump in guilts canbe sort of accelerated by pension
funds that are now forced tosell their UK government bonds.
And also you had sort of thisauction at the same time.
And so something that probably wouldhave been a routine small jump in
government bonds was really exacerbated.
(17:01):
So I'm just curious,
how do you think about these sort of otherfacts in terms of what was going on?
>> Liz Truss (17:07):
I think it's important to.
I think there were variousthings going on, but
the fiscal package I announcedwas smaller even by the Office of
Budget Responsibilities numbers,which I don't necessarily agree with.
But it was smaller than the fiscalpackages Rishi Sunak announced and it was
(17:27):
also smaller than the fiscal packagesRachel Reese have announced since.
So there is something about the waythat the mainstream media and
the economic establishment in Britain
view public spending asopposed to tax cuts, i.e.
They're much more willing toaccept the idea that whereas they
(17:51):
don't accept that tax cutsare inevitable or need to be done.
So there's a asymmetric attitude by whatI would describe as Keynesian economists,
which now dominate the treasury,the bank of England,
the Office of Budget Responsibility.
And what has happened in Britain isthat those entities have required a lot
(18:15):
more power.
So Gordon Brown made the bankof England independent.
They used to be underthe control of the Treasury.
He put the Civil Service Code into law.
So it made it much harder, in fact,impossible to hire and fire bureaucrats.
He also, this actuallyhappened under George Osborne.
The Conservative Chancellor createdthe Office of Budget Responsibility,
(18:38):
which is a bit like an extreme versionof the Congressional Budget Office.
So essentially those bodies were makingjudgments about economic and fiscal policy
that I believe should be politicaljudgments, but were made by those bodies.
And those bodies have a very,very clear worldview.
And it's the same asthe worldview taken by the IMF,
(18:59):
taken by the Democrat Party in the UnitedStates, taken by the World Economic Forum.
Public spending good, tax cuts bad.
And this is why, despite the factRachel Reeves has announced policies
that are much larger fiscally,they've been on the spending side.
(19:20):
So that's entirely acceptable to thesepeople because they like big government.
So that was one factor,the sort of bias in the system and
the group think in the systemthat was pro Keynesian.
And that's been building up formany, many years.
Essentially, since the successfulsupply side of the policies of the 80s,
(19:40):
that kind of worldviewhas been building up.
And I think that if you look atthe backlash Donald Trump has faced
in the markets from economists,it's the same worldview
that has become prevalent andwe need to defeat that.
And I think Scott Bessent is doing a verygood job of making the argument for
(20:02):
supply side policies.
But separate to that,there was an issue, unbeknownst to me,
taking place in the markets themselves,and you referenced it.
These LDIs that pension funds had investedinto, they were essentially a leveraged
product that depended on interestrates being low in perpetuity.
(20:24):
Now, of course,they weren't gonna be low in perpetuity.
They were artificially low.
Ultimately, interest rates had to rise andthose funds were caught short.
It created a run.
And what happened is the bank of England,which is meant to be responsible for
financial stability,rather than ensuring financial stability,
(20:47):
used the opportunity to try and pushthe blame onto the mini budget for what
was happening was in fact their failureto properly regulate the pension funds.
And that was very difficult for
us because we weren't awareof the LDI issue at the time.
We were blindsided.
And subsequently the bankof England themselves
(21:10):
have admitted that two-thirds ofall the gilt spikes that took place
after the mini budget wereactually downed to LDIs.
So they've admitted thattwo-thirds of the market movement
were essentially their fault, butthey've only admitted that last year,
long after I'd been removed from office.
So you had a situation where there wasa very strong group think in favor of one
(21:35):
sort of economic policy.
And I tried to upset that, I tried todisrupt that because I felt that was
the economic policy that hadled our country to decline.
But the second thing was thatthere was a tinderbox in
the market that I wasn't aware of.
And the bank of England and
(21:56):
others tried to blame me fortheir mistakes.
>> Jon Hartley (22:04):
I totally agree with you in the sense that one, I mean,
there has been this enormous rise innew adherence to Keynesian economics,
especially I think,since the Great Recession.
And the gold financialcrisis in the late 2000s.
And what's interesting, too, is for
all these people who say that Keynesianmultipliers are very high and
(22:28):
that in some cases that governmentspending somehow pays for itself,
how is it the case that debt to GDPratios around the world continue to rise
in advance economies in the way they have,right?
And so to me, I mean, andif you look at a lot of, I think,
good empirical work done by economists,including the Hoover Institution,
(22:49):
by folks like Valerie Rainey and others,the Keynesian multipliers ultimately
are much lower than theyactually are in reality.
And that doesn't mean that there can'tbe some stimulus during recessions.
But I think what it does sort of pinkbears that it's ultimately not a growth
plan and that if there is gonna be somespending during these good times or
(23:14):
bad, that just governmentspending tons of money isn't
gonna cause some economicboom like many seem to think,
including, the current Laborgovernment and many others.
And I think, too, would really sort of,I think, strikes at court as well.
Maybe this is just a characteristic of our
(23:36):
age is just the desireto lay blame on others.
I think, the Federal reserve in the USstill won't in any way acknowledge
the role that maybe how late theywere to raise interest rates in 2021,
2022, might have made inflation worse.
It's just very much a,the inflation came from elsewhere.
(23:59):
And nothing to do with all the stimulus->> Liz Truss: Absolutely,
I mean, and this is back to the pointI was making about the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy has becomeincreasingly empowered and
Central Banks are the ultimatecase of this.
And the fact is they've failed.
(24:20):
Inflation has been rampant,it's been particularly bad in the UK,
interest rates were raised too late.
We had massive quantitative easingessentially to pave the way for
all of this public spending.
Keynesian economics hasn't worked.
We've ended up with massive debts.
And I think the Federal Reserveis more part of
(24:44):
the American political dialoguethat there is talk of ending.
The Fed being part of the problem,
in Britain there is less scrutinyof the bank of England, and
that needs to happen because you'vegot a system where the bureaucracy
has gone unscrutinised, they've failed andthey're not accountable.
(25:10):
And I think in order to getthe economic policies we want,
which are supply side policies,small government policies,
those types of policies, we have tochange the role of central banks.
I think they have becomea big part of the problem.
(25:31):
Yeah, and at some level it's interesting how independence of
Central Banks, which I think isan important, in a real thing,
in the sense that->> Liz Truss: The word independence,
when something's independent,independent from what?
And what it's become is independentfrom blame or accountability,
that's what they'vebecome independent from.
(25:53):
And ultimately institutions thataren't accountable to the public or
aren't accountable tomarket become a problem.
And I think they fundamentally,in Britain,
we had a better system where the treasuryand the Chancellor were accountable and
then the bank of Englandwas accountable to them.
The system worked, we moved away from thatand our economic problems have got worse.
(26:20):
Yeah, whether you think it's research or
discussion of green monetary policy, or
how Central Banks can solve issuesof race or other things like that.
It's not to say that these aren'timportant issues, obviously.
>> Liz Truss (26:40):
This is institutions getting captured, because if they're not
accountable to the public, they startto become accountable to NGOs or
lobbyists orpeople with the loudest voices.
And you've had the green fashion orthe DEI fashion,
and that has taken over the thinkingof these institutions and
(27:02):
they've lost sight of whatthey're meant to be there for.
The bank of England has two jobs.
One is financial stability,
which it completely failed todeliver in October 2022, and
the other is keeping inflation low,which it completely failed to deliver.
If the head of the bank ofEngland had been a politician,
(27:22):
they would have been sacked long ago.
And that shows you thatthere's massive problems
with the incentives in the system.
>> Jon Hartley (27:32):
And I think, I wanna get into the media a little bit cuz I think
the media plays a role inall of this at some level.
I think the media doestend to hold water for
a lot of these, say, bureaucrats.
I mean, could you imagine how differentthe narrative would have been if,
(27:56):
say, Trump was in power in the 2021,
2022 inflation period andimagine inflation similarly jumped.
How would the mediacharacterize inflation then?
And I think rather thanpainting it as a picture of,
it's all supply chainscoming from elsewhere,
(28:17):
I think they would have blamed Trumpin the same respect that they're trying
to now look at terrorists and try andsort of look at inflation prints and
tie them together and maybe tariff willcause some one time price impacts.
But I guess the point is, to me it seemslike the media is obviously biased and
(28:38):
the mainstream news obviously biased andobviously, I think has played
a huge role in all of this, I think,including especially in your premiership.
I think the media obviously wentberserk and were relentless and
I think, to be honest,in my opinion, were quite unfair and
(28:58):
never really gave yourpremiership a chance.
You coined the term anti-growthcoalition to describe sort of resistance
from unions, the media, environmentalists,the parts of the Tory party.
I'm just curious,obviously real GDP has been flat for
a decade and a half in the UK.
(29:19):
What are the major institutionalroadblocks in your mind to reignite
economic growth in the uk?
I'm just curious,what kind of obstacle do you think these
groups play in realizinga true reform kind of vision?
Obviously, the Labour Party's inpower now, so the opportunity for
(29:41):
pro-growth reforms has perhapseven been further diminished.
But I'm curious, thinking long term 20,30 years, what sorts of institutional
roadblocks need to change in order forthere to be any hope for growth in the UK?
>> Liz Truss (29:58):
I mean, on the media, I think part of the problem is, yes,
they are biased or the mainstreammedia is biased towards the left and
they're also biased towards stateinstitutions because they have kind of
permanent relationships with civilservants, state institutions which
are quite undermining, I think,of people trying to change the system.
(30:22):
So system change is notsomething they like.
They want to keep the status quo.
And the other thing is the mediahas just got increasingly trivial.
So whereas there would have been detailedanalysis of economic policy, if you
watched a political show in the 1980s,the expertise has been hollowed out.
(30:43):
So it's much more of a coverage ofa pantomime who's up, who's down,
who's plotting against who, soap operathan it is real analysis of the issues.
So I think there's two different problems.
One problem is their bias, butthe other problem is they're shallow.
And that makes it very difficult forpeople like me who want
(31:06):
to change things fundamentallyabout our country,
because having those seriousdiscussions is extremely hard.
Who are the vested interests?
I mean, the bureaucracy itselfis a massive vested interest.
The government's spending,almost half of GDP.
Those are people's jobs,their livelihoods, their future careers.
(31:29):
Of course, they don't want tosee that system dismantled.
Of course, they don't want to seetransparency over what they're doing.
Of course, there's also all of the NGOs,
and there's been lots of talkabout the Soros Network and
the World Economic Forum, butthere are a lot of organizations
(31:51):
funded from groups outside the UKwho are lobbying for policies.
So this Labour government, they saidthat they want to build more houses and
Britain has a massiveproblem with housing.
In the 1940s, Attlee introduced a pieceof legislation called the Town and
Country Planning Act, which basicallysocialized land in our country.
(32:14):
So it's very difficult.
So Labour wanted to make some minorchanges changing environmental laws.
There's been a massive backlashfrom the environmental NGOs and
now they've stopped that.
So this means you can't build somethingbecause there might be a bat there or
there might be a newt there,all those kind of things.
So it's a combination of the bureaucracy,the NGOs,
(32:36):
the big corporations thatbenefit from state regulation.
The people receivingthe green subsidies or
the people getting the DEI money orall this kind of stuff.
So there's a whole bunch of people.
And what I think has changed about Britainand America is the elite is now left wing.
(33:02):
The elite are those people,they tend to live in the big cities,
they talk to each other, they work in themedia, they work in the big corporates,
they work in the bureaucracy andthey want to protect the system.
Whereas it's the workingpeople who their jobs have,
gone because the country'sde-industrializing or
they can't run their small businessbecause there's so much red tape.
(33:25):
It's those people that want change.
And this is what I was talking aboutwhen I was talking about the anti-growth
coalition.
It is those vested interests,it is the people who have that political
power at the moment and ultimatelythat entire system needs to change.
I watch what's going on in America andI see that Donald Trump
(33:47):
is trying to challenge thosetypes of vested interest.
>> Jon Hartley (33:52):
I wanna talk a little bit more about the Labour Starmer government.
I'm curious, where do you see the UK nowunder the leadership of Keir Starmer,
who's been in power for->> Liz Truss: We're heading for
bankruptcy is what is happening.
Well, I'm curious they've passed a number of radical changes.
(34:16):
On the tax side,they've abolished non-dom and
are now gonna start taxingprofits outside the UK.
I think for a long time, the UK and Londonhas been a very business-friendly place.
I mean, I think for people aroundthe world to do business there.
And I think there were some questions orconcerns maybe around Brexit for
(34:38):
a short period of time.
But I think those werelargely smoothed over, and
the banks have largely stayed in the UK,but I think this is a pretty
big sea change now, actually taxingprofits from outside the UK.
The sovereign government's also proposingto lower the voting age from 18 to 16,
(34:59):
not to mention all this spending andso forth.
I mean, what is the path in your mind?
I mean, it's interesting to seehow quickly they've, I think,
lost some of theirpopularity in the polls.
But they've got anotherthree years at least or so.
I'm curious, where do you thinkthe country is heading and
(35:23):
what hope do you think there is here?
>> Liz Truss (35:27):
I think it's important to note that things were bad even before
Labour got in.
That's why I tried to do what I triedto do because we had a huge debt,
we were spending vast amounts of money,taxes were the highest level for 70 years.
So things were already bad, andBritain was getting less competitive.
And the reality is that post financialcrash we have been the slowest
(35:51):
country to recover from the financialcrash in terms of GDP per capita.
So there is a fundamental problemwith Britain's economic model.
We're not competitive enough,our energy isn't cheap enough,
our taxes are too high,our welfare state doesn't work.
The many problems that we discussedin Britannia Unchained still exist.
(36:13):
But what Labour have doneis they turbocharged it, so
made it even worse by abolishing non-doms,by putting up taxes,
everything from VAT onprivate schools to making it.
They're introducing a new Employment Actthat will make it much harder to
employ people.
(36:33):
They're just making everything worse.
And the reason is that they believed,and this is partly what happens
when you have a media thatdoesn't really tell the truth.
They believed that the reasonConservatives were failing is because of
austerity, because we weren'tspending enough money,
which is absolutely ludicrous.
As I've said,
the reason the country wasn't doing wellis we hadn't had enough economic growth.
(36:57):
So they believed their own publicity.
They believed that if they got into power,spent a bit more money and
were nice to the bureaucracy,everything would be fine.
And in fact that hasn't worked.
They are extremely unpopular.
They will be voted out ofoffice at the next election.
(37:19):
It's not just on economic issues as well.
We've got huge problems with our criminaljustice system, with two tier justice,
a failure to stand up toIslamism in this country.
The public are extremely concernedabout where everything's going.
And I wasn't joking when I said,
(37:39):
I think there will be some kindof fiscal collapse in the 1970s.
A Labour government hadto go to the IMF for
a bailout in 1976 becausethe country was stagnating.
There was high inflation and they werenot able to fund government debt.
(38:00):
And I think that is the situation wecould be in in pretty short order.
And the Labour Party MPs are notwilling to vote for spending cuts.
They rejected some welfare reformthat was proposed by the government.
So unless there is some kind of miracle,
it's hard to see howthe show stays on the road.
>> Jon Hartley (38:24):
One thing I think that probably strikes a lot of Americans do,
I think have a pretty good senseof the First Amendment rights and
right to free speech.
And there are very strong protectionsin the US, unlike in the US,
the United Kingdom neverwrote down its constitution.
>> Liz Truss (38:43):
We did have the Bill of Rights in the first place, I think, 1689.
>> Jon Hartley (38:50):
Well, Canada, where I grew up, we have a constitution as well,
terror rights and freedoms.
But I guess you just don't havethe same kind of protections that
you do with sort of in the sameway that the US constitution is
enshrined a judicial review.
All these sorts of additionalseparation of powers, sorts of things
(39:14):
that you don't really have in aparliamentary system checks on government.
And so I'm just curious, I mean, do yousee this as sort of this maybe global
challenge across the Anglosphere, where inCanada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand.
You don't have the same sort ofprotections to things like free speech as
(39:35):
you do in the US.
I mean,I think of things like Speaker's Corner,
which obviously is meant to, there'sa number of things that I think in UK
that sort of are old messages tryingto celebrate these sorts of things.
But now if you listen to say,Vice President JD Vance's speech and
you're talking about atthe Munich Security Conference, and
(39:59):
you see these issues where peopleare being arrested for political films or
people are being arrested forpraying in protest of certain things.
Those aren't the sorts of things thatI think you see in the US regularly.
And I'm curious what your thoughtsare on the state of free speech.
And these are other sorts ofproperty rights protections and
(40:25):
other things that maybe weaker in the UK and
how does that get resolved ifat all in Uk in your mind?
>> Liz Truss (40:34):
The underlying principle of the British Constitution is parliamentary
sovereignty.
And we do have a Bill of Rights andwe did put in place free speech.
The problem is that since thenlegislation has been passed
which has removed these rights andbe done by a majority in Parliament.
(41:00):
So what needs to happenin order to restore
the British Constitution to whatit was is to repeal those laws.
It's as simple as that.
And you're right,it's harder to change things in America.
So it's harder to get ridof the First Amendment or
(41:20):
it's harder to change thingslike the Supreme Court,
in Britain it's easier to change them,
but it means there's lesslong term protection.
So what I'm saying is, particularlyunder the Blair government and
since we have seen the judiciarybecome unaccountable,
(41:43):
we've seen the bank ofEngland become unaccountable,
all of these laws have been passed, theselaws against free speech have been passed.
Like online harms legislation,those need to be repealed, but
they can be repealed throughan act of Parliament.
The problem is we don't have a governmentthat wants to repeal those things.
(42:05):
And this is why there is such a massivedisconnect between the public and
the government andthe elite that run the country.
But there are othersimilar issues in America.
If you remember, I mean,Hillary Clinton was arguing for
the First Amendment to be changed.
There are plenty of people like the womanwho I think is now being defunded but
(42:31):
runs the public radio, she was sayingthat she didn't believe in free speech.
So those forces are therein Western societies.
They're fundamentallyanti-democratic forces,
they don't want the publicto have a point of view.
But I think in each country the battleneeds to be fought in a different way.
(42:54):
And of course the US hasthe First Amendment,
we have our ancient British liberties.
The problem is they've been coveredover with all this terrible stuff
that's been legislatedin the past 40 years.
And what we need to do is electa government that's gonna restore
the historic British constitution.
>> Jon Hartley (43:17):
I guess, my question when I think of Tocqueville a lot and
the idea of the tyranny of the majority,could UK even elect
a government that could reallyrestore these sorts of freedoms?
And I guess that that's the onechallenge sometimes with some
majority type governancewhere it only takes 51% of
(43:39):
the populace to agree tokill the other 49, right?
And so, an extreme obviously, butI guess, that's the one sort of beauty
of the US Constitution where it'sprotecting even minority rights or
instances of people wherethe majority be against.
>> Liz Truss (43:58):
I think the US Constitution is a very good document,
don't get me wrong,I think it's a good constitution.
That's not to say the United Statesdoes not have issues with things
like the Supreme Court, andthere's no perfect constitution.
(44:19):
But you asked would Britishpeople vote for it?
Answer, 52% of the Britishpublic voted for
Brexit, that they are prepared to vote for
more big change if it is clearwhat they're voting for.
So I think the problem has been, and thisis why the Conservatives did so badly at
(44:43):
the last election is the Conservativeswere not clear what they stood for.
And in fact the Conservative Party isdeeply split about what it stands for.
But I believe a proposition torestore the British Constitution and
give British people back the freedomof speech is incredibly popular and
(45:05):
people would vote for it.
>> Jon Hartley (45:11):
I guess, I'm curious what the path forward is in your mind to
get to a place like that andwho the standard bearers will be,
leading that charge sort of outof where the UK is right now on
a number of these sorts of fronts,both economic and legal.
I mean, I'm curious,you've got the UK Conservatives,
(45:36):
the Tories being led by Kemi Badenoch now.
And then you've got the Reform Party UKbeing led by Nigel Farage,
they only have four seats currently inParliament, and Nigel is one of the four.
But in just the past few months, mid-2025,
the Reform Party is pulling ahead ofboth the Labour Party and the Tories.
(46:00):
I'm curious, obviously the Toriesare still very divided and
I think, you put it thisvery well to me once where,
you said that,basically one half the Tories just have
a completely different sortof view than the other half.
And I'm curious,where do both these parties go from here,
(46:24):
and who do you think is gonna emergevictorious in the next few UK elections?
>> Liz Truss (46:32):
Just in terms of the Conservative Party.
The two parts I'm talkingabout are essentially.
Do you believe in the sortof the globalist agenda?
Are you in favor of the internationalinstitutions like the European Convention
on Human Rights?
Are you in favor of net zero andpursuing environmental policies?
(46:59):
Are you in favor of transgender ideology?
These are some of the touchstone issues.
Or are you more in the nationalist camp?
You believe in Britain as a nation state.
You don't believe in followingthe sort of the international human
rights rules that mean that youcan't deport illegal, immoral, etc.
(47:22):
That's the split inthe Conservative Party.
And in fact, I think you saw somethingsimilar in the Republican Party between
the more Trumpite Republicans and maybesome of the more old school Republicans.
So it's exactly the same split thatI think you see in US politics is now
happening in British politics.
(47:43):
And essentially there needs to bea realignment because there's one bunch
of voters and I talked about them,the people who voted for Brexit,
the people who don't believein transgender ideology.
They want to see the countryre industrialized.
They're not environmental fanaticswho wanna ban fracking, etc.
(48:05):
And that is what is happening.
But the process of that is messy andwho knows exactly
how it will turn outbefore the next election.
But what I'm convinced about is thatthe sort of Trump forces in Britain,
and we didn't really havean equivalent of the Tea Party.
(48:30):
And I think it's interesting what happenedto the Tea Party in the MAGA movement.
But the Trumpite forces in Britain,I believe,
will win eventually and will coalesce.
But we're still going through that processof what you might politely call a debate.
>> Jon Hartley (48:49):
You've written this book Ten Years to Save the West.
I'm curious, I wanna get the->> Liz Truss: Here's a copy of it
live here.
Very good. >> Liz Truss
there you are [LAUGH].
Well, I wanna give you an opportunity,
I'm just curious,is there in your mind at some level,
what is the real risk in your mind,
(49:12):
what happens if thiscoalition isn't successful?
I think growing up in Canada,there was certainly a lot of hope for,
I would say pro-growth Conservatives and
I'd say maybe a similar sort ofsimilarly minded Conservatives
that Pierre Poilievre wouldwin this election in 2025.
(49:36):
And because of a whole host ofreasons that didn't happen.
And the Liberal Party of Canada is nowentering its fourth government and
is continuing, a number of things,but it's a little different, but
largely a number of the same things.
It's largely the same peoplepopulated the Trudeau government.
I'm just curious, Ten Years to Save theWest is certainly a very serious title.
(50:01):
I'm curious,what is your main argument in the book and
why is it soimportant that the people act now?
>> Liz Truss (50:12):
What we're facing in Western societies and Anglosphere societies
are internal enemies who essentiallywant to undermine Western civilization,
whether it's importing massesof illegal immigrants,
whether it's pursuing Keynesianeconomics to the destruction
(50:34):
of the economy, the environmental agenda,while China and
India are busy building newcoal fired power stations,
making our energy completely unaffordable.
And it's interesting, Greta Thunberg,
who's really the poster girlof these people, has gone from
(50:54):
campaigning on the environmentto campaigning to be pro-Hamas.
It's a collection of Islamists,green zealots, big state people.
And you can see that that was whatthe Biden administration were doing with
things like the IRA, spending masses ofmoney, focusing on identity politics and
(51:20):
Transgender ideology and Black LivesMatter and all that kind of stuff.
And meanwhile, our enemies, China, Russia,
Iran, North Korea are workingtogether to take on the West.
And that's what I mean by we've gotten years because we need to get our
(51:44):
economic and cultural strength back andbe proud of Western civilization.
Otherwise, we will seea combination of those forces,
the most potent of which isChina dominate the world.
And the particular threat inEurope is the threat of Islamism.
(52:05):
And this is another force thatis currently being unchecked and
it poses a threat to our way of life.
So these are the forces that the westcollectively needs to take on.
I think Donald Trump winningin the United States
last year was an absolutelykey part of the fight back,
(52:31):
but we now need to fightback in Europe as well as
the US because the US willbe incredibly isolated
if Europe is taken over by those forces.
>> Jon Hartley (52:47):
I'm curious, just what particular common interest on China.
Because I think China is the onethat's really changed in maybe
the past ten years or so.
And really the world being now eyes wideopen to various human rights abuses.
And also I think, particularly withthe UK what's happened to Hong Kong?
(53:10):
Hong Kong being previously governedby the UK and it was, I think,
one of Margaret Thatcher's biggestmistakes with the Sino-British
declaration andin sort of handing over Hong Kong when it
arguably didn't really neededto be completely handed over.
(53:31):
But I'm just curious,what is your take now in terms of, I mean,
obviously Taiwan is beingthreatened by China.
I mean, where do you seethe United Kingdom playing a role in?
Certainly it's been taking a numberof Hong Kongers who've wanted to
leave Hong Kong and giving them BNO,British National Overseas status.
(53:53):
I'm curious, where do you see the UKplaying a role in a world where
China's on the rise going forward?
>> Liz Truss (54:01):
We need to be resisting the efforts of China to infiltrate
our country.
So, for example,the Chinese have a plan to build
a massive embassy in the centerof London with huge capabilities.
They've been warned against it by the US,
(54:23):
these are the kind of thingswe shouldn't be doing.
We shouldn't be allowing the Chineseto take over our media or
our critical infrastructure.
There's evidence that that isexactly what they are seeking to do.
And ultimately the UK and Europe,the best way of fighting back
against sort of Chinese dominanceis by making our countries
(54:47):
more economically successful andless dependent on China.
I mean, I've criticized Keir Starmerthrough this interview,
but one thing I'm pleased he didis sign a trade deal with the US,
we need to be working moreclosely with our allies and
we should be avoiding economicintegration and spying and
(55:11):
intellectual property theft from China.
But the reality is of the way the worldworks at the moment that ultimately
is the United States that has to form themain bulwark against Chinese dominance.
>> Jon Hartley (55:30):
I couldn't agree with you more.
Miss Truss,I really wanna thank you for coming on.
It's been a huge honor.
>> Liz Truss (55:35):
Great pleasure.
Good to be on.
>> Jon Hartley (55:37):
It's been an amazing conversation.
>> Liz Truss (55:39):
Thank you.
>> Jon Hartley (55:41):
This is the Capitalism and Freedom, the Twenty-First Century podcast,
an official podcast of the HooverInstitution Economic Policy Working Group
where we talk about economics,markets, and public policy.
I'm Jon Hartley, your host.
Thanks so much for joining us.
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
>> Jon Hartley (00:00):
This is the Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century
podcast, an official podcast of the HooverInstitution Economic Policy Working Group
where we talk about economics,markets, and public policy.
I'm Jon Hartley, your host today.
My guest is Liz Truss, who served as PrimeMinister of the United Kingdom in 2022,
(00:24):
as a Tory MP from 2010 through 2024,where she served in a number
of cabinet positions, various Conservativegovernments, including Foreign Secretary.
She's also most recently the authorof Ten Years to Save the West.
Welcome, Ms. Truss.
>> Liz Truss (00:39):
Great to be on the show.
>> Jon Hartley (00:42):
Well, I wanna start with your early life and
it's a real honor to have you on here.
You were born in Oxford.
Your father was John Truss,who's a professor of mathematics at Leeds.
And you also studied at Oxford,like many British Prime Ministers, and
you studied philosophy,politics and economics.
I mean, at what point do you first decidethat you like politics and economics and
(01:04):
that you actually want to do this fora living?
Was this something that was just destined,given that you were born in Oxford, or
was this something thatyou came across over time?
>> Liz Truss (01:15):
So I was always quite interested in politics and
Politics in the 80s was veryinteresting and exciting and
of course there was a bigbattle between the US and
the USSR who was gonna win the Cold War.
And my parents were on the leftwing side of politics and
(01:37):
my mother actually campaignedagainst nuclear weapons.
She was pretty anti-American actually, and
certainly anti the policies ofthe US administration at the time.
I think one of the first political peopleI heard about was Caspar Weinberger,
which must be quite unusual fora child growing up in the 80s in Britain.
(02:02):
And when I got a bit older andI saw what was actually happening and
the role that Mrs.Thatcher successfully played in bringing
to an end the Soviet Union andbringing to an end the Cold War,
I sort of thought, well, actually,disarming wasn't the right strategy.
(02:25):
It was the right strategy toactually call out the Soviet Union,
talk about how there was a huge problem.
It was obvious whenthe Berlin Wall fell and
all the people were tryingto get into the west,
it was obvious that the Soviet Union wasnot an aspirational model of the world.
Yeah, I think my mum in particular wasslightly misty eyed about what happened,
(02:50):
even though she'd spent a yearin Warsaw in the 1970s.
So she knew perfectly wellthat the model didn't work.
So that's, I guess, my first exposureto politics and talking about politics.
And then I joined the Liberal Democratsand people were saying, why did you join?
(03:12):
What was not the Conservative Party.
But the answer is my parents were veryleft wing and almost being a liberal
was the acceptable face of being rightwing where I was in Leeds at the time.
And it was only really when I got touniversity and met Conservatives that
I decided I was a Conservative andI joined the Conservative Party.
>> Jon Hartley (03:38):
That's amazing.
And yeah, I feel like certainly collegeand universities can be one of those,
I think, transformational periods,I think for a lot of people and
discovering sort of what they believe in,that's quite interesting.
So I take it Thatcher has sortof been your North Star for
you from the beginning.
>> Liz Truss (03:59):
So I think the thing that really sort of started me on the road to
being on the right of politicswas actually experiencing
what happened at my school.
I went to a comprehensive school in Leeds,which is in the north of England, and
it was very politically correct.
There were lessons on racism,there were lessons on sexism.
(04:21):
And I just thought,this is a load of rubbish.
Why are kids being taught about thisstuff when some of them in the school
weren't actually very good at reading andwriting?
And that was my first exposureto kind of left wing ideology.
And it was that that reallyput me on the road, I think,
to being a conservative and wanting tolive in a country that was successful,
(04:45):
not a country that was justmaking excuses the whole time.
And the places I grew up soPaisley in Scotland and Leeds in England,
frankly, the,their better days were behind them.
They had been pioneers ofthe industrial revolution.
They'd been huge manufacturing hubs and
(05:07):
they were now full ofdisused factories and
derelict buildings because they'dlost a lot of their purpose.
And I just thought,why does it have to be like this?
So it was more being in quite a leftwing place and just thinking,
these left wingers,what are they actually talking about?
(05:30):
Their solutions don't seem to work.
And when I got to university and startedstudying economics and I almost arrived
at economics by accident, I'd actuallygone because I was interested in politics.
And the degree course was politics,philosophy, and economics.
So economics was a bit of an afterthoughtonce I started studying it and
(05:52):
saw everything from free tradeto how free markets work,
I've begun to understand why it wasthat these places that had been so
successful had beencompeted out of business.
The policies that the British governmenthad adopted of nationalizing industry,
(06:12):
this is,
I'm talking about the sort of post warAtley government hadn't been effective.
And I became very concerned aboutBritain joining the Euro because which
was being pushed by the laborgovernment of the time,
because I could see that havinga sort of free floating currency was
(06:32):
one of the ways that a country couldactually adjust its economic policy.
So all of those things I then started tolearn about and I built that worldview.
>> Jon Hartley (06:45):
Well, I think it's rare for, I guess, politicians in general and
members of Parliamentto be numbers oriented.
Obviously you grew up in a familywhere you have some very amazing
mathematical minds in your own family anddoing philosophy, politics,
economics and working as an accountant anddoing all these things.
(07:09):
I feel like that's just a rare skillset for politicians in general.
And I mean, it does seem like there was,I guess this rift in the late 80s too,
between the Thatcherites andJohn Major and the role of UK in Europe,
I think was a big part of that andthe euro was a big part of that break.
(07:31):
So to me, I see that as sort ofbeing one of these key moments,
also setting Hong Kong onthe course that it's been on.
So I guess, fast forward a goodnumber of decades later here,
you come in as Prime Minister in 2022,
you have a firmly pro growth agendaat the outset of your premiership and
(07:55):
you wrote a book, in fact,ten years prior called Britain.
Britannia Unchained, Global Lessons forGrowth and Prosperity.
So I think economic growth has beensomething that I think is always been
front of mind for you, is my sense.
You co-authored this withfour other Conservative MPs,
including your Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
(08:17):
And I'm just curious one,can you describe to me, I guess,
what this growth sort of thinking andplan has been for a long time?
Obviously you've been thinkingabout it for a long time, but
how badly in your mind does the UnitedKingdom need pro growth policies and
sort of a revamp on economic growth?
(08:38):
We can talk about what's going on now andthe Starmer premiership,
and many things are going in the worstdirection, in an opposite direction.
But I'm curious what's beenyour vision as far as growth
United Kingdom over the decadesgoing into your premiership?
>> Liz Truss (08:56):
Well, so
the reason we wrote the book is we feltthat Britain was on the wrong track,
even though at the time we were juniorbackbenchers in a Conservative government.
So we felt that the policies the countrydesperately needed weren't happening.
And that is why we wrote the book.
(09:17):
Looking at how do economies actuallysucceed, what does it take?
Cuz Britain was already stagnating.
It was already stagnating by the 2010s.
It had been going on for some time.
You could argue that itreally started in the 1990s
with the coup against Mrs. Thatcher.
(09:40):
That's where it started.
But that is only the recent historyof Britain's economic failure.
In fact, it goes way back tothe end of the 19th century,
the development ofthe permanent bureaucracy,
the failure to really take on theAmericans and Germans in manufacturing.
Britain was a country that ledthe Industrial Revolution.
(10:03):
But the fact is that we got overtaken, and
we got overtaken due toa variety of factors.
You've talked about the lack ofpoliticians who've got numerical skills.
I could make that more general point.
Across the population,
Britain is not done enough tocompete in areas like manufacturing.
Even though we've had great universities,
(10:25):
we've not been good at translatingthat into economic success.
And what we've had is a very,very powerful bureaucracy.
We've had elements of socialism inour country for a very long time.
Of course, those were introducedat the start of the 20th century.
But if you look at the Attlee governmentnationalizing huge swathes of industry,
(10:51):
creating the National Health Service andthe welfare state,
we're now in a position where the Britishgovernment is spending 45% of our GDP.
And even, back when we wrotethe Book Britannia Unchained,
it was still up in the high 30s,it's now got even worse since then.
(11:13):
And at the same time, we've just got hugelevels of regulation on our economy.
Partly that is driven byour membership of the EU,
where lots of regulations were added,but a lot of it is domestic.
The Town and Country Planning Act makes itpretty much impossible to build anything
anywhere in Britain.
We've got incrediblyexpensive house prices.
(11:34):
Our energy costs are four times whatthe energy costs are in the United States,
partly because ofthe environmental agenda,
partly because fracking has been banned.
But on every possible measure, [LAUGH] weare economically very uncompetitive and
we now have the fastest rateof millionaires leaving
(11:55):
the country of any nation in the world,apart from China.
But what I'm saying andwhat we say in Britannia Unchained is
the seeds of that are verylongstanding in Britain.
It's a cultural issue.
There's an anti success culture, sort of.
(12:16):
We call it the tall poppy syndrome ofthe tallest poppy gets cut off an entry,
entrepreneurial culture.
So if I'm to compare us to the UnitedStates, there's much more of a fail
fast culture in the US and peoplerespect people that build up businesses.
I think that's less, less true in Britain.
So these were all the thingsthat we were trying to address.
(12:37):
And it does go back to what I wassaying about the places I grew up in.
I want to see them be successful.
I think it's incredibly depressing.
A country that's declining andliving in a country that's
economically declining leadsto all other types of decline,
(12:57):
whether it's high crime rates, drug abuse,
social unrest,all of those things result or
are correlated with a poorlyperforming economy.
So to me, that was the number oneissue that we, we had to deal with.
>> Jon Hartley (13:15):
Absolutely.
And yeah, I mean, it's amazing tosee what's happened to the UK so
over the decades.
I mean, obviously World War II UKbeing bombed out,
I mean, had a huge impact onBritain's growth trajectory and
the US in many respects overtakingthe UK is having the world's
reserve currency becomethe world's largest economy,
(13:39):
in the post war period being almosthalf the world's GDP at that point.
Obviously, many other players are, are,are growing now, China and many others.
So I wanna talk about early in yourpremiership we have on September 23rd,
your Chancellor Kwasi Kwartengdelivered a Ministerial
(14:02):
statement titled the Growth Plan andit proposed to reverse
an increase in the corporate rateincreases that were scheduled,
also a cut to the personal income tax.
A proposal to essentiallyimplement many of these.
I think great ideas alignedin Britannia Unchained and
(14:23):
really I think a pretty standardsort of pro-growth agenda,
like in the US largely, in part deficitfinance, then all hell broke loose.
I mean, I'm curious->> Liz Truss: If I could cut into this
deficit finance thing thatit wasn't deficit financed.
The fact is the deficit in Britainwas huge and the debt was huge.
(14:45):
But my view was if we'd done nothing,taxes would have gone up because
that had been legislated for andtaxes going up were actually going
to result in a worse deficit becausecertainly over a period of five years.
And a lot of independenteconomists agree with me on that,
(15:06):
that if you raise corporation tax somuch you damage economic activity,
businesses stop, stop opening andcompanies leave the country.
Which is exactly what's happened.
And it's the idea it was deficit financedas opposed to all of the spending
increases which have now beenallowed under the Labour government.
That is a leftist talking point andit's a point that's being used against me.
(15:30):
But I would argue that what we weredoing was not deficit financed.
It was actually creating the growthwould have helped pay off the deficit.
Now that the policies I putforward were not implemented,
we've got the counterfactual and thecounterfactual is the debt has gone up.
(15:54):
So it wasn't deficit financed.
Yeah and I think I'm with you in that the media, I think,
portrayed a certain narrativethat does incorrect at the time.
And I think a lot of economists hadsort of gone back to this period.
And there was this big spike in30 year gilts that moved from
(16:16):
33.5% to 5% in only a few days.
And I think in hindsight now,I think a lot of economists now look
at this as in part being sortof a confluence of factors.
So things like liability driven investmentstrategies, employed by pension funds,
because they have to matchthe duration of their liabilities,
(16:39):
even a small jump in guilts canbe sort of accelerated by pension
funds that are now forced tosell their UK government bonds.
And also you had sort of thisauction at the same time.
And so something that probably wouldhave been a routine small jump in
government bonds was really exacerbated.
(17:01):
So I'm just curious,
how do you think about these sort of otherfacts in terms of what was going on?
>> Liz Truss (17:07):
I think it's important to.
I think there were variousthings going on, but
the fiscal package I announcedwas smaller even by the Office of
Budget Responsibilities numbers,which I don't necessarily agree with.
But it was smaller than the fiscalpackages Rishi Sunak announced and it was
(17:27):
also smaller than the fiscal packagesRachel Reese have announced since.
So there is something about the waythat the mainstream media and
the economic establishment in Britain
view public spending asopposed to tax cuts, i.e.
They're much more willing toaccept the idea that whereas they
(17:51):
don't accept that tax cutsare inevitable or need to be done.
So there's a asymmetric attitude by whatI would describe as Keynesian economists,
which now dominate the treasury,the bank of England,
the Office of Budget Responsibility.
And what has happened in Britain isthat those entities have required a lot
(18:15):
more power.
So Gordon Brown made the bankof England independent.
They used to be underthe control of the Treasury.
He put the Civil Service Code into law.
So it made it much harder, in fact,impossible to hire and fire bureaucrats.
He also, this actuallyhappened under George Osborne.
The Conservative Chancellor createdthe Office of Budget Responsibility,
(18:38):
which is a bit like an extreme versionof the Congressional Budget Office.
So essentially those bodies were makingjudgments about economic and fiscal policy
that I believe should be politicaljudgments, but were made by those bodies.
And those bodies have a very,very clear worldview.
And it's the same asthe worldview taken by the IMF,
(18:59):
taken by the Democrat Party in the UnitedStates, taken by the World Economic Forum.
Public spending good, tax cuts bad.
And this is why, despite the factRachel Reeves has announced policies
that are much larger fiscally,they've been on the spending side.
(19:20):
So that's entirely acceptable to thesepeople because they like big government.
So that was one factor,the sort of bias in the system and
the group think in the systemthat was pro Keynesian.
And that's been building up formany, many years.
Essentially, since the successfulsupply side of the policies of the 80s,
(19:40):
that kind of worldviewhas been building up.
And I think that if you look atthe backlash Donald Trump has faced
in the markets from economists,it's the same worldview
that has become prevalent andwe need to defeat that.
And I think Scott Bessent is doing a verygood job of making the argument for
(20:02):
supply side policies.
But separate to that,there was an issue, unbeknownst to me,
taking place in the markets themselves,and you referenced it.
These LDIs that pension funds had investedinto, they were essentially a leveraged
product that depended on interestrates being low in perpetuity.
(20:24):
Now, of course,they weren't gonna be low in perpetuity.
They were artificially low.
Ultimately, interest rates had to rise andthose funds were caught short.
It created a run.
And what happened is the bank of England,which is meant to be responsible for
financial stability,rather than ensuring financial stability,
(20:47):
used the opportunity to try and pushthe blame onto the mini budget for what
was happening was in fact their failureto properly regulate the pension funds.
And that was very difficult for
us because we weren't awareof the LDI issue at the time.
We were blindsided.
And subsequently the bankof England themselves
(21:10):
have admitted that two-thirds ofall the gilt spikes that took place
after the mini budget wereactually downed to LDIs.
So they've admitted thattwo-thirds of the market movement
were essentially their fault, butthey've only admitted that last year,
long after I'd been removed from office.
So you had a situation where there wasa very strong group think in favor of one
(21:35):
sort of economic policy.
And I tried to upset that, I tried todisrupt that because I felt that was
the economic policy that hadled our country to decline.
But the second thing was thatthere was a tinderbox in
the market that I wasn't aware of.
And the bank of England and
(21:56):
others tried to blame me fortheir mistakes.
>> Jon Hartley (22:04):
I totally agree with you in the sense that one, I mean,
there has been this enormous rise innew adherence to Keynesian economics,
especially I think,since the Great Recession.
And the gold financialcrisis in the late 2000s.
And what's interesting, too, is for
all these people who say that Keynesianmultipliers are very high and
(22:28):
that in some cases that governmentspending somehow pays for itself,
how is it the case that debt to GDPratios around the world continue to rise
in advance economies in the way they have,right?
And so to me, I mean, andif you look at a lot of, I think,
good empirical work done by economists,including the Hoover Institution,
(22:49):
by folks like Valerie Rainey and others,the Keynesian multipliers ultimately
are much lower than theyactually are in reality.
And that doesn't mean that there can'tbe some stimulus during recessions.
But I think what it does sort of pinkbears that it's ultimately not a growth
plan and that if there is gonna be somespending during these good times or
(23:14):
bad, that just governmentspending tons of money isn't
gonna cause some economicboom like many seem to think,
including, the current Laborgovernment and many others.
And I think, too, would really sort of,I think, strikes at court as well.
Maybe this is just a characteristic of our
(23:36):
age is just the desireto lay blame on others.
I think, the Federal reserve in the USstill won't in any way acknowledge
the role that maybe how late theywere to raise interest rates in 2021,
2022, might have made inflation worse.
It's just very much a,the inflation came from elsewhere.
(23:59):
And nothing to do with all the stimulus->> Liz Truss: Absolutely,
I mean, and this is back to the pointI was making about the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy has becomeincreasingly empowered and
Central Banks are the ultimatecase of this.
And the fact is they've failed.
(24:20):
Inflation has been rampant,it's been particularly bad in the UK,
interest rates were raised too late.
We had massive quantitative easingessentially to pave the way for
all of this public spending.
Keynesian economics hasn't worked.
We've ended up with massive debts.
And I think the Federal Reserveis more part of
(24:44):
the American political dialoguethat there is talk of ending.
The Fed being part of the problem,
in Britain there is less scrutinyof the bank of England, and
that needs to happen because you'vegot a system where the bureaucracy
has gone unscrutinised, they've failed andthey're not accountable.
(25:10):
And I think in order to getthe economic policies we want,
which are supply side policies,small government policies,
those types of policies, we have tochange the role of central banks.
I think they have becomea big part of the problem.
(25:31):
Yeah, and at some level it's interesting how independence of
Central Banks, which I think isan important, in a real thing,
in the sense that->> Liz Truss: The word independence,
when something's independent,independent from what?
And what it's become is independentfrom blame or accountability,
that's what they'vebecome independent from.
(25:53):
And ultimately institutions thataren't accountable to the public or
aren't accountable tomarket become a problem.
And I think they fundamentally,in Britain,
we had a better system where the treasuryand the Chancellor were accountable and
then the bank of Englandwas accountable to them.
The system worked, we moved away from thatand our economic problems have got worse.
(26:20):
Yeah, whether you think it's research or
discussion of green monetary policy, or
how Central Banks can solve issuesof race or other things like that.
It's not to say that these aren'timportant issues, obviously.
>> Liz Truss (26:40):
This is institutions getting captured, because if they're not
accountable to the public, they startto become accountable to NGOs or
lobbyists orpeople with the loudest voices.
And you've had the green fashion orthe DEI fashion,
and that has taken over the thinkingof these institutions and
(27:02):
they've lost sight of whatthey're meant to be there for.
The bank of England has two jobs.
One is financial stability,
which it completely failed todeliver in October 2022, and
the other is keeping inflation low,which it completely failed to deliver.
If the head of the bank ofEngland had been a politician,
(27:22):
they would have been sacked long ago.
And that shows you thatthere's massive problems
with the incentives in the system.
>> Jon Hartley (27:32):
And I think, I wanna get into the media a little bit cuz I think
the media plays a role inall of this at some level.
I think the media doestend to hold water for
a lot of these, say, bureaucrats.
I mean, could you imagine how differentthe narrative would have been if,
(27:56):
say, Trump was in power in the 2021,
2022 inflation period andimagine inflation similarly jumped.
How would the mediacharacterize inflation then?
And I think rather thanpainting it as a picture of,
it's all supply chainscoming from elsewhere,
(28:17):
I think they would have blamed Trumpin the same respect that they're trying
to now look at terrorists and try andsort of look at inflation prints and
tie them together and maybe tariff willcause some one time price impacts.
But I guess the point is, to me it seemslike the media is obviously biased and
(28:38):
the mainstream news obviously biased andobviously, I think has played
a huge role in all of this, I think,including especially in your premiership.
I think the media obviously wentberserk and were relentless and
I think, to be honest,in my opinion, were quite unfair and
(28:58):
never really gave yourpremiership a chance.
You coined the term anti-growthcoalition to describe sort of resistance
from unions, the media, environmentalists,the parts of the Tory party.
I'm just curious,obviously real GDP has been flat for
a decade and a half in the UK.
(29:19):
What are the major institutionalroadblocks in your mind to reignite
economic growth in the uk?
I'm just curious,what kind of obstacle do you think these
groups play in realizinga true reform kind of vision?
Obviously, the Labour Party's inpower now, so the opportunity for
(29:41):
pro-growth reforms has perhapseven been further diminished.
But I'm curious, thinking long term 20,30 years, what sorts of institutional
roadblocks need to change in order forthere to be any hope for growth in the UK?
>> Liz Truss (29:58):
I mean, on the media, I think part of the problem is, yes,
they are biased or the mainstreammedia is biased towards the left and
they're also biased towards stateinstitutions because they have kind of
permanent relationships with civilservants, state institutions which
are quite undermining, I think,of people trying to change the system.
(30:22):
So system change is notsomething they like.
They want to keep the status quo.
And the other thing is the mediahas just got increasingly trivial.
So whereas there would have been detailedanalysis of economic policy, if you
watched a political show in the 1980s,the expertise has been hollowed out.
(30:43):
So it's much more of a coverage ofa pantomime who's up, who's down,
who's plotting against who, soap operathan it is real analysis of the issues.
So I think there's two different problems.
One problem is their bias, butthe other problem is they're shallow.
And that makes it very difficult forpeople like me who want
(31:06):
to change things fundamentallyabout our country,
because having those seriousdiscussions is extremely hard.
Who are the vested interests?
I mean, the bureaucracy itselfis a massive vested interest.
The government's spending,almost half of GDP.
Those are people's jobs,their livelihoods, their future careers.
(31:29):
Of course, they don't want tosee that system dismantled.
Of course, they don't want to seetransparency over what they're doing.
Of course, there's also all of the NGOs,
and there's been lots of talkabout the Soros Network and
the World Economic Forum, butthere are a lot of organizations
(31:51):
funded from groups outside the UKwho are lobbying for policies.
So this Labour government, they saidthat they want to build more houses and
Britain has a massiveproblem with housing.
In the 1940s, Attlee introduced a pieceof legislation called the Town and
Country Planning Act, which basicallysocialized land in our country.
(32:14):
So it's very difficult.
So Labour wanted to make some minorchanges changing environmental laws.
There's been a massive backlashfrom the environmental NGOs and
now they've stopped that.
So this means you can't build somethingbecause there might be a bat there or
there might be a newt there,all those kind of things.
So it's a combination of the bureaucracy,the NGOs,
(32:36):
the big corporations thatbenefit from state regulation.
The people receivingthe green subsidies or
the people getting the DEI money orall this kind of stuff.
So there's a whole bunch of people.
And what I think has changed about Britainand America is the elite is now left wing.
(33:02):
The elite are those people,they tend to live in the big cities,
they talk to each other, they work in themedia, they work in the big corporates,
they work in the bureaucracy andthey want to protect the system.
Whereas it's the workingpeople who their jobs have,
gone because the country'sde-industrializing or
they can't run their small businessbecause there's so much red tape.
(33:25):
It's those people that want change.
And this is what I was talking aboutwhen I was talking about the anti-growth
coalition.
It is those vested interests,it is the people who have that political
power at the moment and ultimatelythat entire system needs to change.
I watch what's going on in America andI see that Donald Trump
(33:47):
is trying to challenge thosetypes of vested interest.
>> Jon Hartley (33:52):
I wanna talk a little bit more about the Labour Starmer government.
I'm curious, where do you see the UK nowunder the leadership of Keir Starmer,
who's been in power for->> Liz Truss: We're heading for
bankruptcy is what is happening.
Well, I'm curious they've passed a number of radical changes.
(34:16):
On the tax side,they've abolished non-dom and
are now gonna start taxingprofits outside the UK.
I think for a long time, the UK and Londonhas been a very business-friendly place.
I mean, I think for people aroundthe world to do business there.
And I think there were some questions orconcerns maybe around Brexit for
(34:38):
a short period of time.
But I think those werelargely smoothed over, and
the banks have largely stayed in the UK,but I think this is a pretty
big sea change now, actually taxingprofits from outside the UK.
The sovereign government's also proposingto lower the voting age from 18 to 16,
(34:59):
not to mention all this spending andso forth.
I mean, what is the path in your mind?
I mean, it's interesting to seehow quickly they've, I think,
lost some of theirpopularity in the polls.
But they've got anotherthree years at least or so.
I'm curious, where do you thinkthe country is heading and
(35:23):
what hope do you think there is here?
>> Liz Truss (35:27):
I think it's important to note that things were bad even before
Labour got in.
That's why I tried to do what I triedto do because we had a huge debt,
we were spending vast amounts of money,taxes were the highest level for 70 years.
So things were already bad, andBritain was getting less competitive.
And the reality is that post financialcrash we have been the slowest
(35:51):
country to recover from the financialcrash in terms of GDP per capita.
So there is a fundamental problemwith Britain's economic model.
We're not competitive enough,our energy isn't cheap enough,
our taxes are too high,our welfare state doesn't work.
The many problems that we discussedin Britannia Unchained still exist.
(36:13):
But what Labour have doneis they turbocharged it, so
made it even worse by abolishing non-doms,by putting up taxes,
everything from VAT onprivate schools to making it.
They're introducing a new Employment Actthat will make it much harder to
employ people.
(36:33):
They're just making everything worse.
And the reason is that they believed,and this is partly what happens
when you have a media thatdoesn't really tell the truth.
They believed that the reasonConservatives were failing is because of
austerity, because we weren'tspending enough money,
which is absolutely ludicrous.
As I've said,
the reason the country wasn't doing wellis we hadn't had enough economic growth.
(36:57):
So they believed their own publicity.
They believed that if they got into power,spent a bit more money and
were nice to the bureaucracy,everything would be fine.
And in fact that hasn't worked.
They are extremely unpopular.
They will be voted out ofoffice at the next election.
(37:19):
It's not just on economic issues as well.
We've got huge problems with our criminaljustice system, with two tier justice,
a failure to stand up toIslamism in this country.
The public are extremely concernedabout where everything's going.
And I wasn't joking when I said,
(37:39):
I think there will be some kindof fiscal collapse in the 1970s.
A Labour government hadto go to the IMF for
a bailout in 1976 becausethe country was stagnating.
There was high inflation and they werenot able to fund government debt.
(38:00):
And I think that is the situation wecould be in in pretty short order.
And the Labour Party MPs are notwilling to vote for spending cuts.
They rejected some welfare reformthat was proposed by the government.
So unless there is some kind of miracle,
it's hard to see howthe show stays on the road.
>> Jon Hartley (38:24):
One thing I think that probably strikes a lot of Americans do,
I think have a pretty good senseof the First Amendment rights and
right to free speech.
And there are very strong protectionsin the US, unlike in the US,
the United Kingdom neverwrote down its constitution.
>> Liz Truss (38:43):
We did have the Bill of Rights in the first place, I think, 1689.
>> Jon Hartley (38:50):
Well, Canada, where I grew up, we have a constitution as well,
terror rights and freedoms.
But I guess you just don't havethe same kind of protections that
you do with sort of in the sameway that the US constitution is
enshrined a judicial review.
All these sorts of additionalseparation of powers, sorts of things
(39:14):
that you don't really have in aparliamentary system checks on government.
And so I'm just curious, I mean, do yousee this as sort of this maybe global
challenge across the Anglosphere, where inCanada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand.
You don't have the same sort ofprotections to things like free speech as
(39:35):
you do in the US.
I mean,I think of things like Speaker's Corner,
which obviously is meant to, there'sa number of things that I think in UK
that sort of are old messages tryingto celebrate these sorts of things.
But now if you listen to say,Vice President JD Vance's speech and
you're talking about atthe Munich Security Conference, and
(39:59):
you see these issues where peopleare being arrested for political films or
people are being arrested forpraying in protest of certain things.
Those aren't the sorts of things thatI think you see in the US regularly.
And I'm curious what your thoughtsare on the state of free speech.
And these are other sorts ofproperty rights protections and
(40:25):
other things that maybe weaker in the UK and
how does that get resolved ifat all in Uk in your mind?
>> Liz Truss (40:34):
The underlying principle of the British Constitution is parliamentary
sovereignty.
And we do have a Bill of Rights andwe did put in place free speech.
The problem is that since thenlegislation has been passed
which has removed these rights andbe done by a majority in Parliament.
(41:00):
So what needs to happenin order to restore
the British Constitution to whatit was is to repeal those laws.
It's as simple as that.
And you're right,it's harder to change things in America.
So it's harder to get ridof the First Amendment or
(41:20):
it's harder to change thingslike the Supreme Court,
in Britain it's easier to change them,
but it means there's lesslong term protection.
So what I'm saying is, particularlyunder the Blair government and
since we have seen the judiciarybecome unaccountable,
(41:43):
we've seen the bank ofEngland become unaccountable,
all of these laws have been passed, theselaws against free speech have been passed.
Like online harms legislation,those need to be repealed, but
they can be repealed throughan act of Parliament.
The problem is we don't have a governmentthat wants to repeal those things.
(42:05):
And this is why there is such a massivedisconnect between the public and
the government andthe elite that run the country.
But there are othersimilar issues in America.
If you remember, I mean,Hillary Clinton was arguing for
the First Amendment to be changed.
There are plenty of people like the womanwho I think is now being defunded but
(42:31):
runs the public radio, she was sayingthat she didn't believe in free speech.
So those forces are therein Western societies.
They're fundamentallyanti-democratic forces,
they don't want the publicto have a point of view.
But I think in each country the battleneeds to be fought in a different way.
(42:54):
And of course the US hasthe First Amendment,
we have our ancient British liberties.
The problem is they've been coveredover with all this terrible stuff
that's been legislatedin the past 40 years.
And what we need to do is electa government that's gonna restore
the historic British constitution.
>> Jon Hartley (43:17):
I guess, my question when I think of Tocqueville a lot and
the idea of the tyranny of the majority,could UK even elect
a government that could reallyrestore these sorts of freedoms?
And I guess that that's the onechallenge sometimes with some
majority type governancewhere it only takes 51% of
(43:39):
the populace to agree tokill the other 49, right?
And so, an extreme obviously, butI guess, that's the one sort of beauty
of the US Constitution where it'sprotecting even minority rights or
instances of people wherethe majority be against.
>> Liz Truss (43:58):
I think the US Constitution is a very good document,
don't get me wrong,I think it's a good constitution.
That's not to say the United Statesdoes not have issues with things
like the Supreme Court, andthere's no perfect constitution.
(44:19):
But you asked would Britishpeople vote for it?
Answer, 52% of the Britishpublic voted for
Brexit, that they are prepared to vote for
more big change if it is clearwhat they're voting for.
So I think the problem has been, and thisis why the Conservatives did so badly at
(44:43):
the last election is the Conservativeswere not clear what they stood for.
And in fact the Conservative Party isdeeply split about what it stands for.
But I believe a proposition torestore the British Constitution and
give British people back the freedomof speech is incredibly popular and
(45:05):
people would vote for it.
>> Jon Hartley (45:11):
I guess, I'm curious what the path forward is in your mind to
get to a place like that andwho the standard bearers will be,
leading that charge sort of outof where the UK is right now on
a number of these sorts of fronts,both economic and legal.
I mean, I'm curious,you've got the UK Conservatives,
(45:36):
the Tories being led by Kemi Badenoch now.
And then you've got the Reform Party UKbeing led by Nigel Farage,
they only have four seats currently inParliament, and Nigel is one of the four.
But in just the past few months, mid-2025,
the Reform Party is pulling ahead ofboth the Labour Party and the Tories.
(46:00):
I'm curious, obviously the Toriesare still very divided and
I think, you put it thisvery well to me once where,
you said that,basically one half the Tories just have
a completely different sortof view than the other half.
And I'm curious,where do both these parties go from here,
(46:24):
and who do you think is gonna emergevictorious in the next few UK elections?
>> Liz Truss (46:32):
Just in terms of the Conservative Party.
The two parts I'm talkingabout are essentially.
Do you believe in the sortof the globalist agenda?
Are you in favor of the internationalinstitutions like the European Convention
on Human Rights?
Are you in favor of net zero andpursuing environmental policies?
(46:59):
Are you in favor of transgender ideology?
These are some of the touchstone issues.
Or are you more in the nationalist camp?
You believe in Britain as a nation state.
You don't believe in followingthe sort of the international human
rights rules that mean that youcan't deport illegal, immoral, etc.
(47:22):
That's the split inthe Conservative Party.
And in fact, I think you saw somethingsimilar in the Republican Party between
the more Trumpite Republicans and maybesome of the more old school Republicans.
So it's exactly the same split thatI think you see in US politics is now
happening in British politics.
(47:43):
And essentially there needs to bea realignment because there's one bunch
of voters and I talked about them,the people who voted for Brexit,
the people who don't believein transgender ideology.
They want to see the countryre industrialized.
They're not environmental fanaticswho wanna ban fracking, etc.
(48:05):
And that is what is happening.
But the process of that is messy andwho knows exactly
how it will turn outbefore the next election.
But what I'm convinced about is thatthe sort of Trump forces in Britain,
and we didn't really havean equivalent of the Tea Party.
(48:30):
And I think it's interesting what happenedto the Tea Party in the MAGA movement.
But the Trumpite forces in Britain,I believe,
will win eventually and will coalesce.
But we're still going through that processof what you might politely call a debate.
>> Jon Hartley (48:49):
You've written this book Ten Years to Save the West.
I'm curious, I wanna get the->> Liz Truss: Here's a copy of it
live here.
Very good. >> Liz Truss
there you are [LAUGH].
Well, I wanna give you an opportunity,
I'm just curious,is there in your mind at some level,
what is the real risk in your mind,
(49:12):
what happens if thiscoalition isn't successful?
I think growing up in Canada,there was certainly a lot of hope for,
I would say pro-growth Conservatives and
I'd say maybe a similar sort ofsimilarly minded Conservatives
that Pierre Poilievre wouldwin this election in 2025.
(49:36):
And because of a whole host ofreasons that didn't happen.
And the Liberal Party of Canada is nowentering its fourth government and
is continuing, a number of things,but it's a little different, but
largely a number of the same things.
It's largely the same peoplepopulated the Trudeau government.
I'm just curious, Ten Years to Save theWest is certainly a very serious title.
(50:01):
I'm curious,what is your main argument in the book and
why is it soimportant that the people act now?
>> Liz Truss (50:12):
What we're facing in Western societies and Anglosphere societies
are internal enemies who essentiallywant to undermine Western civilization,
whether it's importing massesof illegal immigrants,
whether it's pursuing Keynesianeconomics to the destruction
(50:34):
of the economy, the environmental agenda,while China and
India are busy building newcoal fired power stations,
making our energy completely unaffordable.
And it's interesting, Greta Thunberg,
who's really the poster girlof these people, has gone from
(50:54):
campaigning on the environmentto campaigning to be pro-Hamas.
It's a collection of Islamists,green zealots, big state people.
And you can see that that was whatthe Biden administration were doing with
things like the IRA, spending masses ofmoney, focusing on identity politics and
(51:20):
Transgender ideology and Black LivesMatter and all that kind of stuff.
And meanwhile, our enemies, China, Russia,
Iran, North Korea are workingtogether to take on the West.
And that's what I mean by we've gotten years because we need to get our
(51:44):
economic and cultural strength back andbe proud of Western civilization.
Otherwise, we will seea combination of those forces,
the most potent of which isChina dominate the world.
And the particular threat inEurope is the threat of Islamism.
(52:05):
And this is another force thatis currently being unchecked and
it poses a threat to our way of life.
So these are the forces that the westcollectively needs to take on.
I think Donald Trump winningin the United States
last year was an absolutelykey part of the fight back,
(52:31):
but we now need to fightback in Europe as well as
the US because the US willbe incredibly isolated
if Europe is taken over by those forces.
>> Jon Hartley (52:47):
I'm curious, just what particular common interest on China.
Because I think China is the onethat's really changed in maybe
the past ten years or so.
And really the world being now eyes wideopen to various human rights abuses.
And also I think, particularly withthe UK what's happened to Hong Kong?
(53:10):
Hong Kong being previously governedby the UK and it was, I think,
one of Margaret Thatcher's biggestmistakes with the Sino-British
declaration andin sort of handing over Hong Kong when it
arguably didn't really neededto be completely handed over.
(53:31):
But I'm just curious,what is your take now in terms of, I mean,
obviously Taiwan is beingthreatened by China.
I mean, where do you seethe United Kingdom playing a role in?
Certainly it's been taking a numberof Hong Kongers who've wanted to
leave Hong Kong and giving them BNO,British National Overseas status.
(53:53):
I'm curious, where do you see the UKplaying a role in a world where
China's on the rise going forward?
>> Liz Truss (54:01):
We need to be resisting the efforts of China to infiltrate
our country.
So, for example,the Chinese have a plan to build
a massive embassy in the centerof London with huge capabilities.
They've been warned against it by the US,
(54:23):
these are the kind of thingswe shouldn't be doing.
We shouldn't be allowing the Chineseto take over our media or
our critical infrastructure.
There's evidence that that isexactly what they are seeking to do.
And ultimately the UK and Europe,the best way of fighting back
against sort of Chinese dominanceis by making our countries
(54:47):
more economically successful andless dependent on China.
I mean, I've criticized Keir Starmerthrough this interview,
but one thing I'm pleased he didis sign a trade deal with the US,
we need to be working moreclosely with our allies and
we should be avoiding economicintegration and spying and
(55:11):
intellectual property theft from China.
But the reality is of the way the worldworks at the moment that ultimately
is the United States that has to form themain bulwark against Chinese dominance.
>> Jon Hartley (55:30):
I couldn't agree with you more.
Miss Truss,I really wanna thank you for coming on.
It's been a huge honor.
>> Liz Truss (55:35):
Great pleasure.
Good to be on.
>> Jon Hartley (55:37):
It's been an amazing conversation.
>> Liz Truss (55:39):
Thank you.
>> Jon Hartley (55:41):
This is the Capitalism and Freedom, the Twenty-First Century podcast,
an official podcast of the HooverInstitution Economic Policy Working Group
where we talk about economics,markets, and public policy.
I'm Jon Hartley, your host.
Thanks so much for joining us.
[MUSIC]
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!