Liz Truss takes over British premiership with Conservative Party win
Liz Truss won the vote on Monday to become the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, a contest that also decided who will replace Boris Johnson as prime minister.
Liz Truss during the Conservative Party leadership hustings event in Cardiff, Wales, on Aug. 3 2022. Credit: ComposedPix/Shutterstock.
Truss, who served in Johnson’s Cabinet as foreign secretary, was the odds-on favourite. She received 57.4% of the vote among party members, while her opponent, former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, garnered 42.6%.
In a brief acceptance speech, Truss said that she would cut taxes, tackle the energy crisis and improve national health care.
The first woman from her party to serve as foreign secretary, she earned a reputation as a supporter of Israel during her tenure at the Foreign Office, which she took over last September.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid congratulated Truss, who he described as a “great friend” of the Jewish state.
“Our nations are allies united by our commitment to freedom and a shared vision for the future. I look forward to continuing our work together to take that alliance to new heights,” he said in a statement.
Truss pledged last month to consider moving the British embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if she became prime minister. She made the promise in a letter written to members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) parliamentary group.
“I understand the importance and sensitivity of the location of the British Embassy in Israel,” Truss wrote in her letter, adding that she has had “many conversations with my good friend” (Lapid) on the topic. She vowed to “review a move to ensure we are operating on the strongest footing with Israel.”
She has also made a number of strongly worded pro-Israel statements.
In an Aug. 11 interview with Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, she promised to “eradicate the scourge of anti-Semitism” and “change woke civil-service culture that strays into anti-Semitism.”
During “Operation Breaking Dawn,” Israel’s three-day aerial offensive last month against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, Truss issued a statement on Aug. 6 expressing the United Kingdom’s support for Israel and its right to self-defence while condemning the terrorists.
In November, Truss signed a 10-year agreement with Israel to cooperate on cyber expertise, technology, trade and defence. At the time, Lapid and Truss said the two countries would “work night and day to prevent the Iranian regime from ever becoming a nuclear power.”
JNS
The U.S. has been at war over 100 times since she was founded in 1776 and this does not the countless coups d’etats she has initiated and funded to overthrow governments she views not meeting her foreign policy objectives.Her Presidents have frequently bypassed the U,S. Constitution by going to war without first seeking the approval of Congress,the People’s voice.There have been only 11 approvals by Congress,the last before American participation in WWII.Democracy requires the People’s voice to be heard.The U.S. is a plutocracy but not a democracy.
It is important for PM Truss to realize that her predecessor Boris Johnson and Cabinet got the UK deeply involved in the totally avoidable Russian-Ukrainian war resulting in high inflation,shortages of food and fuel,worsened African starvation with the big winners the war and Big Oil industries,the latter with obscene trillion dollar profits. The big losers are Ukrainians ,Russians and the impoverished of the world.The actions of all the NATO nations was to supply billions in military hardware and training to the Ukrainians and to prolong this current war whose roots go back a 1000 years.The war could have been avoided if NATO wouldn’t have been on the Russian-Ukrainian border through the conning of Zelensky by the U.S. and other NATO nations. It is important for the world to remember that the German invasion-with cheering by Ukrainians of the USSR-during WWII resulted in 26 million dead Russians and 1.6 million totally innocent Jewish Ukrainian men,women and children were murdered for one reason only,they were Jewish.