During her 44 days in office, former British prime minister Liz Truss became a laughingstock. After her September 2022 “mini-budget” sparked an economic crisis, a British tabloid livestreamed a head of lettuce, predicting it would outlast the prime minister’s tenure. Six days later, the vegetable was intact and Truss was gone.
After resigning, Truss’ own Conservative Party members mocked her. With a ruined reputation, Truss was an odd choice for Taiwan’s government to invite just seven months later.
The pick was understandable: Truss was the most prominent British politician to visit Taiwan since former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1996. Her status was maybe seen as eclipsing a debacle many Taiwanese missed.
However, there is a more important reason authorities should have thought twice before paying a reported ￡80,000 (US$101,064) for Truss’ participation in an event hosted by the government-sponsored Prospect Foundation think tank.
Truss has long been a flip-flopper, disowning previous positions and switching allegiances when it suits her. A child of left-wing activists, she participated in nuclear disarmament marches and anti-Thatcher protests. At Oxford University, Truss was president of the Liberal Democrats student branch. She campaigned for cannabis decriminalization and the abolishment of the monarchy.
This made her Damascene conversion to conservatism at Oxford baffling, and her progressive past dogged her as she campaigned in August 2022 for leadership of the Conservative Party.
These changes might have been a natural evolution and demonstrated commendable adaptability, yet Truss’ turnarounds continued throughout her career, and some cannot be dismissed as youthful indiscretions.
Most obvious was her Brexit volte-face. Having campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU, she backtracked after the referendum passed. She reasoned that leaving the EU would “shake up the way things work.”
After former UK prime minister Boris Johnson made her foreign secretary in 2021, she scrapped parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol — a post-Brexit deal with the EU — and doubled down as prime minister, drawing criticism from European leaders.
Perhaps Taiwan’s government was hoodwinked by Truss’ bravado in posing atop a tank in Estonia as she condemned Russia’s military buildup along its border in late 2022. Like Johnson, Truss is a staunch supporter of Ukraine and an outspoken critic of Russia and China.
In her Taipei speech, Truss lamented the “mixed messages from the free world” on China and the “false idea” that Beijing negotiates in good faith. She demanded an elevation in Taiwan’s status and concrete measures to bolster its defense, reiterating remarks in Tokyo months earlier.
Politico’s revelations that Truss lobbied to expedite military equipment sales to China three months after her Taipei trip must have stunned Taiwanese officials.
In a letter to British Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, Truss asked that a license to supply landmine disposal equipment be granted to Richmond Defence Systems, a firm based in her constituency. The company’s previous application was blocked on security grounds.
Pushing the company’s case, Truss said a rejection would cost it millions of pounds, adding that China “would simply reverse engineer and manufacture the products themselves” — a comment experts have dismissed.
While Truss has been silent, her fellow Conservative lawmaker Alicia Kearns responded unequivocally to the news. Kearns, who visited Taiwan in late 2022, said Truss’ lobbying was “against our national interests, and most certainly those of our ally Taiwan.”
Declining to comment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement through spokesperson Jeff Liu (劉永健), saying that Truss’ words or actions had not harmed Taiwan.
The ministry responded to inquiries about Truss’ appearance fee, saying it was not involved in the contracting process. While technically true, the National Security Council does give funding to the Prospect Foundation. This is taxpayer money. As such, officials should take care when inviting foreign dignitaries.
Prominent visitors to Taiwan include former Czech president Vaclav Havel and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They were noted for their unwavering commitment to freedom and democracy. For all his faults, former US president Bill Clinton, who has visited Taiwan several times, carries the requisite political heft.
Truss lacks these qualities and her selling point has been exposed as a sham. Leaving aside her ineptitude as former British prime minister, she has built a career on opportunistic changes of course. Superficial and self-serving, she should be engaged with only with extreme caution.
James Baron is a freelance journalist and writer based in Taiwan.
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