Trussism is UK subsidiary of Trumpism

 The DeSmog pressure group points out links between Liz Truss and fossil-fuel advocates:

The current favourite to replace UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has defended her plans to slash taxes by citing an economist from a think-tank with ties to the country’s main climate science denial group.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss referenced a Daily Express article [by Cardiff University's] Patrick Minford, a free-market economist who is best known for his dubious 2017 claim that a no-deal Brexit would boost the UK economy by £135 billion per year. 

Minford is a fellow at the Centre for Brexit Policy (CBP), a think-tank in which several figures also hold key roles in the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

He also led the now defunct pressure group Economists for Free Trade (EFT), which was convened by US shale gas millionaire Edgar Miller, one of the few known funders of the GWPF.

This reference by Truss is the latest example of the Foundation’s influence in the Tory leadership contest, which comes amid a record-breaking heatwave that has pushed climate change up the political agenda. 

Truss – who is currently polling ahead of former chancellor Rishi Sunak in the premiership race – has claimed she supports the UK’s 2050 net zero target. 

However, she has a record of working with free-market think-tanks that are opposed to government action on climate change, and has vowed to overturn the UK’s ban on fracking for shale gas. Steve Baker, an influential backbench MP and GWPF trustee who leads an anti-green faction in parliament, is backing Truss’s bid for leader. 

At the same time, she seeks to distance herself from Minford's prediction that UK interest rates will have to rise to 7%. 

Another plank of her campaign is to scrap all law introduced as a result of EU membership. So not only would virtually all environmental protection vanish, but also many civil and employment rights, as the Guardian explains. We would return to key workers, including junior doctors, being forced to work unlimited overtime but also to age discrimination. (A ban on ageism in recruitment was forced on a reluctant Blair-Brown administration in 2006.) There are those who assert that the common law, to which we would revert if the Acts in question were repealed, provides protection, but that would be uncertain and expensive as barristers competed in finding relevant case law.

Conservative members have to ask themselves whether they really want to introduce a regime more akin to that of Trump or Brazil's Bolsonaro than traditional Conservatism.