‘An embarrassment to her party’: Why won’t the Tories cut ties with Liz Truss?
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Former Prime Minister Liz Truss gave an hour-long talk at the Conservative Party Conference, blaming everyone for the failures of her time in power apart from herself.
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In brief…
Read time: 4 minutes
- Liz Truss spoke to a room packed with Tory members for an hour at the party conference on Monday, refusing to take blame for the UK’s economic crisis.
- She said she still enjoys “the fight” of politics, and would be greatly cheered up if Donald Trump wins the US election.
- Lewis Goodall says she is an embarrassment to the party, and should be banned from the next conference.
What’s the story?
She’s no longer a Tory MP, but that didn’t stop Liz Truss being given an hour-long platform at a fringe event during this week’s Conservative conference.
The party is still without a leader, following its thorough thrashing at the hands of Labour in the July election, which cost Truss her seat.
Either Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick or Tom Tugendhat will succeed Rishi Sunak when the winner of the leadership race is decided on 2 November.
All four will be staking their claims on the job at the conference, but on Monday, all eyes were on Truss, who spoke about her brief time in 10 Downing Street, and did her best to explain that nothing that happened during those 49 days was her fault.
Michael Gove says he will show "restraint" talking about Liz Truss
What did Liz Truss say?
During her talk, Truss blamed the Bank of England, the media, woke culture, liberal Tories, and Human Rights culture – among other things – for the failure of her time as Prime Minister.
She said it was “pathetic” for Labour, or anyone, to say she was to blame for the UK's economic crisis.
Lewis Goodall wryly described her as being “as self-reflective as ever”, while Emily Maitlis says she was there to remind people she is not to blame for “anything” that happened under her watch.
During the talk, Truss blamed the rise of Reform UK on the Tory rule that followed hers, noting how it grew from just 3% in the polls when she was in Downing Street, to taking 18% of the votes in the July election.
She also said that Labour now represented the UK elite, adding that the Tories could no longer be the party of the establishment.
But despite everything she believes she has been wrongly accused of, and saddled with, she still says she “enjoys the fight”, claiming Western civilisation is now under threat, due to “neo-Marxist orthodoxies” such as “net-zero alarm” and “wokery”.
The one ray of light for the former PM is the potential of another Donald Trump presidency, saying a Republican win in the US November election would “really cheer me up”.
“There are people who believe this,” says Jon Sopel, with a sense of disbelief, saying her words echo the alt-right of America.
Why does Liz Truss still hold so much power with Tory members?
The queue for Truss was huge. The room was packed. Whether she is or isn’t to blame for crashing the UK economy, she remains a hugely influential figure for many members of the Conservative Party.
Lewis says that there remains “interest in, and sympathy for” Truss among members, which is continually fuelled by an “absolute unwillingness to retreat from the battlefield of Tory politics.”
He believes many members at the Tory conference who went to see her speak may have voted for her to become leader, and simply wanted to feel vindicated in their 2022 choice.
“My guess is they were the members who had originally voted for her and wanted to sort of self-reinforce that they had got it right all along, and everything she said was about her – not being to blame and her not having been given enough time – and why the media had sort of got things wrong,” he says.
But he adds her continued presence and popularity must be a gift to the Labour government.
“It would absolutely delight me if I were in Number 10 Downing Street,” Lewis continues, adding that she is being used and weaponised by the Tories due to the “genuine sympathy” some people feel for her.
The opinion of Truss from her former Tory colleagues differs slightly from that of its members, at least if Michael Gove and Kwasi Kwarteng's comments on her are anything to go by.
Kwasi Kwarteng on Liz Truss's "insane" decisions
What’s The News Agents’ take?
Lewis says if he was the leader of the Tories, he would ban Truss from the next party conference, saying she has "delegitimised" and "damaged" the party.
“You think I'm joking – I'm not,” he says.
“She is disappearing further and further down the rabbit hole of online conspiracy world.
“She's an embarrassment to her party. She's an embarrassment to the country. And honestly, if a leader wanted to show they had some guts, they would ban her.”
But he says this shift towards US-style conspiracy theories and alt-right thinking is evident in some of the candidates in the Tory leadership race, and can been seen in the determination of Jenrick and Badenoch to remove the UK from the European Convention of Human Rights.
“The dynamics of this race, of the online alt-right world means that they are pushing these candidates into ever more fringe directions,” he says.
“They are way more fringe than Jeremy Corbyn ever was in 2015.”
But he adds that the real problem is the disconnect between how much of the UK views Liz Truss, and how many members of the Tory party continue to feel about her.
“Truss is considered in the country to be a joke, but she's not considered a joke by large parts of this party,” he says
“I suspect her influence will continue to grow.”
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