How did Britain end up with someone so odd as PM?

Alan Rusbridger, The Independent

Liz Truss, as you may have gathered, is not at peace with herself. Channelling Dylan Thomas, she is not going gentle into the good night of post-prime-ministerial retirement. She is, as the poet urged, burning, raving and raging. Particularly, raving. a. And then Conservative MPs, who had put her into Downing Street, came to their senses and mounted a Maduro-like raid to airlift her out.

If that is, indeed, your memory, it turns out you are pathetically naive. What happened in 2022 was — at least according to Liz — nothing less than a coup, and our heroine is not going to rest until Sky TV’s Beth Rigby is safely behind bars. Not that Beth was acting alone. Oh no. The long list of co-conspirators is being unmasked in a series of episodes of The Liz Truss Show, a weekly YouTube broadcast in interview format that makes QAnon feel like the periodic table. This week, her guests were her former cabinet colleague, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and a Brexity ex-Tufton Street economist by the name of Andrew Lilico. In general, the guests are mainly there to nod in agreement with Liz as she explains time and time again how it was the Deep State that ate the lettuce.

Imagine David Moyes hosting a series of podcasts to ventilate the true reasons he was ejected from Manchester United after just a few months. Episode 1: How the weather was weaponised. Notice how it rained a lot that season? Was it just possible that Manchester’s microclimate was being manipulated? Episode 2: The Old Trafford ley lines. Episode 3: Sir Alex Ferguson was replaced by a body double. The one advising Moyes blinked too much and kept saying “Trust the process.” Draw your own conclusions. The Liz Truss Show is a bit like that. Liz began the latest episode by naming and shaming Michael Gove, Greta Thunberg, the Bank of England, the Treasury, John Maynard Keynes, wokery, the Financial Times and DEI. Dark forces out to destroy the country we love.

The Bank of England had sidelined her, aided and abetted by the lying mainstream media, the Blob and the political class in general. They, in turn, were in league with a cabal of globalist technocrats who were themselves working hand in hand with corporatists who had been brainwashed in Davos, along with Alan Greenspan, Mark Carney and Tony Blair. And don’t get her going on the Office for Budget Responsibility. Why would no one tell the truth about what really happened? Not the British media, which does nothing but promote wokery, mass migration, and climate change activism. Which does make you wonder which newspapers Liz mostly reads.

Once Rees-Mogg joined in, the list of culprits was expanded to include one Stafford H Northcote, who, along with CE Trevelyan, had helped to create the Blob in 1854. Even Rees-Mogg demurred at this, because his sister-in-law is a descendant of Northcote and he has something of a soft spot for him. But all this was relatively sane compared with an “extra” show last week featuring Dan Wootton, who was billed as “the star of British independent media” and something of a muse to Liz. He boasted that he had openly endorsed her while working for the supposedly impartial GB News. The choice of Dan as a muse is a remarkable one. You will remember that his GB News career did not survive some misogynistic banter with Laurence Fox and a six-minute on-air statement about sexual misconduct allegations, which he labelled a “smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind”. Those dark forces again.

Dan said it had been horrendous to watch the bad guys bring Liz down. He, too, started with Gove, but worked his way through the Treasury, globalism, the Bank of England, the Deep State, the “British Bashing Corporation”, woke ITV, Sly News, “Ofcommunists”, and what he termed the “snivel service”. It was a major conspiracy theory worthy of, say, Ken Follett. If this sounds a bit repetitive, it’s because it was. Liz interrupted Dan a couple of times to remind viewers that her mini-Budget was utterly blameless and she was the victim of a coup. Dan interrupted Liz to remind viewers that he had been forced out of GB News because he was calling out the mainstream media every night. “It’s sick, it’s disgusting.”

“You’re looking at enemies of the country,” he continued, warming to his theme. “If you’re looking at people that should be investigated and locked up, why aren’t we talking about Beth Rigby, Robert Peston, Laura Kuenssberg, who all led a campaign to mislead the British people for political purposes over years and years and years ... I’m so disgusted by my profession.” Liz agreed vigorously: “It’s not really a profession any more, is it, Dan? It’s become a racket. Thank God for President Trump, who is suing the BBC.” That was why Liz had started her own media channel, apparently – to “drive conversations with sensible people who are freedom fighters”. The resistance starts here. Not since the Tolpuddle Martyrs have we seen such a glorious fightback.

Liz is not limiting her energy to her YouTube channel, though. You may have read that she is fronting a venture to turn the former MI5 headquarters, Leconfield House, into an ultra-exclusive private members’ club for anyone with a spare half-million to invest. And in her spare time, she fires off “cease and desist” legal letters to anyone who dares to suggest that she crashed the economy. Was this woman really the British prime minister, or was that Moyes? Perhaps I’ve muddled things up, and it was Truss who briefly managed Manchester United. Who could honestly say she would be less qualified to coach the Red Devils than to sit in Downing Street? Or that Moyes wouldn’t have made a better fist of stringing together a Budget that wouldn’t freak the bond markets?

After watching the thick end of five episodes, you pinch yourself that someone so frankly odd could have ended up at the pinnacle of power. Someone so paranoid, so un-self-aware, so one-dimensional, so mediocre, so charmless, so limited. And so pleased with herself. There’s another odd one in the White House. And yet another who has a reasonable chance of being our next prime minister in Britain. Which makes you wonder what it is about modern politics that attracts the weirdos and then elevates them to high office — and how we can stop the cycle from repeating itself.