Trussed up? Parsing the PM's speech

How it might have felt to her isn't how it looked to me.

Truss enters and is made to stand at the podium with a fixed smile for 60 seconds. This strikes me as deliberately too much applause. She looks physically uncomfortable and incapable of making a start on her own terms. Given that after a week since taking the job she is already plumbing record depths of unpopularity and having racked up demonstrable screw ups while showing the will to blame one person for the thing that no one likes, the applause cannot all be positive. There’s punishment in there.

“My friends…”

That’s how Putin opened his recent speeches.

“GET BRITAIN MOVING” looks like it is projected on to the background so that letters can’t fall off like they did for Theresa May.

The autocues are set too far apart. This forces her to look deliberately and unnaturally wide left and right every few seconds to read the words. Judging by the frequency of the head movements, either the words on the autocue are set large or she needs to read every word and has a short memory.

She is deliberately tilting her head up too high, perhaps to limit the “second order chin effect”. It just looks awkward and unnatural.

Top left is a reminder of the pound’s weakness thanks to Truss’ non-involvement in the Chancellor’s tax cut decision that they all abandoned and blamed on him.

When the shot cuts to the Tory front line, they appear to be watching themselves on TV and adjusting their behaviour accordingly, notably Ben Wallace.

Tory mayors are the best kind of mayors, she tells the echo chamber. They appear to agree.

We gather at a vital time. These are stormy days.

i.e. Britain is in the shit. No shit. Who’s fault is that? If you don’t know who the sucker is at the table, it’s you. All the applause has petered out. No one is clapping about Britain’s current state of affairs? Why not?

We have just done the right and only thing to get through Covid together. And we are doing the right and only thing stoking WW3 against the enemy in the East (or West, if you want to fly the other way, carbon quotas and APT allowing). Where we are isn’t our fault is it? We did everything the best way and the right way, so why isn’t that worth some applause?

We’re now in a new era under King Charles III

Yep, she actually had to read that sentence in two parts off the autocue, as though she needed to see “King Charles III”.

She’s screwed. We’re all screwed.

We’re dealing with the global economic crisis caused by (gulp) Covid and Putin’s appalling war in Ukraine.

This is open bullshit. The economic situation was not caused by Covid. It was caused by multiple decades of fundamental market and political financial decisions and constructs, combined with myriad political choices, including political decisions and policies in response to Covid. If we had literally done nothing, we’d all be better off than we are now, and the death numbers “with” Covid would have been the same. If we had used the proven early treatment protocols, the deaths would have been less and we would have managed the entire disease for a fraction of the cost. In fact, in real terms, no one would have noticed.

Putin’s war is our war. We’re directly involved in it. It could have ended in April at the negotiating table as per Zelenskyy’s statements, but USEUNATO intervened (likely Britain and US) and killed the negotiations to deliberately drag out the war and bleed Russia dry, “to the last Ukrainian”.

I believe that you know best how to spend your own money, to get on in life and to realise your ambitions.

Which is why this government’s overt actions have made all of those choices less affordable, so you all have less choices.

Time to “humanise” the woman dressed like Hitlerina.

To her rescue comes The Big Issue! Surprise surprise:

Years and Years was a dystopian near-future drama series… Enter Emma Thompson… with honeyed-words and slick charm belying some terrifying far-right policies. The six-part series aired in May 2019 and, right there in episode five, as she is discussing concentration camps, is that red dress. So did Truss see Thompson’s fascist fashion and think “that’s the look for me”? Unlikely, given she was wearing the same dress at least eight months before the show aired. Should someone on her team perhaps have spotted the similarities and warned her of the terrible optics, given the weeks-long train wreck that has typified her first month as PM? Absolutely. Will she be wearing it again? With a recent history of not always making the best choices in public appearances and a media adviser who joined her team from that of Prince Andrew… well, anything is possible.

My friends,

Putin again.

That is what conservatism is about; it’s a belief in freedom, fair play and the great potential of the British people.

This is not reflected in any policy introduced by the Tories over the last 2.5 years, all of which have been the most draconian changes in law in my lifetime that sought to utterly dictate daily living to the entire population except for the ruling classes who have been proven to be exempt from law (see Cummings, Johnson, Ferguson, SAGE, MHRA, any government agency, NHS management, corporations).

I’m not interested in how many two-for-one offers you buy at the supermarket….

This is actually an economic indicator of a vendor’s conscious manipulation of customer behaviour and also of customer’s lower spending power. But Truss isn’t interested. She leans out and smiles, like this is an in-joke. Using the phrase “I’m not interested” is going to come back and bite her in a matter of hours. Videos will be cut of a plummeting pound, rising homelessness, increasing crime, increasing all cause mortality, a Russian winter fightback and escalation. All interspersed with “I’m not interested! I’m not interested!” UK public money was spent on the person who wrote that speech and used that phrase, and Truss was dumb enough to sign off on it and say the words without forethought and sensitivity.

She’s a sociopath. We’re screwed.

…or in how you spend your spare time.
Or in virtue signalling.

Poor people don’t have spare time because they are working for minimum wage in possibly two jobs.

Her pause after “virtue signalling” was where the autocue told her the applause would come, but it didn’t come. It had already started to come when she said “two-for-one offers” until someone told Ben Wallace to stop clapping due to “optics”. To which he replied, “It’s fine, I’ve got an order in for night sights with Raytheon. Should be here on Wednesday next week. Picking it up from the Downing Street Amazon locker so no one has to be home.”

Truss gets into nitty gritty. Bear in mind, she is describing the “hopes and fears” of people living in the G8 nation.

Can I get a good job locally?
Is it safe to walk down the high street late at night?
Can you get a doctor’s appointment?

This shows two things:

1. That what she says are UK citizens’ hopes and fears are in keeping with people living in the developing world.

2. They reflect almost no one in the UK retired population, who don’t walk down a high street at night, have retired and hold most of the wealth.

Truss goes on to claim that she has been the victim of sexual discrimination throughout her life. According to Wikipedia, this is her coarse resumé:

Truss attended Merton College, Oxford and was the president of Oxford University Liberal Democrats.[3] In 1996, she joined the Conservative Party.[4] She worked at Shell and Cable & Wireless, and was deputy director of the think tank Reform. After two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she was elected as the MP for South West Norfolk at the 2010 general election.[5] Truss served as parliamentary under-secretary of state for childcare and education from 2012 to 2014, before Cameron appointed her secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs in the 2014 cabinet reshuffle. After Cameron resigned in July 2016, May appointed Truss secretary of state for justice and lord chancellor, making her the first female lord chancellor in the office's thousand-year history. Following the 2017 general election, Truss was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury.

Following May's resignation in 2019, Truss supported Johnson's successful bid to become Conservative leader and prime minister, after which he appointed Truss as secretary of state for international trade and president of the Board of Trade. She took on the additional role of minister for women and equalities in September 2019. Promoted to foreign secretary by Johnson in the 2021 cabinet reshuffle, she was appointed the government's chief negotiator with the European Union and the United Kingdom's chair of the EU–UK Partnership Council in December 2021, and was involved in the UK's response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. She became prime minister amid an ongoing cost of living crisis and an energy supply crisis.

Therefore, according to her own claims, some or all of the following harbour sexists:

• Oxford University

• Liberal Democrats

• Conservative Party

• Shell

• Cable & Wireless

• Reform

• House of Commons

• South West Norfolk

• The various areas of the British Government in which she has served

The same Wikipedia page states:

At the 2001 general election, Truss stood for the constituency of Hemsworth in West Yorkshire, a safe seat for the Labour Party. She came a distant second, but increased the Conservative vote by 3.2%.[40][41] Prior to the 2005 general election, the parliamentary candidate for Calder Valley, Sue Catling, was pressured to resign by the local Conservative Association,[42] whereupon Truss was selected to fight the seat, which is also in West Yorkshire. Truss narrowly lost the election to the Labour Party incumbent.

According to the Telegraph, Sue Catling was subject to sexism in the Tory party who then replaced her with Truss (who lost):

[Catling] blames sexism and dyed-in-the-wool attitudes within the party for her downfall in the West Yorkshire constituency. She says she has been the victim of a "sustained campaign of dirty tricks" by a clique within the 250-member association for more than two years.

"A Tory gentleman in his late middle age also said at a pre-selection meeting, after hearing I had been an actress, 'Do tell us if you did any porn movies'."

https://web.archive.org/web/20160706194126/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1480977/Dumped-candidate-blames-old-Tory-sexism.html

Truss claims to have been made “angry” and “determined”. You be the judge of what she has changed for the better or worse.

She tells the home crowd that she is the first Prime Minister to have gone to a comprehensive school. To quote George Carlin, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it!” Cue a deliberately and uncomfortably overlong round of applause from a room full of people who mostly didn’t go to a comprehensive school. She does not smile during this applause, rolls her jaw several times, stares out at the crowd and actually narrows her eyes. No “thank you” or smiles.

That taught me two things. One is that we have huge talent across our country. And two, that we’re not making enough of it.

This is an admission of two things. One is either she or her geography teacher lacked talent at Russian geography. And two, all Conservative (and preceding) governments have constantly failed the British people if the present Prime Minister expressly states that the talent of British citizens is not being made enough of.

She again reverts to myopic, narrow-minded, patronising and sexist “ambitions”:

• Reward for “hard work”;

• Women can walk home safely at night;

• Children have a better future.

Largely meaningless slogans. Define “adequate reward” and “work”. Why focus on women’s safety? All people should be safe walking around. Also, why are women walking home from work? We should be wealthy enough to be shielded in vehicles or transportation (piggybacking on a gig worker’s BMX). Children’s futures against what baseline metrics?

We can’t have any more drift and delay at this vital time.

She has been put into a trap with this speech and she knows it. Some of this is already out of date. She’s being lead into the abattoir and will be culled soon.

Let’s remember where we were when I entered Downing Street.

The pound was about $1.14. It then nose-dived to a historic low when you opened your mouth. Then you had to run away and blame the tall man for everything in order to get it back to $1.14.

Average energy bills were predicted to soar above £6000 a year.

Predictions aren’t truth or certainty. You could affect the price of energy right now by buying gas and oil from the cheapest suppliers, which used to be Russia until your own choices sent the prices rocketing. This is all your fault.

Highest tax burden for 70 years.

How many years of Tory rule have contributed to that tax regime? Truss says she just doesn’t believe whatever the macro situation might be and so she acted. Although she hasn’t acted yet.

Boom! An “event” occurs. Greenpeace protestors have managed to “sneak in”. Believe it or not, Truss actually says “Let’s get them removed,” into an open mic, making her sound like a twat. First, they are going to be removed without any need for a command. Second, she sounds like a heartless bitch, given that Greenpeace is fully aligned to Agenda 2030’s Net Zero policies. They ask a fair question, “who voted for this?” Truss had two workable options: stay silent and let the room of thugs work; use charisma to acknowledge the pair and engage them deftly. Truss was incapable of doing either, despite the first option literally demanding nothing of her and guaranteeing that she looked and sounded like less of a twat. The “protestors’” ejection made the entire hall look like a closed shop of elitist sociopaths who, through the clapping and jeering, demonstrated pure contempt for people asking questions of the agents of representative democracy. This is a message to citizens: “we don’t give a fuck about you or your concerns, we can touch you and you can’t touch us.” Truss “jokes” that the “protestors” came early. There might be a sliver of truth in that.

We’ll get on to them in a minute.

Truss lacks the fluidity to have an ad hoc adaptation, so there must be something of direct relevance in the speech about either protest or the environment.

We made sure that the typical… household… energy bill shouldn’t be more than around £2500 a year this winter and next.

She was too slow to read the whole sentence, meaning that she doesn’t know the entire logic sequence of the words. If you’re talking about energy bills, you should have no doubt about the phrase “typical household energy bill” in that context, but still she had to see the words.

That’s a Tory government engaging in state price intervention and fixing. What happened to the belief in the efficiency of the free market? Why is the government allowing onward selling of energy imports instead of the primary supply of the domestic market to drop prices based on supply volume?

Truss admits more failure. UK growth hasn’t been enough. So anyone who claimed positivity in any unspecified period was lying.

She lived in Leeds in the 1990s and claims it was behind in economic growth. In the late 1990s, Leeds benefited from massive influx of money from banking, finance and call centres, as well as the growth of its two universities. If she wanted reasons to be grateful, she should have visited Bradford.

Truss then talks about an invented pie, and says she’s made up a way to sort it all out. Despite the external and internal limits and dependencies she admits, she reckons Britain can do what it wants how it wants.

Here comes the slogan! Three priorities: growth, growth and growth. This is a crock of shit. At record public debt levels, most of which has been passed to corporations in multiple wealth transfers, she is going to cut taxes (intended for the rich) but then refers to a patronisingly simplistic notion of public money. Public spending will therefore be cut, which is likely to manifest in overt and covert privatisation of all services and citizen data. War spending will not be curtailed, nor will big pharma spending. That means all benefits and so on will probably not keep up with inflation.

In the rambling section about business subsidy and deregulation, Truss abandons all meaningful intonation, getting more and more boring into the punchline. She doesn’t even pretend to believe her own bullshit. She knows she is going to be culled later.

Then there’s a section repeating growth slogans while stats play along side. Truss starts claiming something about the NHS and the new Deputy Prime Minister and Health Secretary will do loads of things that are worse than they used to be:

1. GP appointment within two weeks

2. Urgent care same day

3. Ambulances out faster and A&E improvements

4. Bust the Covid backlog

5. Bolster social care

This is a joke. This is conditioning to accept and expect shit. Even these vague claims won’t be met in real terms, despite being vague enough to invent claims that they have, just by using weasel words. Likely, these items alone will be used to take out Truss and the Tories in favour of Starmer come the next election.

On that note, time to go back to episode something of The Rings of Power, where the bad acting, invented plot line that bears no resemblance to source material and the clear overspending is a more entertaining proxy for the global, managed nose dive. That there’s a “determined blonde heroine” at its centre is not, I repeat NOT, some form of parallel predictive programming, even if SAGE SPY-B’s accounts do have a line item for “£1.2bn PROJECT GALADRIEL”.

Nudge, nudge.