Truss's Latest Big Idea? To Pretend She Was Never PM

Sketchwriters were initially banned from the Liz Truss rally. Only news reporters were permitted to add their names to the list. But at some point, someone must have worked out that a Liz Truss rally will, by definition, reduce a news reporter to a satirist, and so they relented.

- TOM PECK

You can only imagine the crisis meeting. Many years ago, still in the afterglow of her “that is a disgrace” speech on the subject of imported cheese, Truss – then environment secretary – told me personally that she had deliberately staged a photo opportunity and speech at the premises of a cheese manufacturer. She hoped that journalists would not be able to turn down the opportunity to go and laugh at her, and was disappointed that the temptation had somehow been widely resisted.

So it is possible – likely, even – that the last-minute volte face came at her own instigation. That she’d had to have a quiet word with her advisers, to let them know that if you try to keep out the people who are only there to laugh, then no one is going to turn up. Indeed, if all of the piss-takers had been banned, they’d have had to ban Truss herself from the Liz Truss rally, which in a way might have felt more normal than what actually took place.

Truss bounded onto the stage, her legs clearly moving at a speed that indicated that she must know that none of this is a dream. That the nightmare is real, and we’re all in it together. She was wearing a dark navy suit, and a white blouse with a large white bow. It’s the same outfit she wore to the first debate of the leadership campaign last summer, for which she was not unfairly mocked for cosplaying as Margaret Thatcher.

And here she was again, and if she wasn’t launching another leadership campaign, then it’s not at all clear what she was doing. She’s the only person in the world who can possibly know for sure, which is no reason to believe that she does.