'Liz Truss' Left-Baiting, Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories are No Joke'

Adam Barnett argues that the former Prime Minister is playing with fire with her new conspiratorial pro-Trump screed

Photo: Karl Black/Alamy

The release of a book by former Prime Minister Liz Truss has been met with the ridicule and contempt it deserves. But if we let the laughter drown out the politics, the joke won’t only be on Truss. 

Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room (2024 Biteback) starts by lamenting that “our political discourse” is often “more concerned with personalities than ideas”. After a week of superficial Truss interviews and tired lettuce gags in the media, this is hard to dispute. 

But personalities matter in politics, as Truss’s career proves. On one level, the book does serve as a deadly critique of the UK political system – if only by tracing Truss’s own rise to public office. It also reveals much about the relationship between the personal and the political – and about the ideas and psychology of the modern Right.