Sooner or later, someone is going to have to call a halt to Liz Truss’s public appearances. Not for our benefit, but for hers. We’ve nearly reached the point where we’ve tipped over into the Theatre of Cruelty. A freak show where audiences turn up just to see what mad thing she says next. Where she is egged on to make herself look ever more ridiculous. Hard to believe, I know. But every time you think you have reached Peak Trusster, Liz is there to say “hold my beer”.
It would somehow feel less grubby if Liz was in on the joke. If she was aware that her residual value is as a washed-up end-of-the-pier entertainer. Someone long past her best, churning out her greatest hit. A song that once reached Number 73 in the charts several decades ago.
But Liz is totally unaware. Blissfully ignorant. She actually believes she is still relevant. Not just to a Tory party, who just wish she would disappear under a rock – the electoral disaster whose name strikes fear among relatively sane Conservative members. PTSD. Not even just to the country who she still has not forgiven for her graceless resignation. But to the entire world. The Trusster’s stated mission is now to save western civilisation.
Most striking of all, Liz actually means this. She believes the fate of the western world resides solely in her hands. She wakes up every morning and stares at a map of the globe and plots her next move. First she takes Manhattan. Then she takes Berlin. Something like that. For narcissistic endeavour she outdoes Boris. A genuine contender for the world’s maddest person. Even Napoleon had less of a Napoleon complex. Where are her shrinks when she really needs them? They have a duty of care. Truss needs to be protected from herself.
Ninety minutes before the Liz Truss fringe event is due to start, I join a pioneering group of hacks in the auditorium. No one wants to miss this. At a party conference whose sole function is as a beauty pageant for the Fearless Four, this is the top attraction. Or distraction. Above the stage there is a screen advertising the talk with a QR code inviting audience members to send in questions. Everyone tweets this. We’re then turfed out for the next hour and made to queue.
When we’re allowed back in, the QR code has mysteriously disappeared from the overhead screen. Perhaps too many random people had submitted questions that were considered off-message. Like “Could you please explain the best way to get promoted well beyond your capabilities?” or “Don’t you ever suffer from impostor syndrome?”
I’m sure you all have variations on these questions you would like to see answered. You will be waiting a long time. Because nothing approaching these topics is allowed. There is an omertà on any suggestion that the Trusster could ever have made a mistake. Something that applies throughout the party conference. The Tories just want to pretend that Truss never happened. There is a 49-day hole in the Tory collective memory. Liz is a mistake they can never learn from because it occurred only in a parallel universe. A different space-time continuum.
On Liz, it’s best to draw a veil over her 45-minute appearance. Mainly out of decency. The Trusster shouldn’t be allowed out without a responsible adult in attendance. Someone to advise her to say: “No comment.” Because whatever medication she is on – and it must be a lot to produce that disturbingly affectless delivery – it’s not enough. In her own private world – the only one that counts – she is queen of all she surveys.
Safe to say that the Trusster is completely unrepentant. She believes all that went wrong is that we didn’t get enough of her. Elle ne regrette rien. Her confusion is total. She was brought down by the establishment; unaware that she once was at the centre of that establishment as prime minister. Others were to blame for her ignorance. Britain was in the clutch of a socialist cabal led by the Tories and Labour establishment. Wokery was bringing down the west. She could have done a better job at the last election than Rishi Sunak.
Just make it stop. Just make it stop. I feel as if I’m colluding in someone’s personal breakdown. That I’m a participant in something unpleasant. Please tell Liz she wasn’t just a useless prime minister: she was a useless constituency MP. Her Norfolk voters had had enough of her. She is now an irrelevance. Just that strange person who no one will recognise at the Cenotaph in years to come. The session was billed to last an hour but her interviewer, the Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley, wrapped things up after 45 minutes. It was the greatest kindness he could bestow on her.
Elsewhere, the Tory conference trundled on its own meaningless way. Jeremy Hunt opened proceedings in the hall. No one quite knew why. Who cares what a bloke who isn’t going to be shadow chancellor in a month’s time thinks? Jezza didn’t seem to notice. He declared the economy to be in tip-top shape. You can’t buy that kind of razor-sharp analysis.
Otherwise it was the Fearless Four competing to say the same things to the same people over and over again in different meetings. Without anyone appearing to get bored. They must be on autopilot. We are in an echo chamber par excellence. Where supporters follow their man or woman around and laugh at the same jokes to give themselves a sense of purpose.
In the main hall it was the turn of Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch to be interviewed for an hour each. Tom was so desperate not to remind people he had been in the army and had killed people that he kept talking about his time in the army. Still, he kept his supporters happy. Kemi merely tried not to get into a fight with Chris Hope, who was asking the questions. She gives the impression she doesn’t really like anyone. Even herself. Not exactly the qualities most people are looking for in a leader. But then the Tories are a law unto themselves.
