Little more than two years ago she was running the country - but today Liz Truss found herself told at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe she was living in a “parallel universe”. Audience members were left gasping in disbelief in a question-and-answer session littered with a series of extraordinary remarks from the former prime minister. Ms Truss said there was a place for Nigel Farage in the Conservative Party, and warned the party was at risk of collapse and being replaced by Reform UK if it did not stop shifting to the left.
She also stressed she “desperately” wants to see Donald Trump re-elected as the next US president, and said it was a “shame” former home secretary Suella Braverman was not standing to be the next Conservative leader. Ms Truss said while she does not agree with everything Nigel Farage says, “he is right about the need for change”. When asked if she can see Mr Farage in the Conservative Party in the future, the former PM said: “Yes - I want to see a Conservative Party at the next election with a clear plan to change the country.
“I don’t care who is in it. I care about whether they have the policies.” The open admiration for other politicians did not stop there.
Audience members audibly groaned as Ms Truss heaped admiration and praise onto Mr Trump, Argentinian Prime Minister Javier Milei and ousted Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. One person who clearly is not in her good books is former prime minister Rishi Sunak - the man she conquered in the original leadership race to succeed Boris Johnson, only to be ultimately replaced by him following a whirlwind 45 days in office, making her the shortest serving British prime minister in history. Ms Truss said she “didn’t get on with” and had not spoken to Mr Sunak since the election.
And while not explicitly blaming the incumbent Tory leader for the “massive drubbing” at the polls, where Ms Truss lost her seat, she was keen to point out how difficult her campaign was on the doorsteps because of the “dissonance” between her and Mr Sunak. And her mere 45 days in Number 10 clearly had not dampened her fighting spirit, as she knocked back several hecklers and even took on one audience member directly. During a discussion about the economy and her disastrous mini-budget, one gentleman shouted out Ms Truss “just apologise”.
However, not one to be shouted down, Ms Truss said it was an “inane comment” from someone “who doesn’t understand or care about what’s going on”, and cared more about “trading political insults”. She then said heckles like this were “why the country is in the mess we are in” - a statement that prompted a laugh at her attempt to take the man on. Presenter Matthew Stadlen pointed out that asking for an apology was not the same as an insult.
But the former prime minister was quick to respond, saying: “I take it as an insult.2 If there was one thing that summed up the whole show, however, it was Ms Truss’s repeated claims that she was not to blame for anything that had gone wrong in Britain in the past few years. The former foreign secretary blamed the Bank of England for the fall out of the mini-budget, saying it had made a “major error” they tried to blame her for.
And she blamed Mr Sunak for the general election result, even saying “I would have run a better campaign”. And when it came to the failure of the Rwanda immigration policy, she even went as far back as blaming the policies introduced by former Labour prime minister Tony Blair. Despite the less-than-friendly reception from the audience, Ms Truss took her statesmanship hat off and celebrity hat on as she posed for photos with fans outside the venue.
At least some in the audience appeared to appreciate her visit to the Edinburgh Fringe..
