Listen to Liz Truss long enough and she’ll tell you she’s been on a journey. The inexorable rise of a girl who went from a rough education in Leeds to front-runner to be the next Conservative Prime Minister. Through a short spell in the Lib Dems. We all make mistakes.
Take a closer look at the journey, however, and it begins to look even more remarkable. The human remnant that accidentally drifted downstream to the doors of number 10. A journey with no ideas or purpose other than to adapt to her surroundings and rise to the top. The failures were spectacular. Yet extremely successful. Each time she appears in a more powerful iteration. Samuel Beckett could only stand back and applaud. She is literally living his dream.
Get version 1.0 of Radon Liz. It is a gas, but it is inert. This was in the early days of David Cameron’s leadership. No one was more socially liberal than Truss. No one has ever hugged a Husky tighter. Or embraced austerity more firmly. As and when needed.
This Liz was also a fiery remnant. I remember meeting her in the spin room of a TV debate during the referendum campaign. She bent my ear at length about how the Leave vote was based on lies and that Remain would win at a gallop. No problem. No worries. This was probably the first time I seriously considered the UK leaving the EU. Her reward for failure was a promotion.
Radon Liz 2.0 turned out to be a passionate quitter. Much more than many people who have supported Brexit all along. Not that he now thought what was done was done, there was no going back and we just had to make the best of it. It was that staying in the EU was wrong. Thought crime. A mortal sin. This was Truss, who dressed in a Union Jack for pictures at every possible opportunity. Who’s never been happier than when he’s cosplaying Margaret Thatcher in a tank. While the economy also went down. This version was also rewarded with even more government trinkets.
The latest version, Liz 3.0, is almost unintelligible. It has slipped so far through the looking glass to the Tories on the right that in some parallel universes it appears to have adopted Marxist economics. Dialectic has never been so confusing. She honors the memory of Boris Johnson and says she wouldn’t change a thing, but at the same time refutes the work of the government. Her prescription for reviving the economy is to reverse increases in national insurance and cut personal and corporate taxes. How she would do that, she didn’t say. Just talking in riddles is enough right now.
It’s exhausting though. To keep up with Radon Liz’s journey, you need to be able to run fast. She is the anti-ideologue. The politician against beliefs. Not so much a set of ideas looking for their natural home as a feverish ambition in search of some ideas. Any ideas. If you don’t like hers, she has others.
Because here’s the thing. Tras is a tabula rasa. A kinky 1980s computer with a screen that constantly buffers. Someone capable of reinventing himself almost at will. And it just so happens that every time she needs new ideas, she comes up with a set that exactly mirrors those needed to allow her to rise even higher in the Tory party. It’s a terrible coincidence. Imagine a person having that much luck. It’s like she doesn’t believe in anything at all. The ultimate shapeshifter. “Tonight, Matthew, I will be what you want me to be.”
For reasons not entirely clear to anyone, Truss hit the dirt with version 3.0. All is certain that her journey is now complete. No one is calling the next seven weeks a pointless, protracted coronation yet, but we’re not far from that point. Radon Liz’s latest incarnation has appealed to Tory members. Partly because I’m not Rish! – there are many who will never forgive him for betraying Judgment – but mainly for telling them what they want to hear.
If she were a little smarter, she would also be amazed that so many people could forget this Rish! he did not increase public borrowing and did not increase taxes because he is a socialist. He did it because the country was falling apart in a pandemic. But when you go, you go. And Liz is living her best life as Prime Minister-in-waiting. So much so that she almost passed out. As relaxed as AI gets.
Her interview with Nick Robinson on the Today program went off without a hitch. She even found her way into the building and navigated it without having to call security. A huge improvement over her launch event the previous week. And she even managed to talk the usual crap without sounding too robotic. Close your eyes and you can almost imagine it’s human.
She knew her unsecured tax relief plan wasn’t inflationary because Patrick Minford told her so. This was the economist who predicted that Brexit would increase GDP by 7% and that food prices would fall. Bring on the Nobel Prize.
Later on Thursday afternoon, Radon Liz was at Little Miracles, a charity for children with life-limiting and other disabilities, and seemed quite relaxed. She must have made countless such visits as a constituency MP. She talked for a while with the children about the troubles of being followed by the media. She looked pointedly at the collection of sketch writers. But there was kindness and laughter in her eyes. At least she sees the absurdity of someone like her becoming prime minister. And she really believes in a free press. Unlike Rish!.
Truss then moved over to the parents and listened as they shared their experiences. I then asked two of them, Wendy and Brian – neither Tory voter – what they thought. Nice enough, they said. Although the proof will be in the delivery. If Truss were to spend matching money on social services, this would be the first.
By then, Radon Liz had moved on. It’s about time I said she’s all for a new royal yacht, provided it’s funded by Tesco, and that she’s Labour’s worst nightmare. Wet sleep rather. But she is entitled to her delusions. And with that she left. Job done. It was a typical Liz experience. Fascinatingly superficial. Little Miracles is still underfunded and parents will still struggle to get the services their children need. But more importantly, Truss will be in Downing Street. She left as she came. No trace. On brand to last.
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