Power Without Authority

Compromised elites, parties fleeing their constituencies, and voters losing confidence: it’s no wonder so many people want something better.

PMO Barbados from Bridgetown, Barbados, PDM-owner, via Wikimedia Commons

British prime minister Liz Truss is in trouble. Just six weeks into her tenure, Britons are counting the days until her demise. Even Conservative Party loyalists are asking when, not if—and how, not why—she will be deposed.

We needn’t look far to see what is driving such discussions. Truss launched her premiership with a tax-cutting budget designed to fuel economic growth. But her refusal to indicate how the books might balance meant that the pound plummeted. Pressure from within her own party to change course and ditch tax cuts for the highest earners quickly led to a U-turn. Having scented blood once, her critics were emboldened. Truss was forced to ditch her chancellor and appoint a new finance minister. Jeremy Hunt, a twice-failed leadership contender, has this week rowed back on every tax cut the new prime minister had proposed.

On the surface, Truss and President Joe Biden have little in common. Britain’s younger female leader stands in stark visual contrast to the aged president. But the real differences between the two are political. Forget Conservatives versus Democrats: politics was no barrier to Barack Obama and David Cameron’s friendship. Fast forward a decade, though, and the political barriers are insurmountable. Truss had barely set foot in 10 Downing Street before the White House warned her that dismantling the Northern Ireland Protocol would “not create a conducive environment” for U.S.–U.K. trade talks. Biden followed this up with a Tweet about trickle-down economics, widely interpreted as a dig at Truss’s plans for tax cuts. He has since gone further, declaring from an Oregon ice cream parlor that “cutting taxes on the super wealthy . . . I disagreed with the policy.”

Yet, if they put politics aside, Biden and Truss might discover that they do share a common predicament: they hold power but little authority. From foreign policy to the domestic infrastructure deal and targets for rolling out Covid vaccines, it is hard to keep up with how many times Biden’s aides have had to walk back the president’s public statements. On both sides of the Atlantic, people wonder who really calls the shots.