Not a leader anyone needs

‘Why did Liz Truss cross the road? Because she said she wouldn’t.’’ The Tory candidate likely to be British prime minister next week has made more U-turns than a wobbly shopping trolley.

She’s a Liberal Democrat who joined the Tories. A passionate Remainer who mutated into a hardline Brexiteer. After 10 years in Cabinet, she is pitching herself as a ‘‘fresh face’’. It would be amusing if liberal democracy weren’t under siege, and we didn’t need leaders with backbone to meet the moment.

0.3% of the British population – paid-up Tory members – will choose between Truss and Rushi Sunak. ‘‘We’re retired now, but in our spare time we like to choose the next prime minister,’’ quipped Private Eye magazine of those elderly Tory stalwarts. They’ve chosen the UK prime minister three consecutive times now.

Note to self – allowing party members to pick doesn’t seem to produce better or longer-lasting leaders. It does, however, appear to produce leaders who struggle in the job. Anyway, back to the UK.

A minority of voters support Truss. The public prefers Sunak, or Labour leader Keir Starmer. Truss is not even the first choice of Tory MPS or even most of those who will fill her Cabinet. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, she may not have enemies, but she is intensely disliked by her friends.

Truss will be the latest new leader not up to the job of defending fundamental ideas of liberal democracy – equality before the law, and the rules that bind us. It is under attack in the battlefields of Ukraine, where Putin was triggered not by the expansion of Nato, but the expansion of democracy.

It is under attack from Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was ‘‘stolen’’, and from Boris Johnson threatening to rip up the Northern Ireland Protocol, a legally binding agreement he negotiated and signed.

Those who break the rules when it suits them are as culpable as those who never believed in them in the first place.

If leaders don’t defend democratic institutions, we end up with leaders who are more weather vane than signpost. Politicians who change their views to suit public opinion end up as insipid alternatives to the ‘‘strong man’’ autocrats who promise to blow the whole system up.

Thirty per cent of British voters – equivalent to 14 million people – agree that ‘‘Britain needs a strong leader who can take and implement big decisions quickly without having to consult parliament’’. If that doesn’t worry you, last year the world experienced the lowest levels of democracy for 30 years.

You and I might have just lived through the end of a brief interlude of liberal democracy. If the rise of democracy and the rejection of colonialism defined the second half of the 20th century, its collapse could be the defining trend of the 21st. Unless we fight back. Defeating autocracy and cynicism requires us to defeat identity politics, because it’s the tool through which highly polarised extremes force voters to choose between bad and awful.

The appeal of populism is the identity it gives people who feel left behind, or sneered at by ‘‘the elites’’ in universities, media or parliament. Identity pitches people against one another by creating a shared understanding of victimisation. Dehumanising the ‘‘bad people’’ is a prerequisite.

The Hidden Tribes study, by the Uk-based group More In Common, identifies a group on the right, ‘‘Devoted Conservatives’’, who see themselves as defenders of traditional ‘‘values’’ and institutions. On the left it found ‘‘Progressive Activists’’ who blame ‘‘power structures’’ and institutions for causing inequality against minorities.

Those groups together make up about

14% of the population, but wield huge influence on political discourse. It’s no surprise the Devoted Conservatives were the whitest of all seven groups identified in the study (88% white), but you may be surprised to learn the second whitest were the Progressive Activists (80% white).

The two groups were also the most highly educated and reported the highest annual income. More in common than they think.

Part of the appeal of populism and activism is they promote transformative change, and provide optimism that things should and will be better.

Liberal democracy used to own that optimism. To survive, it must do so again.

Truss will not be one of those leaders who can make a passionate defence of liberal values or understand the seriousness of this moment. She will feint in the direction of right-wing identity and bait the left. They will respond in kind. Polarisation will rise.

But courage to resist can emerge in unlikely places. Republican Liz Cheney, with an unmatched right-wing pedigree, chose to blow up her political future to try to stop Trump re-entering the White House.

Why did Liz Cheney cross the road? Because she decided that defending liberal democracy was more important than her own career. We need more of these signpost politicians.