Liz Truss wished me dead. Here's why.
For those tempted by the Conservatives' latest reinvention, remember: beware Tories bearing gifts.
“The thing about Steven is”, said former prime minister Liz Truss, turning to me at a DC cocktail party, “is that his legs should be tied together, his body weighted with stones, and thrown into the Potomac”.
Truss had uttered her death wish without the hint of irony, or a smile.
Just a few months prior to this encounter, I had sat down with the ex-PM for a fifty-minute exchange for GB News. During the interview, I gently pointed out that Truss, far from being the “Populist Conservative” she was claiming to be, had governed on the far-Left of the Tory Party.
With the CPAC conference being held in London this week, hosted by Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, it is worth reflecting on the record of the many Conservative Party politicians now rebranding themselves as anti-establishment insurgents.
And, with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arriving in cinemas this week, it seems an apt moment to revive an ancient warning: beware Tories bearing gifts.
Truss gave me the interview to promote her book lamenting ‘the woke’. Her enemies were clear: “CINOs (conservatives in name only)”, “trans activism”, “leftist hegemony”, and excessively high immigration.
The only trouble? Since 2021, Truss, in her various ministerial roles, supported all of these things. She backed a ban on so-called “transgender conversion therapy”, was pictured holding a sign declaring herself an “LGBT+ ally”, and told the Equality and Human Rights Commission that the government did not intend to prevent biological men identifying as transgender from using female-only facilities.
As Secretary of State for the Department for International Trade, Truss’s permanent secretary sent weekly emails to the entire department promoting “Transgender Day of Awareness”, “Non-binary Awareness”, Black Lives Matter, cross-dressing officials, and trans activist charity Stonewall.
In response to these points, Truss admitted it was a mistake to have held the LGBT sign, but refused to criticise Antonia Romeo, who, as prime minister, she had wanted to promote (and who is now Cabinet Secretary).
As International Trade Secretary, Truss argued that post-Brexit trade deals should involve relaxing immigration rules. In 2021 she praised the “massive rise” in Indian students coming to Britain and argued for greater “business mobility” between the UK and India. Reports at the time made clear that expanding visa access for Indian nationals formed a key component of the trade negotiations she championed.
By 2022, during her premiership, Truss was considering easing English-language requirements for certain visas in order to bring more foreign workers into Britain, according to a report in The Times. Her government was also examining expanding the shortage occupation list and increasing the number of seasonal workers entering the country. The official “Growth Plan” produced under her premiership stated that increased skilled migration was important for economic growth and productivity.
While these points may have irked Truss during our interview, what I suspect really provoked her were my questions about history. It is one thing to admit hypocrisy, and quite another to reveal ignorance.
Truss served for some time as Foreign Secretary, a role previously held by titans such as Palmerston, Grey, Eden and Canning. With these figures and their intellectual seriousness in mind, I asked: Are you more of a Gladstonian, or Disraelite, in terms of foreign policy? Truss looked at me with glazed eyes.
For an even shorter period, as we all know, she served as prime minister, evoking even more titanic figures: William Pitt the Younger, Lord Salisbury, Stanley Baldwin, the Iron Duke, and Robert Peel. Who then was the best Tory PM, excluding the obvious answers of Churchill and Thatcher? After a long pause, she finally replied: “Javier Milei”.
Her post-government conversion to the radical Right is typical of Conservative Party MPs, ministers, and prime ministers. It is all very convenient to chuck out red meat on immigration, wokeism, and Net Zero after you leave elected office.
For some years it has been a mission of mine to hold Conservative and Reform politicians accountable from a Right-wing perspective. Too often Conservatives in particular have been given an easy ride by Britain’s media class, if by accident.
