Liz Truss wants to abolish the UN
Liz Truss has said that she would like to see the United Nations abolished because she claimed she doesn’t see a purpose for the organisation.
The former prime minister, who served as foreign secretary under Boris Johnson, accused the UN of playing a “damaging” role in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
She also questioned Chinese and Russian membership of the UN Security Council, a group of 15 countries that has struggled to reach agreement on North Korea and Syria in recent years.
Ms Truss told the BBC’s Newscast podcast: “I can’t see a purpose for the UN as it stands. At present it has been very ineffective at dealing with international situations, in fact positively damaging, for example, on Israel.”
Asked whether she wanted to abolish the UN, she replied: “I do recommend abolishing quite a lot of things in my book. I’m not a UN fan. I think the best use it has is actually a meeting point for governments.
“But certainly the UN Security Council as it’s currently constituted, with both China and Russia on, is not keeping the world safe … I much more support alliances of like-minded countries like Nato.”
The UN Security Council passed a motion last month calling for a ceasefire in Gaza that was not contingent on the release of more than 100 Israeli hostages by Hamas terrorists.
Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, has said that his country would not abide by the resolution, while Barbara Woodward, the UK’s ambassador to the UN, said Britain would have preferred for it to explicitly condemn Hamas.
‘Everyone’s entitled to an opinion’
In a wide-ranging interview to promote her book Ten Years to Save the West, the MP for South West Norfolk called to deny China access to trading markets and suggested anybody who wished to do business with Beijing should be seen as a pariah.
“What I believe is we are far too free and easy in the way we trade with China,” she said.
“What I saw in government was too many people who were concerned with the short-term economic benefits of trade with China, rather than the very serious long-term costs”.
And reflecting on her time as foreign secretary, she also claimed both the Foreign Office and the United States harboured too much “scepticism” towards Benjamin Netanyahu’s nation.
“Everyone’s entitled to an opinion but it’s more that it’s within the advice and the culture of the organisation that it’s very rare that you’ll get strongly pro-Israel advice.
“I think the US at the moment is often very critical of Israel, who are in an incredibly difficult position, they face the appalling atrocities that we saw in October and in my view they have to be allowed to get on with dealing with the real problems they face on their doorstep.
“There is a scepticism about Israel … Every single department I worked in had biases in particular directions and the Foreign Office was no exception.”
‘People don’t vote on press releases’
Ms Truss resigned amid untenable pressure from Conservative MPs after only 49 days as prime minister in autumn 2022 after the mini-Budget she unveiled with Kwasi Kwarteng, her chancellor, spooked the gilts market and saw public borrowing costs soar.
Her premiership saw the Tories fall more than 20 points behind Labour in the opinion polls, a deficit from which the party has struggled to recover, but on Tuesday she insisted that she had been alone in setting out a plan for economic growth.
“My view of electoral politics is that people vote on election day and how they’re doing,” she said. “People don’t vote on press releases coming out of Downing Street or on opinion polls 18 months ago.
“I went in there with a genuine view of what needs to be improved. I haven’t heard anyone else come up with an alternative view to stop the British economy stagnating.”
Ms Truss was also asked about the Daily Star’s live stream of a lettuce pitting the rate of its decay against the demise of her government, with the vegetable ultimately outlasting her administration.
Challenged on whether the episode had damaged Britain’s international standing, she responded: “This is just pathetic, you know, points scoring. This is the kind of thing that obsesses what I describe as the London elite.
“It’s ‘what do other people think of me’, ‘what’s Britain’s international standing’ ... I’d put forward perfectly rational policies that I won a leadership election on. What happened is that I was undermined by organisations like the Bank of England.”
