Liz Truss takes office in difficult times. The new British prime minister, the fourth Conservative to hold the position in 12 years, will lead a party that is wracked with infighting. Britain also faces many serious challenges, any one of which would test a leader’s skill: war in Ukraine, a looming winter of discontent over energy prices and shortages, threats to the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland.
No one should be surprised if she fails, and many expect she will. But there’s one reason she should instead be tipped to succeed: her character.
Truss is not to the manner born. Like Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Truss comes from a middle-class family and was educated at government-funded schools until her merits led her to the University of Oxford. Like Thatcher, she knows her success is earned, not bestowed. She climbed up the legendarily greasy pole of politics on her own determination and wits.
That combination — courage and cunning — happen to be exactly the attributes possessed by the most successful statesman in U.S. history: Abraham Lincoln. The president’s law partner, William Herndon, said of his famous friend, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest”. That engine powered Lincoln’s rise from nothing to the top.
Lincoln’s ability to govern other ambitious personalities was also key to his triumph. British soccer pundits call this man-management skills, and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s chronicle of Lincoln’s ability to maneuver through factious intra-party politics paints a picture of a master craftsman at work.
Truss’s rise suggests she has similar qualities. She is only 47, and is the third and youngest woman to serve as prime minister. She didn’t get to the top so fast by accident. Working her way up post by post, she slowly built her own network of allies and positioned herself so that others would see her potential. She sought the premiership even though she was not the overwhelming favorite of her colleagues. Indeed, former finance minister Rishi Sunak received more votes from Conservative MPs, but Truss’s standing with party members, cemented with strong commitments to party dogmas on lower taxes and deregulation, saw her through.
Truss is already showing man-management skills by appointing a cabinet almost exclusively from her own backers. A weaker person would have sued for peace with Sunak’s camp, bringing many of them into the fold. But that would have produced only a paper unity that would surely have been tested at the first hint of adversity. Better to weather the coming storm with her own team and create party unity later on her own terms.
Truss will need to show similar resolve and dexterity in the coming months. She has stated she will pursue economic growth through tax cuts, reform, and investments in roads, schools, hospitals and other key infrastructure. The resulting deficits could easily unsettle markets and lead to a run on the pound. Truss, like Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, will have to stick with her core plan during the early days when it might appear to be all pain and no gain.
She will nonetheless need to be flexible in dealing with the inevitable curveballs thrown at her. Strength can easily blend into stubbornness. She should note that Reagan raised taxes in 1982 after cutting them in 1981. He did this because he needed to buy time for his economic program to work and thus bargained away some of his tax cuts for businesses to cement his rate cuts for individuals. Truss will need to be similarly willing to cede some ground to keep the high ground for herself.
Truss’s personal history shows she may grasp this. She once was a Liberal Democrat but switched to the Tories. She opposed Brexit during the 2016 referendum but backed Brexit once her side had lost. She did not join other Tory Remainers in their revolt against Prime Minister Boris Johnson over his proposed Brexit deal, thereby securing herself as the once-promising careers of the Remainers all washed out to sea. She must keep her eyes firmly on her goal rather than on the means she chose to get there.
Niccolò Machiavelli said that a prince must be both a lion and a fox, strong enough to fight enemies and smart enough to avoid snares. He also said that princes should permit few to genuinely see their inner selves. Truss, an enigma to many in a party that is happier to defer to the posh than follow the clever, may be just the princess Britain needs.
Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.