Truss tanked the UK economy and was out in 49 days. Milei may still be standing, but he’s executing an even extremer version of Trussonomics than Liz Truss executed.
“Javier Milei is the template,” Kemi Badenoch told the Financial Times in July. When asked whether Britain needed its own version of the Argentine president, known for brandishing a chainsaw at rallies and pledging to slash government spending to the bone, and whether she saw herself in that role, she responded: “Yes and yes.”
The Conservative Party leader has quoted Milei at length, praising his belief that state tools such as printing money, subsidies, and price controls, only serve to dominate people’s lives. “He is absolutely right,” she said.
And Kemi is far from the only Tory figure seemingly enamoured with Argentina’s far-right president, who proudly identifies as an “anarcho-capitalist.”
Boris Johnson hailed Milei for giving Argentina “the economic medicine it needs” through drastic spending cuts.
Liz Truss, who, as we well know, is a fond of radical economic disruption, has also sung Milei’s praises. In April, she told GB News that, aside from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, Milei topped her list of political heroes.
But, alas for Liz, the feeling doesn’t appear to be mutual. When asked if he admired Truss, Milei responded: “Who?”
Truss x10?
The irony is rich. Since taking office, Milei has channelled the spirit of the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister in both rhetoric and results. Except this time, it’s a Truss – times ten.
A self-styled libertarian outsider, Milei won Argentina’s presidency in November 2023 amid a crushing economic crisis. Inflation had soared to 143 percent, and nearly 40 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. His election was dubbed a “political earthquake,” cheered on by right-wing allies’ home and abroad, including Donald Trump, who declared that Milei would “Make Argentina Great Again.”
Nicknamed El Loco (The Madman) by critics, Milei campaigned on a platform of radical disruption. He promised to scrap the peso in favour of the US dollar, abolish Argentina’s central bank, which he blames for inflation, outlaw abortion that was legalised in Argentina in 2020, legalise the buying and selling of human organs, loosen gun laws, and slash welfare and public services. He also vowed to shut entire ministries, including culture, health, education, and women’s affairs, and privatise the national energy company and the country’s public broadcasters.
“Everything than can be [put] into the hands of the private sector, will be in the hands of the private sector,” he said.
And for a while, markets loved it. Investors piled in. The stock market surged, enriching local oligarchs and foreign investors.
Milei’s rise and fall
But much like Truss’s disastrous ‘mini budget,’ Milei’s drastic measures have plunged Argentina into crisis.
The president’s promotion of a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme called Libra, caused tens of thousands of his own supporters to lose millions, while insiders allegedly pocketed $100 million.
He has also overseen rapid deindustrialisation, with manufacturing and construction sectors collapsing and mass layoffs sweeping both public and private sectors. As of September 2024, over half of Argentina’s 46 million people were living in poverty.
As economic pain deepened, scandals rolled in. Audio leaks this summer implicated Milei’s influential sister, Karina, in a scheme involving bribes for medical contracts. She allegedly pocketed 3 percent of each deal, including those involving treatments for people with disabilities.
Then came the electoral blow. In September, Milei’s far-right party, La Libertad Avanza, was trounced in Buenos Aires, home to 40 percent of the electorate, by Peronism, Argentina’s dominant leftist movement. They won 47 percent of the vote to Milei’s 33.8 percent, a 13-point margin that rattled the markets.
With another key legislative election looming on October 26, putting half of parliament and a third of the Senate in play, panic is setting in that Milei’s reform agenda is finished.
Investors are dumping pesos, fleeing Argentine assets, and speculating about a looming default on the country’s massive international debts.
The turmoil has prompted Donald Trump to offer Milei a $20 billion bailout, hoping to prop up his embattled South American ally.
“We are seeing in real time how a government can melt in front of our eyes,” Alejandro Bercovich, a leading Argentine TV and radio journalist told the Guardian: “I never thought they would collapse this quickly.”
Sounds familiar?
Truss’s own experiment with hardline libertarianism, £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts, triggered a market meltdown and ended her premiership in just 49 days, or was it 47?
The Atlas Network
It’s no surprise that Milei’s monster ‘reform bill’ was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal think-tanks tied to the Atlas Network. As RWW readers know, this Washington, D.C.- coalition of nearly 600 free-market groups across 100 countries has long promoted radical market policies, with deep influence in the UK Conservative Party.
After the 2016 EU referendum, Atlas-aligned UK think tanks like the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Legatum Institute exploited the Brexit crisis, gaining unprecedented access to ministers and pushing for a hard exit.
And the IEA helped shape Liz Truss’s political agenda. On the day of her infamous ‘mini-budget,’ the then IEA director Mark Littlewood remarked in a recorded call: “We’re on the hook for it now. If it doesn’t work it’s your fault and mine.”
It didn’t of course, and the the plan collapsed, much like Argentina’s economy under Milei.
And with news of the Argentine economy now in freefall, the UK right’s once-gushing praise for Milei has suddenly been muted.
Well, almost.
Enter Steve Baker
At this week’s Conservative Conference, Milei’s name was noticeably absent, at least publicly. But one man is still championing the chainsaw-wielding libertarian – Steve Baker.
The self-styled Brexit ‘hardman,’ former Northern Ireland minister, and ex-Wycombe MP who lost his seat in 2024, appears undeterred by Milei’s economic implosion, electoral humiliation, and bailouts.
Instead, he’s doubling down, launching a new initiative known as Fighting for a Free Future (FFF), a campaign to identify and empower “Britain’s Javier Milei.”
“The project is non-partisan,” Baker told Politics Home. “I’m interested in creating the conditions within which a British Milei can do what needs to be done in the UK. Sweep aside planning law, sort out the health service so that it actually works and we can get high-quality care that we can afford to pay for.”
Asked whether Nigel Farage fits the bill and Baker was dismissive, claiming “Farage is closer to Trump than Milei.”
Nigel Farage – another Milei admirer
Still, Farage has repeatedly praised the Argentine president. In 2024, he described Milei’s economic reforms as “Thatcherism on steroids,” gushing: “This is incredible, cutting and slashing public expenditure, doing all the things he’s done… That’s leadership… He is amazing.”
Reform’s Richard Tice also heaped praise on Milei, saying he “rightly tells the elite the facts of life – socialism and state intervention tends to make people poorer.”
And there are parallels. Like Milei and Trump, Farage built his brand as an outsider, capitalising on so-called ‘establishment failings.’ And like Milei, his appeal is rooted less in policy detail than anti-system ‘charisma.’
As the Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty put it: “Broadcast to an electorate tired of a failing economy, Milei reached voters other right-wing politicians just couldn’t reach.”
But spectacle alone doesn’t govern. And as Milei’s Argentina descends into crisis, the warnings for Britain couldn’t be clearer.
Be careful what you wish for
This week, in a bid to lift national spirits, the former Rolling Stones’ tribute band frontman, belted out songs at a concert in Buenos Aires. Clad from head to toe in leather, Milei’s return to the stage was a bid to promote his new book, ‘The Construction of the Miracle,’ which he hopes will give him a boost before national midterms on 26 October.
Nigel Farage might not wield a chainsaw or sport ‘rock star’ sideburns, but you wouldn’t put it past him to appear on stage at a concert to try and shore up support from ‘ordinary people.’ After all, the theatre of populism has little boundaries.
But beyond the showmanship, the reality is stark. Amid economic collapse, corruption scandals, and rising public unrest, the question becomes unavoidable: is this really the model British conservatives want to import?
Truss tanked the UK economy and was out in 49 days. Milei may still be standing, but he’s executing an even extremer version of Trussonomics than Liz Truss executed.
If Kemi Badenoch sees Milei as a template, it demands serious scrutiny of the vision she holds for Britain’s future. Argentina is undergoing a radical experiment in state dismantlement. Though some libertarians cheer it on, the lived results so far are pain, division, and deepening repression.
In other words, governing with a chainsaw might make for good theatre, but it leaves a trail of wreckage, not reform.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
Left Foot Forward doesn’t have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
