The former leader’s comeback is directed at her party: to force it back toward the low-tax radicalism it tried to abandon, says Katy Balls, the political editor of the Spectator
. A former aide to Truss is similarly disobliging: “I don’t think now is the right time to speak. In the past, former prime ministers have found a charitable cause rather than diving straight back in.”
However, Truss appears unperturbed by the criticism. Given her place in history as the shortest-serving prime minister, she was markedly upbeat during the 50-minute sit down. Perhaps though the difficulty of that seven-week premiership explains why one of the questions she was the quickest to respond to was: would she like to be prime minister again? The answer was a polite but firm no.
Her return presents Sunak with trouble on several counts. First, there are senior Tories and ministers who worry that any intervention by Truss, regardless of whether it’s separate to or even critical of Sunak, will simply remind the public of a short-lived leadership they would like voters to forget. It makes it much harder for Sunak to turn the page with the public if his predecessors are still hanging around. But more than that, Truss still holds some sway in parts of the Tory party.
Truss believes one of the reasons her premiership failed was a failure by people who hold her views – small-state, low-tax, free market – to make the argument. “Was I trying to fatten the pig on market day, maybe … there’s a long history of failing to make the case and that’s what I’m thinking now,” she said.
On this point, there are plenty of Tory MPs who agree. There is a sense not just on the right of the party that, after more a decade in government, the party has lost touch with its core principles. It’s one of the main reasons she won the leadership contest in the summer.
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