British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss Photo: AFP

So who is Liz Truss, the British Foreign Secretary whose remarks about China's international ambitions were so bizarre they caused a former Australian prime minister to call her "demented"?

There are probably people in China wondering right now whether she is really mad and even whether she wants war between their nation and her own.

After all, she did say she believed that China could possibly launch its own war of aggression in the Indo-Pacific and that it could be inspired to do so if Russia was to invade Ukraine.

Well, unfortunately, Liz Truss is currently being spoken about in Britain as the favorite to succeed its prime minister Boris Johnson, who is widely believed to be nearing the premature end of his disastrous term of office leading the UK. 

She is a politician who is openly ambitious, and in the past has been talked about as wanting the top job at Downing Street. She is also very much focused on her own image - her output on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram is prolific. When she worked as International Trade Secretary, her Department for International Trade was nicknamed the Department for Instagramming Truss.

The image she cultivates is one of a no-nonsense negotiator, leading the charge around the world for Britain's interests. She was once described by a critic as "indissolubly wedded to a set of theories about how the world should be, that are impervious to argument, facts or experience". In other words, she is inflexible and intolerant of other views.

It is this self-cultivated image of strength that she attempted to reinforce last year when she visited British troops in Estonia and was pictured riding in the turret of a battle tank. It was a very conscious attempt to mimic a well-known photograph taken decades earlier when the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher was also photographed in a tank. Thatcher was famously known as the Iron Lady, a title she gloried in. However, Truss is no Thatcher - and people in Britain know it.

It is not hard to think that if she is a warmonger, she is an accidental warmonger - someone who can give the appearance of being belligerent, only because she says something without thinking through what it means. She does not have the qualities of a sabre-rattler - that is, deliberately saying something provocative in an interview to make what amount to overt threats to China. She would only rattle a sabre if it got stuck in its scabbard while she was trying to draw it. She was asked during an official visit to Australia this month whether China could launch aggression in the Indo-Pacific. She replied: "I don't think we can rule that out. Russia is working more closely with China than it ever has. Aggressors are working in concert and I think it's incumbent on countries like ours to work together."

It was almost as if she had opened her mouth without thinking, speaking the words before her brain had time to filter them for appropriateness. This is why Australia's former premier Paul Keating said her comments were "…nothing short of demented. Not simply irrational, demented"

He added: "Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation".

Keating's remarks have been widely reported in the UK and have caused much comment - a great deal of which is mockery and ridicule.

There is little doubt that Truss can talk the talk - that is, she can say the right words which her supporters expect from her to bolster her image as a tough cookie. But it is less certain that she can walk the walk - that is, support her tough-talking with meaningful action.

Ironically for someone who has risen to one of the highest offices of State, and who harbors such vaulting ambition, ridicule is what most British citizens, even recently, recognized Truss for. Her gaffs and goofy behavior caused - and still cause - great amusement. Just a few years ago she was best known in the British public eye as someone who was mercilessly ridiculed for a speech she made about, of all things, cheese. 

In 2014, when she was working as Environment Secretary, Truss made a speech about Britain's trade in food products, declaring: "We import two-thirds of our cheese: That! Is! A! Disgrace!". She received polite applause from her audience but in truth, it was a humiliation, as was her later claim to be "opening up new pork markets" in Beijing. The mockery was merciless and a video of her speech regularly surfaces on social media whenever Truss's name is mentioned.

In her role as Environment Secretary, she championed a 10-year plan to halt and reverse the decline of bee populations in Britain - only to approve the use of a pesticide the following year which could have harmful effects on bees.

When she was Justice Secretary, responsible for running the judiciary and legal system, she was heavily criticized for lacking legal expertise.

Sometimes she seems to literally have an appetite for controversy. She recently entertained Joe Biden's trade representative at an expensive private dining club owned by a Tory party donor - refusing to visit cheaper restaurants - where they ate and drank their way through a meal costing £3000. That's about the same as two months' pay for a nurse working in Britain's hard-pressed National Health Service.

It has also emerged that during a three-day trip to Japan, Truss and three officials blew £2,000 on food and drink - having initially claimed to have spent just £182. 

And in 2019, Truss's department twice allowed the shipping of weapons to Saudi Arabia to use in its war in Yemen, despite such shipments having been declared illegal.

So that's Liz Truss, the senior British politician who talks anti-China talk and whom a senior Australian politician thinks is "demented".

She probably likes to think of herself as another Margaret Thatcher, a reincarnation of the notorious right-winger who dominated British politics for decades. But the truth is she is less of an Iron Lady and more of a Chocolate Soldier, someone who might look smart and shiny in a uniform, but is utterly clueless when it comes to fighting.

The author is a journalist and university lecturer living in Britain. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn