To Liz Truss’s many failings must now be added an apparent prejudice against Rutland. Not unlike the island of Taiwan, England’s smallest historic county has fought hard over the years to maintain its independence from a larger, overbearing neighbour. For China, read Leicestershire. Now its Conservative MP, Alicia Kearns, has become the target of a nasty geopolitical sneer. If you hail from landlocked rural Rutland, Truss’s spokesperson superciliously implied last week, you probably don’t understand international affairs.
This insulting inference was made after Kearns had the temerity to question the wisdom, utility and motivation of Truss’s unofficial visit to Taiwan last week. The disgraced former prime minister says she plans to speak out in “solidarity” with Taiwan’s people in defiance of Chinese intimidation. But Kearns dismissed the trip as a vanity project to help Truss “keep herself relevant” and as “the worst kind of Instagram diplomacy”. Truss’s confrontational antics could make things worse for Taiwan, she warned.
The response was snotty. Truss “has been invited to visit by the Taiwan government. They are better placed to know what is in the interests of the Taiwanese people than the MP for Rutland,” her spokesperson condescendingly replied. Yet Kearns, no Rutle yokel she, is well-qualified to speak on this issue. She chairs the Commons foreign affairs select committee. And given Truss’s record of causing chaos, her concerns are valid. Like many Tories whose political life expectancy was drastically shortened by last autumn’s Trussian revolution, Kearns has learned to distrust her ex-leader’s judgment.
Self-promoting Truss was already a bit of a martial joke before entering Downing Street. As foreign secretary in 2021, she was mocked for posing, Margaret Thatcher-like, atop a tank in Estonia. As prime minister, she mimicked Boris Johnson’s Winston Churchill tribute act over Ukraine. After her forced resignation, she resurfaced in Tokyo, rebooting herself as a China hawk and unguided missile. Britain should arm Taiwan, join a “Pacific defence alliance”, help deter “totalitarian” China and thus save the “free world”, Truss boldly declared.
More simplistic, dangerously belligerent verbiage can be expected this week. What the Taiwanese, and China, may make of it is worrying. Diplomatically isolated and constantly menaced by Beijing, the last thing Taiwan’s people need is “help” from Truss. As last year’s destabilising visit by senior US Democrat Nancy Pelosi showed, gratuitously provoking Beijing can be seriously counter-productive. Truss’s clumsy intervention could also be read as a bid to influence January’s Taiwanese national elections.
That’s problematic, since the ruling, pro-independence Democratic Progressive party faces a tight race with the more Beijing-friendly Kuomintang opposition. Truss’s anti-China rhetoric may be mistaken for official British policy. As foreign secretary James Cleverly explained recently, the government is trying hard to balance justified criticism of China with the “robustly pragmatic”, constructive pursuit of beneficial ties. Truss doesn’t help.
Another problem with this bull-in-a-china-shop blundering is dreadful timing. In the real world, far removed from rightwing Tory feuds and petty personal ambitions, the US – the only truly capable guarantor of the Taiwan status quo – is actively attempting to patch up strained relations with China. Delicate talks in Vienna last week, the most significant bilateral contact since the “spy balloon” blow-up earlier this year, reportedly made cautious progress.
It is in Britain’s interest, and the world’s, that these two competing superpowers find ways of living amicably with each other – and maintaining channels of communication that prevent more Ukraine-style disasters. Indulging her hubris and pique, the serially irresponsible MP for South West Norfolk is doing her country another disservice. She owes Rutland an apology, too.
