One of the WEF-linked candidates running to become Britain’s next Prime Minister has promised that there will be no fully cashless society for now.
Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss has told fellow Conservative Party members that she will not allow the implementation of a fully cashless society, emphasising that she will back people being able to pay for goods and services using physical tender for now.
Truss made the promise despite her links to the World Economic Forum (WEF), a lobby group that appears to be extremely keen on the idea of a society based around digital-only transactions using currencies under the direct control of central banks.
However, according to a report by The Telegraph, it appears that Truss — who is listed on the NGO’s website and has spoken at the group’s Davos summit — is not, for now, backing such a move, instead saying that people should have the option to pay with cash at least in certain circumstances.
“We should make sure people are able to use cash where they don’t have alternatives,” Truss said at leadership hustings in Belfast on Wednesday, describing having the ability to do so as “important”.
Truss’s sentiments echo those of her last remaining opponent in the race to become Prime Minister,fellow WEF affiliate Rishi Sunak, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer recently pushed through a law mandating that banks ensure the public are able to withdraw their funds in the form of physical cash.
Despite the passing of this law, however, the pandemic period has nevertheless seen the power of physical tender eroded in the public sphere, with more and more people in the country switching to cashless payments over the last two lockdown-dotted years.
Some have even accused banks themselves as having had a hand in this transition to cashless, with Ireland’s Financial Services Union (FSU) accusing banks in their country of actively using COVID-19 as a “Trojan horse” to do away with physical currency.
Banks were accused by the union of intentionally understaffing branches, failing to repair cash ATMs within a reasonable timeframe, and not answering their own phones — all in an attempt to push people online, while also using the pandemic as an excuse to reduce services and hours.
“This is all to deny people cash and drive them online,” the group’s General Secretary claimed earlier this month.
“The banks have used Covid and the transition from it to force people on to digital platforms, whether they want to or not,” he continued. “The lack of staffing… is chronic in banks for a reason. It creates long queues. It is the same with the phone lines.”
Regardless of whether Truss sticks with her pro-cash sentiment or not, at this point in time it seems like her ascension to the position of Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is all but certain, with polling showing that the Foreign Secretary is over 30 points ahead of Sunak in the race for Number 10 — a lead that appears nigh unassailable.
However, neither Truss nor Sunak appear to be overwhelmingly popular with Conservative Party voters, with the party’s base saying that they would much rather Boris Johnson remain as Prime Minister than be replaced by either of his would-be successors.
So strong is this sentiment that some now expect that voters in Britain will badly punish the party in the next election, with a Tory mayor in the hotly-contested ‘Red Wall’ region reportedly expecting things to go poorly once the public can go back to the polls.
“Lots of first-time Conservative voters are completely bewildered, confused and actually quite upset that the Conservative Party got rid of Boris,” Mayor Ben Houchen is reported as saying.
“I think we will ultimately be worse off at the general election for not having Boris Johnson,” he added.
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