{"id":6463,"date":"2022-09-17T06:44:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-17T11:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whia.us\/?p=6463"},"modified":"2022-09-17T06:47:20","modified_gmt":"2022-09-17T11:47:20","slug":"6463","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whia.us\/en\/6463\/","title":{"rendered":"What Washington thinks about the next Queen Liz"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ryan Heath and Ella Creamer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source: Politico<\/strong><\/p>\n

Liz Truss\u2019 conservative allies in Washington adore her. Democrats opposed to Brexit distrust her. The Georgetown set wonders about her intellectual capacity.<\/p>\n

Even British diplomats are divided. Those who have shepherded Truss through Washington are split: some argue she had no impact, others praise her clear vision.<\/p>\n

Speak to 19 people who\u2019ve worked with Truss \u2014 as POLITICO did, from the White House and Congress to federal agencies, think tanks and the British diplomatic ranks \u2014 and you\u2019ll hear about as many different versions of the woman poised to become Britain\u2019s next prime minister.<\/p>\n

That represents a branding problem in Washington for Truss, who needs support from both parties to have any chance of securing a long-sought bilateral trade deal with the United States.<\/p>\n

Working most obviously in her favor is simply that she is not Boris Johnson. The White House shed few tears over the political undoing of the outgoing prime minister. But that doesn\u2019t mean Truss will be embraced.<\/p>\n

While close advisers prefer to call her \u201cvalues-driven\u201d and \u201cpragmatic,\u201d colleagues in London concede she can be \u201cideological.\u201d One thing is certain: Britain\u2019s chief diplomat isn\u2019t afraid to ruffle feathers.<\/p>\n

As one senior British diplomat said, with admiration: \u201cShe sometimes does things she knows people are going to hate, and does it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden administration and members of Congress are frustrated by Truss\u2019 sponsorship of legislation to unilaterally rewrite the Northern Ireland protocol, the legal linchpin managing the Irish border and Britain\u2019s wider relations with the European Union after leaving the bloc.<\/p>\n

Six years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Truss\u2019 plans are popular with Conservative party members but have left relations between London and Brussels at a low point.<\/p>\n

Now the protocol dilemma pits Truss\u2019 domestic base against her country\u2019s greatest ally.<\/p>\n

Democrat powerbrokers, including President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have spoken repeatedly about their fear that Brexit policies will trash hard-won peace in Ireland. They want the Good Friday Agreement preserved by the protocol, and for Brussels and London to stop wasting energy over avoidable conflicts.<\/p>\n

Pelosi in May labeled efforts to rewrite the protocol as \u201cdeeply concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truss fired back Wednesday, telling a campaign audience in Northern Ireland that she wouldn\u2019t be swayed by the House Speaker. \u201cI have been very clear with people like Nancy Pelosi exactly what I think about this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Two-track special relationship<\/strong><\/p>\n

As long as Biden occupies the White House, Britain\u2019s special relationship with the U.S. is set to continue operating on dual tracks.<\/p>\n

While Truss will not show up at the White House with the same personal baggage as Johnson, a U.S. diplomat familiar with the Britain file told POLITICO they see Truss as a \u201cBoris loyalist\u201d who is \u201clikely to continue the policies and tone of Johnson\u2019s government.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means the first track of the relationship will remain warm. The U.S. diplomat said the contours of the relationship are \u201cunlikely to change,\u201d regardless of who takes over in Downing Street, because defense cooperation provides stability to the special relationship. Territorial and economic challenges from China and Russia will also keep London and Washington geopolitically aligned.<\/p>\n

The second Brexit-themed track will be frostier. The diplomat predicted \u201cthe issue of how a Truss government approaches the protocol will be the first major test of relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

With no pre-existing rapport with Biden to fall back on \u2014 Truss has only been introduced to the U.S. president at summits \u2014 even her allies concede it\u2019s a tough way to kickstart a relationship.<\/p>\n

If she becomes prime minister, Truss will likely meet Biden in September, when she visits the U.S. for the United Nations General Assembly.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of who is in office in Downing Street, there can only be tensions between London and Washington,\u201d over the Northern Ireland protocol issue, said Nile Gardiner, head of the Thatcher Center at Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n

Elisabeth Braw, a U.K. specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, also sees a dispute looming. \u201cJust as Johnson and Biden were a culture clash,\u201d Braw said, Truss \u201cwould have worked better with somebody like George W. Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n

A member of Truss\u2019 campaign team told POLITICO: \u201cLiz has a good relationship with her American counterparts. They\u2019ve worked well together during her time as foreign secretary, in particular responding to Russia\u2019s illegal invasion of Ukraine. As Prime Minister she would continue to work closely with our American allies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Truss\u2019 challenge is \u201cto build a constructive conversation with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol and other matters,\u201d said Fran Burwell, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington.<\/p>\n

But Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group\u2019s managing director for Europe, said that unless Truss mends fences with the EU, the U.S.-U.K. friendship \u201cis not going to flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truss will need Republican support to have any hope of completing a U.S.-U.K. trade deal under Biden. Even that might not be enough. \u201cIt will take a change in the White House to a pro-free trader president\u201d for Truss to unlock a trade deal, said Luke Coffey, a former U.K. Defense Ministry and Conservative Party adviser now at the Hudson Institute.<\/p>\n

While Truss was eager to strike a free-trade arrangement as trade secretary during the Trump administration, she has treated the prospect of a deal as a second-order issue since Congress allowed fast-track approval for an agreement to lapse in 2021.<\/p>\n

Truss has some room to maneuver with trade policy, even if the Biden administration remains allergic to a bilateral deal between the two governments. The U.K. signed its first state-level trade agreement with Indiana in May. The government aims to sign around six additional state agreements by the end of 2022, \u201cand they\u2019re trying to get 19 more,\u201d said Cato Institute trade policy analyst Gabriella Beaumont-Smith.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if she might skirt some of the politics and work with Republicans,\u201d Beaumont-Smith added.<\/p>\n

These deals would cover non-tariff barriers and investments in tech, among other sectors. All but one of the states the U.K. has been negotiating with are Republican-led: Indiana, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, along with deep blue California.<\/p>\n

In Washington, Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) \u2014 co-founders and co-chairs of the Senate\u2019s U.K. Trade Caucus \u2014 introduced the SPECIAL Relationship Act in June to give the administration five years of fast-track authority to negotiate a trade deal. Trade dialogue discussions continue on non-tariff barriers.<\/p>\n

Crash through or crash<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps not surprising, given the chromosomes, but former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is the leader Washington power brokers most commonly associate with Truss.<\/p>\n

Forget that, as a child of left-wing parents, Truss attended anti-nuclear marches, where she remembers shouting \u201cMaggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out!\u201d<\/p>\n

Truss now welcomes the Thatcher comparison \u2014 and it is an image carefully cultivated by her inner circle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a great deal of positive energy in terms of U.S. Conservative perceptions of Liz Truss: she\u2019s very popular,\u201d said the Thatcher Center\u2019s Gardiner.<\/p>\n

By positioning herself as Britain\u2019s biggest cheerleader, Truss created the space to be the face of the U.K. government\u2019s \u201cGlobal Britain\u201d policy. That turned her image \u2014 in the eyes of the Conservative Party members currently voting to choose Britain\u2019s next prime minister \u2014 from that of 2016 Brexit opponent to the minister doing the most to deliver Brexit dividends.<\/p>\n

Through mostly cut-and-paste efforts, Truss\u2019s two years as trade secretary from 2019 to 2021 put the U.K. on course to replicate nearly all the trade deals it had participated in as an EU member.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one reason why Truss feels so comfortable admonishing anyone \u201cwho talks our country down.\u201d<\/p>\n

As international trade secretary, she hoisted the Union Jack, promoting the reach of the British economy. And as foreign minister, she jumped into a tank (not unlike Thatcher, before her) and strode across aircraft carriers in the style of American presidents. Her 2021 Christmas message \u2014 delivered in a style eerily similar to Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s \u2014 could have come from Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n

An economist before she entered politics, Truss has served in six different Cabinet roles and been a regular visitor to Washington since she joined David Cameron\u2019s team in 2014, aged 38.<\/p>\n

Despite that impressive CV \u2014 and the fact Truss graduated from the same university, Oxford, as the man she hopes to replace, Boris Johnson, and the man she is battling for the job, Rishi Sunak \u2014 one of the first topics of discussion about Truss in Georgetown social circles is her intellectual capacity.<\/p>\n

The reasons differed according to who POLITICO spoke to. Britons in Washington wonder if Truss\u2019 slight northern English accent is the reason: a version of British class prejudice jumping the pond. Some Americans knew Truss only through her bombastic rhetoric on Russia and China, while Biden administration officials tend to see her rise as a symptom of decline in the caliber of British leadership.<\/p>\n

One former British diplomat described Truss\u2019 early ministerial forays to Washington as \u201ca bit awkward in both group and one-to-one settings.\u201d While insisting Truss was on top of her brief, \u201cshe also didn\u2019t leave much of an impression,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Those who\u2019ve worked closely with Truss reject the criticisms. \u201cShe\u2019s not stupid, not at all,\u201d said one senior British diplomat, who was not authorized to speak on the record. \u201cHer public persona is dominated by being phenomenally pro-British, but there\u2019s more to her than people sometimes assume. She\u2019s not a right-wing reactionary.\u201d<\/p>\n

A major theme of Truss\u2019 public comments is Western complacency since the end of the Cold War, which she positions under the banner of: \u201cBe tough, get peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a March speech at the Atlantic Council entitled \u201cThe Era of Complacency is Over,\u201d Truss praised unprecedented sanctions against Russian individuals and organizations, but insisted that was not a sufficient policy response. Sounding much like her idol, Thatcher, she told the audience: \u201cWe have to start with the principle that the only thing aggressors understand is strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect that a Truss premiership would see very tough British positioning on China, and that you\u2019re going to see a lot of U.S.-U.K. collaboration on confronting China,\u201d said the Heritage Foundation\u2019s Gardiner.<\/p>\n

While Sunak, Truss\u2019 Downing Street rival, completed an MBA at Stanford and was a green card holder until 2021, Truss has wider networks in Washington, having cultivated Republican activists and intellectuals during repeated think-tank engagements during official visits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a great deal of positive energy in terms of U.S. conservative perceptions of Liz Truss: she\u2019s very popular,\u201d Gardiner said.<\/p>\n

Truss\u2019 American links date back to the 1990s when, as a young industrial economist at Shell, the oil and gas company, she oversaw a ship refurbishment project in Norfolk, Va.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was overseeing two LNG vessels that had been mothballed due to lack of demand,\u201d Truss told her Atlantic Council audience, noting the irony that Europe faces a long and cold winter without Russian gas, because it can\u2019t ship enough in.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s another reason why Truss will need to prioritize warming relations with the Biden White House.<\/p>\n

Her Atlantic Council speech was a start in that direction, praising Biden for helping to lead the response to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and strengthening the relationship with Britain. She even sounded a bit like Biden himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want us all to work together to resolve our differences and to be focused on the threats that we face,\u201d she said. \u201cOur ultimate aim \u2014 working with all our allies \u2014 is to make the world safe for freedom and democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alex Ward, Nahal Toosi and Daniel Lippman in Washington and Eleni Courea in London contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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What Washington thinks about the next Queen Liz<\/a><\/blockquote>