Truss’s clumsy intervention could also be read as a bid to influence January’s Taiwanese national elections. As last year’s destabilising visit by senior US Democrat Nancy Pelosi showed, gratuitously provoking Beijing can be seriously counter-productive. Diplomatically isolated and constantly menaced by Beijing, the last thing Taiwan’s people need is “help” from Truss. What the Taiwanese, and China, may make of it is worrying. More simplistic, dangerously belligerent verbiage can be expected this week. Britain should arm Taiwan, join a “Pacific defence alliance”, help deter “totalitarian” China and thus save the “free world”, Truss boldly declared. After her forced resignation, she resurfaced in Tokyo, rebooting herself as a China hawk and unguided missile. As prime minister, she mimicked Boris Johnson’s Winston Churchill tribute act over Ukraine. As foreign secretary in 2021, she was mocked for posing, Margaret Thatcher-like, atop a tank in Estonia. Self-promoting Truss was already a bit of a martial joke before entering Downing Street. Like many Tories whose political life expectancy was drastically shortened by last autumn’s Trussian revolution, Kearns has learned to distrust her ex-leader’s judgment. And given Truss’s record of causing chaos, her concerns are valid. She chairs the Commons foreign affairs select committee. Yet Kearns, no Rutle yokel she, is well-qualified to speak on this issue. They are better placed to know what is in the interests of the Taiwanese people than the MP for Rutland,” her spokesperson condescendingly replied. Truss “has been invited to visit by the Taiwan government. Truss’s confrontational antics could make things worse for Taiwan, she warned. But Kearns dismissed the trip as a vanity project to help Truss “keep herself relevant” and as “the worst kind of Instagram diplomacy”. The disgraced former prime minister says she plans to speak out in “solidarity” with Taiwan’s people in defiance of Chinese intimidation.
This insulting inference was made after Kearns had the temerity to question the wisdom, utility and motivation of Truss’s unofficial visit to Taiwan last week. If you hail from landlocked rural Rutland, Truss’s spokesperson superciliously implied last week, you probably don’t understand international affairs. Now its Conservative MP, Alicia Kearns, has become the target of a nasty geopolitical sneer.
Not unlike the island of Taiwan, England’s smallest historic county has fought hard over the years to maintain its independence from a larger, overbearing neighbour. To Liz Truss’s many failings must now be added an apparent prejudice against Rutland.
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