Cricket lessons from Truss mess in UK: Mistimed strokes lead to catches, losing matches

If there is such a thing as a perfect lack of timing, there must be a competition in that sphere in the United Kingdom between two of its most prominent ladies: Prime Minister Liz Truss (who holds the office as this is written but may not hang in there by the time of publication if critics are to be believed), and Home Secretary Suella Braverman (whose love of Britain seems far in excess of King Charles III, to paraphrase the old English saying about one being more loyal than the regent).

This is not an algebra column, but you need to solve the simultaneous equations of these two political variables to get a hang of the country whose economy is in shambles.

Puns and punchlines abound in the quest for an accurate description of the situation.

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The venerable Economist magazine has spoken of "Truss deficit' as markets pounded the pound and the IMF grumbled about the large-scale tax cuts her weeks-old government delivered before reversing about half of it with the sacking of short-lived finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng. The chancellor's arrival was as much steeped in cluelessness as his departure.

I, for one, describe the Indian-origin Suella as a brave woman for declaiming that Indians tend to overstay their visas even as a free trade agreement (FTA) was being worked out between the former colony and its erstwhile coloniser. This could well be a self-goal because India can be a veritable asset for the post-Brexit UK trying to reinvent its economy from the mess created by London's exit from the European Union -- among other things.

Foolhardiness is another way to describe foot-in-the-mouth courage in angels-fear-to-tread situations. This brave woman called Ms Braverman is a sideshow in a larger Truss circus. It may be time to speak of clowns in the British jewelinstead of Indian jewels in the British Crown.

I am no big expert on the details of Britain's complicated economy, but I do know that Brexit was caused by an existential crisis in a country whose elitesare/were steeped in ideological confusion. What thefollow-up required was a fine balancing act. What Ms Truss delivered was a bookish off-with-the-tax eagerness that reminded one of the infamous queen in Alice's Wonderland. Balancing act, balancing budgets: same thing.

Rishi Sunak, playing a good cop in Conservative Party, must be sitting in a corner trying to suppress a giggle because he is having an I-told-you-so-moment with respect to the woman who defeated him in party polls to become the PM. He has to first look serious and committed to Britain and its greatness to retain his chance of getting the chair he missed sitting on. But his supporters are making all the required noises on his behalf.

Without us stepping into the details, we can say Brexit was a lot about UK feeling uncomfortable with competition from immigrant citizens from the European Union that caused a close-call verdict. Only 51.8% of Britons in the 2016 referendum favoured the exit. Any sensible country would have had second thoughts because only 72% of eligible British citizens took part in that vote. But in the UK, promises are to be delivered in letter, not spirit. That has resulted in a procession of Brexiteer PMs that does not seem to end: Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss may be next? Truss had to deliver on the Tories'tax-cut promises, which turned out to be a case of cutting one's own nose to spite the face.

Xenophobia, a smug dislike of competition at the workplace, colonial-era hubris and plain mood swings seem to have enabled votes in favour of Brexit. But what stares us in the face is the fall in investment and productivity in the UK economy that is at the heart of the crisis.

Market fetishists believe in low fiscal deficits as a puller of foreign investment -- and the Truss tax cuts upset the fiscal balance for that. This is because right-wing orthodoxy believes that lower taxes lead to higher efficiency, less bureaucracy and the creation of wealth and capital that fuel more jobs. Things are not so simple. And even if true, that happens in the long run. A more pragmatic Tory like Sunak likes to have safety nets to protect the poorer sections (a completely relative term in Toryspeak).

That brings us to Ms Braverman. In order to boost productivity, Britain needs skilled workers who actually look forward to work, and India with its growing talent pool, is a good hunting ground for that. You know the basics: Indians are not usually tainted by tags of Islamic extremism (hence safe), they have the colonial-era English language comfort, and last but not least, UK universities routinely make Indian students employment-ready for Britain. In such a context, Ms Braverman saying what she said was ill-timed, ill-conceived, and yet factually accurate.

This then is the horrible truth of Britain's crisis. Two women did the correct thing that was simply not appropriate for the moment. Ms Truss went for tax cuts instead of a toil-and-tears speech and Ms Braverman seems to have confused the ubiquitous tourist or family visa seeker with the much-wooed Indian engineer or technologist -- with no clarification on the apparent stereotyping. Indian techies can boost British productivity at optimal costs while foreign investors appreciate red carpets that carry no banana peels -- which is what Trussonomics seems to have laid on UK's intended road to an economic rebound.

At the core of Tory economics is the need for market and social stability that Truss has lost sight of. At the core of ongoing FTA negotiations is the need to distinguish between productive business and unwanted immigration that Ms Braverman does not seem to be conscious of.

As wounds are licked and blames are apportioned in Britain's cantankerous democratic discourse, the simultaneous equations of the two ladies in question need to be solved by keeping in mind a simple rule of the game called democracy. You can't keep voters, financiers, nationalists and foreign investors all happy at the same time. This means taking one run at a time instead of trying to hit the ball out of the park. The latter would be risky baseball fit for America's vast fields, not a cold, beleaguered island. What Ms Truss and Ms Braverman have done, oh, well, is simply not cricket.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

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