The tragedy of Liz Truss 

LONDON — Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister is trying desperately to carve out a new place in the world. So far, it just isn’t happening.

Since becoming the third premier in a row to be ousted by her fellow Conservative MPs, Liz Truss has unsuccessfully sought to rehabilitate a reputation which lay in tatters by the end of her chaotic 49 days in 10 Downing Street.

In Britain she remains the butt of jokes. Labour, now in government after a landslide Tory election defeat under her successor Rishi Sunak, wheels out her ghost every time it needs to score political points.

Now political biographers are picking over the bones of her failure. Her attempts to crack America on a pro-Trump ticket have fallen flat. And Truss can’t even organize in parliament any more because she lost what should have been a safe Conservative seat at the election — the first former PM to suffer such ignominy for more than a century.

A former senior adviser to Truss, who like others in this piece was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said: “There was a time that, as her special advisers, we would have walked over hot coals for her. Not any more — nobody that worked for her in No. 10 wants anything to do with her these days.

“Unless you’re a free-market ideologue, an association with Truss post-No. 10 is a kiss of death for someone’s reputation.” 

How not to be PM

It’s a far cry from the afterlife of other former British prime ministers, who have gotten used to racking up lucrative speaking gigs and earning rose-tinted reappraisals of their more controversial moves.

“In the past people like [Harold] Macmillan, [Winston] Churchill, [Harold] Wilson, [James] Callaghan and [Margaret] Thatcher did the decent thing, which was to sort of go off, write their memoirs and then pop their clogs,” said Anthony Seldon, the respected British political historian who has just released a warts-and-all biography of Truss subtitled “How not to be prime minister.”

Other former prime ministers have worked hard to salvage their reputation. Anthony Eden, for instance, attempted to use his time after No. 10 to repair the damage his handling of the 1956 Suez Crisis — seen as one of the great foreign policy debacles of the 20th century — had done to his standing. “He tried to rebuild his reputation on Suez by writing his memoirs, but he didn’t do so as shamelessly as Liz Truss,” Seldon said. 

Truss’ memoir “Ten Years to Save the West” was published a mere 18 months after she left office and contained little in the way of regret — instead doubling down on her controversial policy agenda and blasting an economic establishment she argued wrong-footed her administration.

Truss has acknowledged she was not “blameless” for the debt-fueled, tax-slashing government budget that precipitated her downfall. But she has largely trained her fire elsewhere.

“Looking back, that afternoon [of the mini-budget] was probably my happiest moment as prime minister. Little did I know the establishment was about to use every tool at its disposal to fight back,” she wrote.

Seldon said prime ministers needed to couple their memoirs with continued “public good” if they were to have any hope of rehabilitation.

“They all write their memoirs, and that’s both a source of revenue for them, but also a chance to get their side of the story across,” he said, adding of the latter: “That never works.”

If Truss were able to use her status to accomplish something the world needs, in the manner of former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s interventions on global poverty, she would “earn a lot more respect,” Seldon argued.

Team Truss strongly rejected the biographer’s characterization of her premiership.

An ally of the former prime minister said: “The fact that so much more venom is still being directed at Liz than the man who just led the Tories to our worst defeat in history only goes to show that she is advancing an agenda at which her detractors evidently feel threatened.”

Taking aim at the “political and media class” for its focus on Truss, they added: “Frankly it would be a welcome change if they were merely to engage with the arguments she is making rather than indulging in the kind of harassment and intimidation which is condemned as a disgrace if the victim is a left-wing politician but which is apparently fair game if the target is a right-winger.”

Kiss of death

For those who worked for Truss during her decade in government, there is a sense of sadness at what she has become, with former aides saying she is unrecognizable from the politician they felt they got to know and believe in during her ascent to power. 

Truss’ time as trade secretary and foreign secretary saw her at the forefront of post-Brexit trade deals. She secured the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from an Iranian prison, a feat which had eluded multiple predecessors. And she was a key player in the U.K.’s robust response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Truss successfully read the mood of the Conservative Party after Boris Johnson was ousted, and proved a formidable campaigner who comfortably beat her main rival Sunak to the top job.

She was viewed as socially liberal by colleagues, and was a self-proclaimed LGBT+ ally — a position that won praise in some parts of the Conservative coalition.

Since leaving office, however, Truss has opted to go all in on her support for former U.S. President Donald Trump, declaring the world “safer” under his tenure. She shared the stage with former Trump aide Steve Bannon as he described the British far-right activist Tommy Robinson as a “hero.” She has loudly recanted her description of herself as an LGBT+ ally — and continued to blame the “deep state” for her ouster.

A second former aide who worked with Truss in Downing Street said it was “sad to see” what had happened to her, adding: “I don’t think she’s recovered from the trauma and shock of what happened in No. 10.” 

“She’s chosen to indulge in conspiracy theories, written a slapdash book with no new ideas, and cozied up to right wing populists who are anathema to many of the things she believes in as an economic and social liberal,” they added.

“Her play to the U.S. market and the alt-right scene is about making money. It’s the only place she can go politically. No one else will have her and it’s hard to see her returning to front line Tory politics here.” 

The Truss ally quoted earlier in this piece said: “Since leaving office Liz has written a Sunday Times bestseller, convened the Growth Commission to help establish how to kickstart the stagnant economy, inspired the creation of the new Popular Conservatism movement and been warmly welcomed by audiences not only in the U.S. but also in places like Japan, Taiwan, India, numerous European locations and of course across the UK.

“I don’t doubt we can expect to hear much more from her in the weeks, months and years to come,” they added.

A gift for Labour

Britain’s newly-elected Labour government certainly hopes to hear more from Truss.

Her frequent media interventions are seen as a boost by an administration currently trying to explain away the more controversial parts of its policy platform by blaming Truss’ economic turmoil.

“She’s a constant reminder of the chaos the Tories wanted to inflict on the country and why they had to be stopped,” a senior Labour official said.

The government has even gone so far as to introduce a law aimed at preventing a repeat of Truss’ mini-budget, with ministers explicitly name-checking the former prime minister as they debated it last week. “The purpose of this bill is to ensure that never again do we find ourselves in a situation, like at the 2022 Liz Truss mini-budget, in which fiscally significant measures are announced without accompanying [Office for Budget Responsibility] analysis,” said Business Secretary Darren Jones.

His Conservative counterpart Andrew Griffith retorted that the “disreputable bill” would achieve little of substance, branding it a “piece of political theatre.”

As Labour does its best to repeatedly remind voters of the Truss years, some in the Conservative Party are praying for a period of silent reflection from the former prime minister.

“I think the sort of damage she did to the party, and to some extent the country as well, means that however long you duck out in public life for, as soon as you reappear, you remind everyone of what went wrong,” said a former Tory minister who lost his seat in July’s election wipeout.

“I think it was just such an extraordinary car crash, I’m not sure that there is ever a right time to come back.”