In the latter part of 2021, as a Hail Mary to 2021 and as much to shunt her away from his problems, Boris Johnson appointed one Liz Truss to the cabinet position of Foreign Secretary during a cabinet reshuffle. The Russians may have raised an eyebrow at the new tank commander. Her appointment may come to be a move Johnson will regret – or maybe not. Since her appointment and since BoJo’s continuing gaffes and poor performance as PM, the rumour mill has been rife with talk of Liz Truss replacing Johnson as PM. As well as his Hail Mary move, the UK experienced its first exact solar arc square of Pluto to its Meridian axis, bringing in the New Year, in what is a clear and growing contest between the people and the government. For more, read on…
There are three items to briefly address in this post: 1) the general trend in the growing divide between the British public and their present government, 2) a nutshell overview of Liz Truss and what she would mean for the UK, and 3) if Boris Johnson will stay on as PM and a timeline if he doesn’t.
Ordinarily in politics, the solar arc just described would indicate a contest between the sitting government and the opposition parties. There has been a surprise in that regard, which we will address shortly. But on the whole, the main opposition party (Labour) to the Tories is opposition in name only, otherwise known as ‘controlled opposition’. The semblance between the two main parties in the US, as well as those in Australia and the UK is striking, in that neither of them really represents the will of their constituencies. And the elections we endure every cycle are more for show than for substance.
The Anglo nations, especially the three just mentioned, are undergoing deep and existential changes, as will become evident in the years immediately ahead, if it isn’t already. And we see the rumblings of those coming changes in the protests and collective labor actions (as in workers, not the parties), which grow by the month as economic hardships and restrictions imposed by governments bite harder and harder. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the US and the UK, the two bastions of capitalism-run-amok, with Australia soon to follow suit. 2022 will see such restiveness and movements amplified. Canada and New Zealand are relatively quiescent at the moment in comparison, but that will soon change, too, to be addressed in a future post.
We start our investigations for this post with a look at the UK chart with transits and directions for the year’s end. The chart is below (bigger):
The directions in the chart show the matter clearly enough, with directed Pluto at the exact square to the Meridian axis and the directed MC to Venus and sesquisquare Uranus. Change and ‘fun and games’ are the order of the day. But then we see the directed Vertex square natal Saturn and opposite Ceres, showing a nation at a crossroads, with serious choices facing the nation, especially in the nature of economics (directed Vertex is in the natal 2nd house, opposite Ceres in the 8th). This is key to what is happening in UK politics and the why and wherefore of Brexit.
The Vertex axis represents new horizons, of awakening consciousness. As such it represents the collective unconscious in a chart – universal awareness – of a type not ordinarily recognized in the waking consciousness. The Vertex represents what is ‘just over the horizon’ in one’s consciousness. It adds a spiritual dimension to the horoscope and it brings in or represents people who aid in or exemplify such a dimension. For the UK, the directed Vertex is bringing an old karmic pattern and the imperial ambition of the UK elites into focus for the populace. It is also highlighting the economic situation there and the self-esteem of the nation, as well as what is really valued.
Finally, we see the match that will light the flames in the UK, in a direct station of transiting Uranus on the UK Mars, the latter ruling the 7th house (open conflicts and litigation), taking place in the 8th house, heralding some possibly transformative events. The direct station takes place on the 19th of January, with the exact and last ‘hit’ of Uranus on Mars for this cycle on March 7th.
This is the 3rd such transit for the UK. The previous one was in May of 1937, which saw Neville Chamberlain take over as PM from Stanley Baldwin, who had retired. Chamberlain was a Conservative. He was a pacifist, too, but there is more underlying his supposed pacifism than meets the eye. At that point in time the City of London was busy funding the Nazis in the lead-up to the outbreak of war in Europe. It was very lucrative business.
The Americans were also up to their necks in the scheme, via the infamous Allen Dulles, who went on to head the CIA. The mechanism used to fund the Nazi regime still exists. It is called the BIS (Bank of International Settlements), which was also instrumental in the creation of the Euro currency. There is far too much to go into here, except to say the unelected leaders in the US and UK have a heavy guiding hand in the affairs of Europe, with the present form of capitalism being their primary instrument of the moment.
Before that last Uranus-Mars transit, the year of the previous transit was 1853 and the UK was involved in tensions with Russia leading to the Crimean War, which started in October of that year. The rhyme of history through the planetary cycles holds true. The British wanted control of the Black Sea in order to deny Russia access to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea and to leave the underbelly of the Russian Empire (of the time) vulnerable. They succeeded then, and Britannia ruled the waves.
This time, in terms of UK-Russian relations, the balance of power has decisively shifted, with Russia now militarily dominant across Europe and with the British Empire dissolved. Crimea is still a sticking point for the West, but Russia will retain Crimea for its freedom of use for the Black Sea and access to the Mediterranean, which it had lost as a result of the Crimean War.
We may see the retirement this year of Boris Johnson, forced or otherwise, a Conservative PM, speaking again of the Uranus cycle to Mars. We also see the old animosity of the British toward the Russians, still ongoing since 1853 and before, with British posturing toward Russia in the Black Sea and elsewhere. It is all too much to go into here except to mention a few facts.
In domestic politics, the Conservatives today in the UK are seeking to reinstate the UK’s economic imperialism, which it had in 1853 and which it had largely lost by 1937. It has had a secret ‘2nd Empire’ since the late 1950s, based in its secrecy locations and in Libertarian Austrian School economics, exemplified and promoted since the 1950s by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). The latter has been described as, “Undoubtedly the most influential think tank in modern British history”, quoted on the front page of their site. The Conservatives adhere to that line of thought. The IEA are a modest bunch and further claim to be an ‘educational charity’. Pay no attention to those people behind the curtain.
The preceding brings us to Brexit, Boris and Liz, the Tories notwithstanding and what is actually afoot in UK politics. The short answer is that Boris has done his run for the vested interests and needs to be put out to pasture. The Empress waits in the wings. There is talk of a contest between her and Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer (CoE) since 2020, for the post of PM. But Liz appears to be the favorite. Sunak took over from Truss as CoE when Truss was promoted to Foreign Secretary. But behind all the political scheming and intrigue (distracting the populace) lies what was behind Brexit to begin with, and that dates back to 2006, if not before.
There is a site where the machinations behind Brexit can be found, the Baker Street Herald. It takes time to go through all the links but the information checks out thus far. Brexit was forecast by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father in his book The Sovereign Individual, released in 1997. This was just after the UK entered the EU. Rees-Mogg-the-younger holds enthusiastically to his father’s views and was a key instigator behind Brexit. There is quite a bit we have to leave out here due to length (do read through the Baker St. Herald), but our main interest here is Brexit and why the UK is so dead-set against Russia – at least the UK establishment.
There was a pivotal meeting in Vienna at the Hayek Institute (machine translate) in June 2006, a year that began to turn the West clearly against Russia and which would set the stage for Brexit. The Hayek Institute is the bastion of the Austrian school of economics. Throughout the previous decade the West had been applying economic shock therapy and Western liberalization to Russia’s economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The results were disastrous for the Russian people and created the Russian oligarchy. Vladimir Putin had been in power since the turn of the century and he had begun to chart a different course for Russia’s economy. Putin called a halt to Austrian School, neoliberal economics soon after coming into office and started to rein in the Russian oligarchs, many of whom fled Russia and settled in London and the United States.
Present at that June 2006 meeting in Vienna at the Hayek Institute was the ex-chief economic advisor to Putin, Illarionov, who had resigned in 2005 in protest of Putin’s policies. He had gone on to join the Cato Institute, one of the premier far right think tanks in the US. Cato was founded by the Koch brothers. Also present at the meeting (machine translate), among others, was Bibi Netanyahu, Boyden Gray (US ambassador to the EU), Illarionov and one Barbara Kolm, General Secretary of the Hayek Institute.
On 3 July 2006 another meeting was held at 55 Tufton Street by the IEA, where the keynote speaker was Barbara Kolm, Founding Director of the Austrian Economic Centre (AEC) and vice-president of the Austrian National Bank (OeNB) (since 2018). The day before members of the group had issued a paper on Statement of Concern for Freedom in Russia, meaning concern for the fact that the Russians had closed the door on American and EU libertarian economics. Their concern, though couched in terms of human rights, was actually about the restriction of their own freedom to conduct unfettered capitalism in Russia.
Chief among the 111 Libertarian signatories the abovementioned statement of concern were Grover Norquist of the American Friends of the Taxpayers’ Alliance (another Libertarian right wing think tank based in London), Hardy Bouillon of the Mont Pelerin Society and one Matthew Elliot, one of the chief architects of Brexit. These 2006 initiatives have since spawned hundreds of right wing think tanks in nations worldwide. But we are concerned here with Brexit.
We could argue all day about what caused Brexit, but one of the main reasons revolves around the 2008 financial crisis, one caused by neoliberal policies and a lack of consumer protections. That led to the 2010 electoral win by the Conservatives under David Cameron and a coalition government.
It is worth noting here that Labour under Tony Blair (Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement) had adopted many of Thatcher’s neoliberal (Thatcherite) policies, which caused a disconnect between Labour and their voter base, which led to their defeat in 2010. Thatcher had been busy privatizing British assets and taking away worker’s rights, which Blair’s New Labour only continued. And let’s not forget the little wars under Blair’s watch which were deeply unpopular with much of the British public. There are growing calls to revoke his recent knighthood because of those wars.
As soon as the Conservatives took power they started their cuts to social services, claiming there was too much government intervention (big government), too many regulations and so forth, all of which hit the poorest sector of the populace the hardest. It was that sector which swung to vote to leave the UK with the Brexit referendum.
Basically, it was austerity under the Conservatives that brought about the possibility of Brexit. This was partly by design. There was also the specter of EU tax laws and regulations against which the Libertarian mindset chafed. Boris Johnson was brought to leadership to take a wrecking ball to what was left of social programs in the UK and EU regulations, though Brexit is showing that escape from those regulations is not possible when trading with the bloc, still by far the UK’s largest trading partners. The US is only 1/5th the size in trade as that of the EU in terms of imports and less than half in terms of exports. All the talk by the Leave campaign of making fantastic trade deals with other nations once free of the EU was just campaign smoke and mirrors.
Rees-Mogg-the-elder outlined in his book, in the article referenced previously, exactly what we are seeing in the UK today under the Conservatives:
“For 380 breathless pages, Lord Rees-Mogg and a co-author, James Dale Davidson, an American investment guru and conservative propagandist, predicted that digital technology would make the world hugely more competitive, unequal and unstable. Societies would splinter. Taxes would be evaded. Government would gradually wither away. “By 2010 or thereabouts,” they wrote, welfare states “will simply become unfinanceable”. In such a harsh world, only the most talented, self-reliant, technologically adept person – “the sovereign individual” – would thrive.”
“The future is disorder”, from the same book. The bolded bits describe what we see evolving in British society. The last italicized bit leaves out the vast majority of the British public. The average person in any nation is neither self-reliant on the whole, especially not technologically adept and, while people have many talents, their talent for financial capitalism is generally very limited, both in terms of knowledge and in wherewithal.
Boris was clearly a marionette to the real powers – the ones mentioned in preceding paragraphs – who desire to keep their opaque tax havens, minimal taxes, as few regulations as possible and so on. This had been quietly brewing in the City of London at Tufton St. since 2006 at least. It has been an aim of Libertarian, Austrian School ideologues for many decades, and is one of the guiding principles of financial capitalism.
Boris Johnson has been a weak leader, witness through the COVID crisis, the Brexit fandango, being mocked in social media as ‘Mr. Refrigerator’ and always on vacation when he was needed at No. 10 the most in times of crisis, which seems to be the norm these days. When the statement was made Boris needed to be put out to pasture, what does his chart show? His chart with directions and transits is below (bigger):
Right now Boris is being buoyed by a transit of Jupiter to his nodal axis and a square of Jupiter by direction to his Horizon axis. These influences will soon pass, to be replaced by a square of Neptune by direction to his Horizon axis, an opposition by Saturn to his Moon, the latter ruling his 10th house, and his directed Ascendant square his natal Uranus. These latter influences will be felt stronger in the 2nd half of the year. So, yes, the public will have to put up with Johnson for a while yet, but his fortunes will be changing for the worse in short order. By May this year we can probably expect the worm to turn. There are already trial balloons being floated about a Truss leadership. There is still some wreckage to be wrought in the meantime by Johnson, though.
What do we know about Truss, then, except that we do not have a birth time for her? Liz Truss likes to do things by the numbers. She loves numbers, in fact. But, her infamous ‘cheese speech’ and her ‘porky’ comments during the same speech have brought her comedic fame in the Twitter-sphere, along with pose with the tank. People might be forgiven for thinking she is just another clown and Boris clone. They would be wrong. Truss is far more calculating and directed than Boris, and she is being groomed for his possible replacement, witness by her rapid rise through the ranks from being a relative unknown and minor player. We saw this sort of thing before with the likes of Barack Obama in the US. Just who is Liz Truss, then? Her chart is below (bigger):
Liz Truss is a Leo, with Pisces Moon. We don’t have a birth time for her, but we have enough information to look at her personality. Being a Leo, she likes the limelight and to show off, and she often does so in a clownish manner. This is supported by the natal Jupiter/Chiron/Vertex conjunction, which also gives her a measure of public appeal and magnetism. But that veneer is where it ends. Underneath the appearance of fun and light-heartedness at times there can be a cold and calculating mind-set, shown by the Mercury/Saturn conjunction square to Uranus. The latter is also where her mathematical bent comes in.
Make no mistake about Truss, though. She has high ambition, marked by an applying Sun/Pluto sextile, which is well-directed, marked by the Sun/Mercury/Saturn stellium, even if dissociate by sign. She is also quite independent, marked by the Sun/Uranus square, even if separating by transit as well as dissociate by sign. The combination of the Mercury/Saturn with the Uranus square makes her a formidable opponent in debate. We have yet to see it, mostly because she has to tread and toe a fine line as she rises through the ranks. It should be interesting to watch if she ever finds herself unfettered by circumstance and position.
That same combination just mentioned also marks her as a rebellious sort, not liking to abide by regulations. The Mercury/Uranus square has been described as a mind-set that says, “Whatever it is, I’m against it”. Talking back to police would be a favoured pastime. And supported by the Saturn, the arguments would not go in favour of the police, but would likely land a person in jail at the same time. As such, Truss has a makeup good for revolutions, yet she has chosen the Conservatives as her political base. Why, since her inner being is so bent against conservative principles? It comes down to one of her most important and prominent midpoints, Sun=Pluto/Node: “The urge to impose one’s will upon others with ruthlessness and vice versa.”
It has been said of Truss that when it comes to doing something, the only difference between her and a rottweiler is that the rottweiler eventually lets go of its prey. This is evident in the astrology discussed for her thus far, especially the Saturn combinations along with the midpoint just described. In fact, the Mercury/Saturn conjunction was once described by Ebertin in his Combination of Stellar Influences as, “Obstinacy, tenacity or endurance, clumsiness or heaviness, industriousness, the state of enduring or suffering without yielding.” With the Uranus square it can tend toward nervous upsets. With the Jupiter square it can yield unusual successes without much effort.
The quirk in Truss’ nature is that, despite her independent nature, she has tied herself to Conservative causes. But when her chart is placed on that of the UK, the situation becomes clear (below, bigger):
There is much in the way of mutual Pluto entwinements, with her Pluto within minutes of the UK Ascendant in the UK 12th house. The UK Pluto may or may not be on her Moon (since we don’t know her birth time), and is quincunx Truss’ Sun. The basic reading of the mutual Pluto contacts is that Truss is closely tied with the Plutocracy in the UK, which can work out for good or ill for both parties, going back to the Sun/Pluto/Node midpoint. Her Sun sits on the UK Jupiter, giving her a great ease with British aristocracy and oligarchs and the lifestyle it affords her.
But most of all, her sense of freedom is tied in with the rhetoric of ‘freedom’ as expounded by the Austrian School – the freedom of markets, the freedom from regulations and so on. Truss would be a perfect example of the ‘sovereign individual’ in Rees-Mogg’s book – not tied to troublesome rules and regulations, all the while enjoying ‘the good life’ while the rest of the nation is in chaos. In fact, she founded a Libertarian think tank called the Free Enterprise Group. Administrative support for the group is provided by the IEA, mentioned previously. There are about 40 Conservative members of Parliament in the group, including Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Raab and Tom Tugendhat. They have ties to the tobacco industry.
If all this sounds harsh, it is a worst-case example, but it is also her present trajectory, as well as that of the Tories. It is sounded as a heads-up for anyone who thinks Liz Truss would be just another clown on strings at the seat of UK government. Instead, she would be Brexit Queen, and a British version of Tony Abbott.
Truss is very strong in her support of the Baltic States, of the 3B+P. In one of her visits to Estonia she posed for her now-famous ‘tank photograph’, “…at the frontier of freedom,” as she called it. The Baltics aren’t very free at the moment. That’s for certain. One doesn’t see population decline like we see in the Baltics, Poland and Ukraine in free and prosperous societies – you know, those societies that are currently operating under neoliberal economics. She went on to say at that visit, “Britain stands with our NATO allies to defend liberty and democracy and counter malign threats.” There are those words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ again.
Truss’ mention of ‘malign threats’ is a direct reflection of the Russo-phobic stance of the UK establishment. The ‘malign threat’ to the UK is that Russia has abandoned the neoliberal agenda as practiced in the UK and is growing. Whether she actually holds such a view or is simply parroting British establishment propaganda, I don’t know, but it plays well to the establishment, which she must do if she is to be PM. She also warned Putin against making a “strategic mistake” by launching an invasion of Ukraine, though the Russians have no intention of doing so. Her PR stunt with the tank was a clear imitation of Margaret Thatcher, who did the same thing in Germany in 1986 during her tenure as PM, just a few years before German reunification.
Having said all the preceding, however, no one is either wholly bad or good. Truss’ views on mathematics in school actually has great value, for example, if the UK is to eventually return its manufacturing base, which it must do if it is to survive as a G7 nation. Financial capitalism is dying out, which spells eventual disaster for the financiers in the City of London and New York. It also makes for hard times for the British public, too, because the UK has gone more toward service industries and away from manufacturing under neoliberalism, as is true for much of the West.
Once those financial markets crash, which is coming, where will the people of the UK be left without jobs to go to? If there is to ever be a renewal of British infrastructure – at one time the best in the world – then mathematics is essential because it is at the root of all STEM subjects, the bases of all technology and engineering. The technocratic, financialized and high-tech society envisioned by the neoliberal Libertarian mind-set holds little promise for the average citizen of any nation.
It is very well hidden away at the moment, but there is a humanitarian streak in Truss’ chart, in the Pisces Moon. But her Moon receives no easy aspects, and is instead square to Neptune, which makes her more of a dreamer and unrealistic, as detached from the reality and vagaries of everyday British life as many of the Tories are.
The bottom line here is that Truss would be a dangerous PM for the public in the UK, unless she is hiding some progressive agenda very close to her chest. Yes, there are serious doubts of that. Her elevation to PM would likely be the final curtain call for any social welfare and workers’ rights in the UK. And that is precisely why the Tories have groomed her for the job. For the British social safety net to be saved – also once the envy of the world, or at least Europe – there needs to be a lack of Truss and her like in any major way in UK government. And lack of trust in UK government and major parties grows by the week.
Although Liz Truss is being groomed for the top job, all is not wine, roses and caffs at No. 5 Mayfair and Hertford in her future. 2022 is not going to be the greatest for Liz astrologically. We will save that for another post. A recent byelection paints the scene going forward for Truss and the Tories, and begins to show why these next years will not be easy for the British establishment parties in general going forward.
The recent byelection in Shropshire delivered a crushing defeat for the Tories. It was also a statement about the leadership of Boris Johnson:
“His party won the seat in North Shropshire, central England, by a massive majority in 2019, but that was wiped out by the Liberal Democrats in Thursday’s vote in a result that will intensify the mutinous mood among Conservative MPs.”
Labour should take note of what happened there, too, because it was the Liberal Democrats who won the seat, one held by Conservatives for almost two centuries. For Labour, they have lost their electoral mojo, having had any progressive element in the party sidelined by charges of anti-Semitism, remembering Bibi Netanyahu being featured speaker at the 2006 meeting at the Hayek Institute, mentioned previously. Israel is a neoliberal bastion, and one of the UK’s creations, along with the US. Labour’s hope for renewal as a party for the people lies in the ousting of Kier Starmer, to be replaced with the likes of Angela Rayner. Now, a debate between Truss and Rayner would be a very popcorn-worthy event, and one for the history books.
In closing, Liz Truss may make it to the seat of PM, but at the same time the cup passed to her could well be a poisoned chalice, with the difficulties of Brexit, the Tories increasingly on the nose with the British public – cheesed-off, as in the odor of a proper Blue Stilton or Stinking Bishop – and with neoliberalism being steadily exposed as the fraud and Ponzi scheme that it is. Truss may be the very PM who brings an end to the dominance of the Conservatives in UK politics for a generation.
Liz Truss may be the Tories’ current blonde ambition, but the British public may well want to think again before voting the Conservatives into power again. And Liz Truss may want to be careful what she wishes for – she may get it!
Featured pic from Daily Express