WITH a brand-new Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in London, should Guyana and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member-states be worried about the future of aid from or trade ties with the United Kingdom?

It’s much too early to say after less than a week in office for the new Prime Minister Liz Truss.

From her first public comments to the press on Tuesday, just hours after being invited by Queen Elizabeth II (now deceased) in Scotland to form Britain’s next government, and during her first ‘Question & Answer’ period in the House of Commons Wednesday, it’s clear PM Truss’ first call of duty is, first and foremost, establishing her credentials as a Thatcher-Reagan trickle-down, free-market conservative.

She “will not tax our way to growth,” but instead “will grow the economy” by investing more at home and encouraging big companies to pay their fair share of taxes.
Described as a “right-of-centre conservative” who’ll tailor her policies along the lines of Thatcherism and Reaganomics with her own brand of “Trussonomics,” the new PM’s first stand-off in parliament was with opposition Labour Party Leader Sir Keir Starmer — about whether she would impose “a windfall tax” on Big Business.

Truss made it absolutely clear she felt such a tax would chase and scare companies from investing in Britain, but Starmer cited her unwillingness to tax the likes of “Shell and Amazon,” while “willing to tax the poor…”

Starmer noted that the energy companies serving the UK stand to earn over £170 billion (over US$200 million) over the next two years, and said the new PM wants to make taxpayers pay the nation’s energy bills.

Truss responded that she intended to build more nuclear-powered energy facilities and drill for more North Sea oil and gas, instead of the proposed windfall tax, which she said reflected a consistent Labour philosophy of taxing the rich to help the poor.

What sounded more like an ideological debate between a right-of-centre conservative and a right-of-centre democrat did not, however, overshadow the antics and optics that came with a brief intervention by ex-Prime Minister Theresa May and the visibility of the new Tory front-bench.

As if to tell Starmer what she did not want to say, ex-PM May asked PM Truss: “Why is it that all of Britain’s three women prime ministers been Conservatives?”
No one offered to answer Mrs May, but PM Truss did engage successfully to employ the effective optical impression of being surrounded by a multiracial and multicultural English callaloo of Women and People of Colour (Black Britons and MPs of Indian descent among them). She appointed members of minoritized groups to major positions as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Home Affairs Minister, among others.

As things stood after her first day in office and her first Commons meeting, Britain’s third woman at the helm of the ship at Downing Street offered a good representation of why she swung from being a young Liberal Democrat to a middle-aged, right-wing Conservative.

In Cabinet since 2012 and as Foreign Secretary for two years, the new UK PM has the most experience among her peers.

But her loyalty to predecessor Boris Johnson remains unquestioned, taking every opportunity to praise him to the heavens and thank him for paving her way to the top.

Johnson, ever different, said words during his final speech as PM before departing Number 10 that he was stepping back, but not necessarily down, leaving no indication he plans to slip quietly into the parliamentary back bench (like Mrs May).

Instead, he’s left it wide open as to whether he’ll agree to or expect a role in the Truss administration – and the new PM has given no indication she wishes to see him retire from the public front line, stressing she’ll use all the party’s “available talent” to ride the national storm.

Meanwhile, the new British PM has to work miracles quickly, with fast-and-furious speed, to give Britons hope before next month when energy bills alone will increase by 80 per cent and ahead of a winter that can be more white and cold than any before.

Climate Change has wreaked havoc across Europe, and the UK is already registering the worst blows from the blowback on sanctions against Russia, which has now turned off the energy taps and says it won’t switch them back on until all the sanctions are lifted.

PM Truss has her work well cut-out and the UK’s third woman prime minister will continue to attract global attention as she settles into the toughest job handed her way by what she describes as “the best party in the world.”

Britain’s fourth prime minister in six years, she has made it clear she intends to be as committed to arming Ukraine as her predecessor Boris Johnson (also keeping Johnson’s appointee Ben Wallace as Defence Minister) and more hawkish on China.

But PM Truss has said nothing about her plans for Britain’s ties with the Caribbean, or other developing countries.

Guyana’s healthy trade ties with the UK – as its biggest CARICOM trade partner – was assured of continuity when President, Dr Irfaan Ali met PM Johnson in London earlier this year; and trade with the European Union (EU) is also in good stead.

EU funding to the Caribbean has been contracting over time, but Guyana will benefit from direct bilateral financing totalling €21 million over the next six years, with separate access to regional and continental donor funds.

Total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and Guyana was £565 million in the four quarters that ended in the First Quarter of 2022, an increase of 3.5 per cent (or £19 million) from the four quarters to the end of the same period last year.

Here too, there’s no indication yet that this figure will contract, analysts preferring to expect that given Europe’s current grave and worsening energy problems and Guyana’s abundance of what it needs most in quickest time possible, energy deals may well be in the making – and sooner, not later.