The current Tory government is rammed full of extremely low calibre individuals who have been promoted way beyond their abilities, and the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss is one of the worst examples of the lot.
You only need to look at her Twitter feed to see what a callous intellectual lightweight she is, yet somehow she's been clunking around at the top of the Tory party for years. Before she was made second in command at the Treasury Theresa May actually saw fit to appoint her Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.
Feeling Tiggerish
Take Truss's January 26th Tweet celebrating the release of dire economic figures with a picture of the Winnie the Pooh character Tigger and a ludicrous #FeelingTiggerish hashtag.
As second in command at the Treasury Truss clearly has no excuse for not understanding that an annual growth rate of 1.8% is the lowest since 2012, and that a quarterly growth rate of just 0.5% makes for the 8th consecutive quarter of below 2% annual growth (the worst run since the bankers trashed the economy in 2007-08). She also has no excuse for not knowing that the UK economy is languishing with the second lowest growth rate in the entire developed world.
She has no excuse for not knowing this stuff, so she's either profoundly ignorant of the absolute basics of her own job, or she knows perfectly well how bad it is but she's trying to dress this Tory failure up as a success because she has so much contempt for the "lower orders" that she thinks they'll eat her turd and thank her for it, as long as she sprinkles a bit of glitter on it. Either way it's a disgrace.
As second in command at the Treasury Truss clearly has no excuse for not understanding that an annual growth rate of 1.8% is the lowest since 2012, and that a quarterly growth rate of just 0.5% makes for the 8th consecutive quarter of below 2% annual growth (the worst run since the bankers trashed the economy in 2007-08). She also has no excuse for not knowing that the UK economy is languishing with the second lowest growth rate in the entire developed world.
She has no excuse for not knowing this stuff, so she's either profoundly ignorant of the absolute basics of her own job, or she knows perfectly well how bad it is but she's trying to dress this Tory failure up as a success because she has so much contempt for the "lower orders" that she thinks they'll eat her turd and thank her for it, as long as she sprinkles a bit of glitter on it. Either way it's a disgrace.
Miners
Then take Truss's crass January 30th Twitter "joke" about the ideologically driven suffering her party inflicted on miners and mining communities across the United Kingdom.
As a result of the Tory ideological war on the miners and their merciless "leave it to market forces" approach to poverty and unemployment in the communities they trashed there are still dozens of poverty blighted towns across South Wales, the midlands, Yorkshire, the north east, and Scotland.
Yet here's a Tory minister laughing and joking about the miners' strike as if crushing an industry that was once the backbone of the empire, deliberately dividing communities, describing working people as "the enemy within", violently repressing workers' rights and political protests, and putting hundreds of thousands out of work is just a convenient setup for an attempted joke at the expense of a political rival.
What's even worse is that Liz Truss sat in the Tory cabinet that decided to not bother having a public enquiry into the police violence against miners at Orgreave, despite not having even bothered to review the police files first.
Authority
In another Tweet Truss tries to defend hard-right free market fanaticism by opining that that she's "pro freedom" because she has supposedly "never liked being told what to do".
This is a quite extraordinary statement from someone who's job it was until quite recently to head the entire UK legal system as Lord Chancellor and Minister for Justice.
It's a quite extraordinary statement from a woman who has sat in cabinet and voted in favour of scrapping one freedom after another for ordinary people (such as legislating away the freedom from unlawful state surveillance, introducing unlawful Tory charges designed to prevent fair access to the justice system, and the introduction of unlawful Tory forced labour schemes designed to revoke people's freedom to say to to working for highly profitable corporations with no wages and no workers' rights).
Worst of all it's astoundingly hypocritical from a woman who has not rebelled once against her own political party since 2015, no matter how depraved, economically illiterate, or downright incompetent their policies.
As a result of the Tory ideological war on the miners and their merciless "leave it to market forces" approach to poverty and unemployment in the communities they trashed there are still dozens of poverty blighted towns across South Wales, the midlands, Yorkshire, the north east, and Scotland.
Yet here's a Tory minister laughing and joking about the miners' strike as if crushing an industry that was once the backbone of the empire, deliberately dividing communities, describing working people as "the enemy within", violently repressing workers' rights and political protests, and putting hundreds of thousands out of work is just a convenient setup for an attempted joke at the expense of a political rival.
What's even worse is that Liz Truss sat in the Tory cabinet that decided to not bother having a public enquiry into the police violence against miners at Orgreave, despite not having even bothered to review the police files first.
Authority
In another Tweet Truss tries to defend hard-right free market fanaticism by opining that that she's "pro freedom" because she has supposedly "never liked being told what to do".
This is a quite extraordinary statement from someone who's job it was until quite recently to head the entire UK legal system as Lord Chancellor and Minister for Justice.
It's a quite extraordinary statement from a woman who has sat in cabinet and voted in favour of scrapping one freedom after another for ordinary people (such as legislating away the freedom from unlawful state surveillance, introducing unlawful Tory charges designed to prevent fair access to the justice system, and the introduction of unlawful Tory forced labour schemes designed to revoke people's freedom to say to to working for highly profitable corporations with no wages and no workers' rights).
Worst of all it's astoundingly hypocritical from a woman who has not rebelled once against her own political party since 2015, no matter how depraved, economically illiterate, or downright incompetent their policies.
Capitalism
Truss's sub-juvenile and offensive Twitter timeline is an embarrassment that is entirely unbefitting of a government minister, but one tweet stands out above all for sheer idiocy, and it's a lazy rehash of the Mensch fallacy that posits that people are somehow a hypocrite if they in any way criticise the capitalist system if they happen to live in a capitalist system.
Apparently, according to Truss, it's somehow hypocritical for the centre-left Labour campaign group Momentum to use buildings, drink coffee, or use social media, presumably because they should only be allowed meet in buildings made of twigs, drink river water, and communicate by shouting if they intend to oppose stuff like corporate tax dodging, the Carillion scandal, low wages, and ruinous Tory austerity dogma.
The glaringly obvious counterpoint is to make the ridiculous argument that anyone who has ever benefited from social ownership or socialist policies (like using the NHS, driving public roads, having a state education, claiming a pension, tax credits, or child benefits, using any other aspect of the welfare system, or taking advantage of workers' rights like the weekend, paid leave, sick pay, parental pay, protection from unfair dismissal or dangerous working conditions ...) is precluded from ever criticising the excesses of the Soviet Union under Stalin, hyper-inflation in Venezuela, or the repression of human rights in China.
It's like the lord of the manor telling the serf that they can't criticise feudalism because the rags they're wearing are the product of the feudal economy.
Apparently, according to Truss, it's somehow hypocritical for the centre-left Labour campaign group Momentum to use buildings, drink coffee, or use social media, presumably because they should only be allowed meet in buildings made of twigs, drink river water, and communicate by shouting if they intend to oppose stuff like corporate tax dodging, the Carillion scandal, low wages, and ruinous Tory austerity dogma.
The glaringly obvious counterpoint is to make the ridiculous argument that anyone who has ever benefited from social ownership or socialist policies (like using the NHS, driving public roads, having a state education, claiming a pension, tax credits, or child benefits, using any other aspect of the welfare system, or taking advantage of workers' rights like the weekend, paid leave, sick pay, parental pay, protection from unfair dismissal or dangerous working conditions ...) is precluded from ever criticising the excesses of the Soviet Union under Stalin, hyper-inflation in Venezuela, or the repression of human rights in China.
It's like the lord of the manor telling the serf that they can't criticise feudalism because the rags they're wearing are the product of the feudal economy.
Just look at the ridicule Truss's former Tory colleague Louise Mensch suffered for using this absurd fallacy, yet here we are years later with an actual government minister making the same idiotic argument.
Liz, you're sounding as stupid and desperate as your ex-colleague Louise Mensch with this pathetic drivel.— Tom (AAV) (@Angry_Voice) January 30, 2018
And to think you're an actual government minister! pic.twitter.com/4O9f3Fo5PY
Conclusion
A look at Liz Truss's lamentable Twitter feed, and the knowledge that she's been clunking around at the very top of the Tory government for years tells us all we need to know about the absolute dearth of talent they must be experiencing.
How far we've fallen as a nation that such a person could have risen so far in politics.
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