Buckle up. Next week brings with it the release of Liz Truss’s new book Ten Years to Save the West, and with it a round of publicity interviews catering to both sides of the pond.
While the serialisation is due to begin this Saturday, thanks to an enterprising Guardian journalist some of its claims have already gone public. A leaked copy means that headlines from the book already include the revelation that the Queen told Truss to pace herself soon after taking office (spoiler: she didn’t).
It means that Downing Street is once again having to live with the ghosts of prime minister’s past, as Sunak’s predecessors decide to buck tradition and make their voices heard straight away. Boris Johnson offered an amuse bouche this week when he used a speaking event in Canada to describe Rishi Sunak’s proposed smoking ban as “absolutely nuts”.
The worry among Sunak’s supporters is that the book could see Truss let loose on the Prime Minister, his leadership campaign and his managerial style of government – thereby opening up a new front of factional warfare. On top of this, as Sunak tries to come back from dismal polling, the last thing Tory strategists want is anything that will remind voters of a period of a rocky period of Conservative government they are trying to forget. In contrast, Labour aides view the publication date as Christmas come early.
But more than the usual trading of blows, the question being asked in Tory circles is: what influence does Truss now have when it comes to Conservative thinking? Truss has already befriended some Tory candidates who could enter Parliament at the next election. There are no Trussites left in 10 or 11 Downing Street – yet her agenda can still find backing in parts of the party and grassroots.
It means that while it’s hard to even find supporters of Truss’s who believe she is the right messenger, her views and ideas could yet find relevance on the Tory side. As one Cabinet minister puts it: “Personally I would love it if no one paid her attention but among our supporters she still has an audience.”
Despite the title suggesting her tome is a foreign affairs opus, the book is largely personal and an account of Truss’s long climb to the top of government and then her abrupt fall from grace. Those close to her say it will make the overall argument that democracies across the world are at risk of undermining support for Western values if they stay on the current trajectory. Truss takes the view that big state, high tax, governments will allow hostile states to have the advantage.
Anyone hoping for a full mea culpa is likely to be disappointed. As the former prime minister put to me last year in her first broadcast interview since leaving 10 Downing Street, she accepts some culpability but ultimately stands by her project. It means the diagnosis amongst some of Truss’s supporters is that the bigger problem was not her plan for growth – including mass tax cuts – but establishment forces including civil servants, and Tory MPs masquerading as conservatives who are ultimately social democrats.
While Truss’s spell in No 10 was short, her experience serving under three different Tory prime ministers in government means that her views on how Whitehall works ought not to be discounted entirely because of how it all ended. Yet her recent claims involving the “deep state” are viewed by some who worked for as a step too far: “I don’t think that phrase is helpful,” says an MP who served as a minister in her government.
The bigger question for the Tory party is whether it embraces the idea, which she articulated recently at the launch of her new outfit PopCon (“Popular Conservatism”) that, effectively, some currently in the party don’t belong there. That they are too interested in being invited to dinner parties in north London than changing the country in the right way.
The thinking goes that parts of the Truss project that failed would have worked if only outspoken Conservative colleagues such as Michael Gove had gone along with the mini-Budget rather than making a scene and leading a rebellion. However, the market response, and the crisis it sparked in pension funds, means that even Tory unity would be unlikely to have been enough to calm the storm that followed.
Yet the general view that the Conservative Party has become too wide is one that has broader support on the right of the party. These MPs see the One Nation Tories as blockers who are stopping them from capitalising on the 2019 realignment which saw the party win the “Red Wall”.
Truss appeared at the PopCon launch alongside Lee Anderson, who has since defected to Reform UK. She has spoken positively of Nigel Farage – suggesting to Trump’s ex-right-hand man Steve Bannon that the former Ukip leader should come and help the Tories. It means that when it comes to the post-election defeat, Truss is in the camp arguing that the answer to the Conservatives’ current Reform UK problem is to move towards the party.
The release of the Truss book is unlikely to win the former prime minister many new supporters – most have already made up their mind on her short-lived premiership. But it could point to where the party goes following election defeat. For a taste of this, watch Tuesday’s debate on Sunak’s smoking ban. Truss, along with other freedom-fighting Tories, are tipped to speak in the debate that will follow. It ought to give a flavour of the ideological fight still to come.
