A Kook’s Tour Continued: Liz Truss Rips UK Media As ‘Friends Of The Deep State’
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss blasted UK media outlets as “friends of the deep state” at the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), telling host Steve Bannon that in order to win conservatives “need a bigger bazooka.”
On Thursday the former prime minister delivered a 15-minute dog whistle speech, entitled Taking Back Our Parties, that claimed a leftist-infiltrated UK establishment ousted her from power and that Western conservatives needed to “challenge” the “hostile environment” they found themselves in.
Truss then held a Q&A with Bannon, former President Donald Trump’s political strategist, for the Real America’s Voice cable news channel.
“We love the strong Tories, not too crazy about the RINO Tories, right? Talk to us about it,” Bannon began, taking a shot at centrist conservatives deemed Republican in Name Only (RINO).
Truss said: “Look, I wanted to cut taxes. I wanted to cut the size of the administrative state. And those people didn’t like it. The economic establishment in Britain wanted to keep things the way they were. And they did. They got me. But I have learned from that, Steve.”
“Hold it, hold it, hold it,” Bannon interrupted, holding up different print publications. “Was it The Economist that got you? Was it the Financial Times of London? Are these the people we got? This is the party… The city of London, are they the ones that run the deal over there?”
Truss, joining in, lifted a copy of the Financial Times: “These are the friends of the bureaucratic establishment. They are the friends of the deep state.”
She continued: “And they work together with bureaucrats, of which we’ve got many more in Britain than you have here in the United States, to keep things the same. And people in Britain aren’t happy about that. They want change. But it’s being stopped. And that’s why we need a bigger bazooka. ”
Later in the interaction, Truss admitted that she didn’t have much support and implored Bannon to come “sort out” the UK.
“I need a few more friends, though, to be frank. I need a few more people to help me,” she said. “Once you’ve sorted out America, you come over to Britain and sort us out.”
Bannon replied: “I think I would be banned there.”
Truss’ Stateside PR run coincides with the promotion of her new book, renamed and rebranded suitably for its target populist right audience as Ten Years to Save the West: Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism, and the Liberal Establishment. At CPAC the promo poster displayed beside the new biography of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who recently interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking engagements at CPAC have seen Truss assert herself as a conservative martyr of sorts and garnered her bemused admiration from the US fringe right.
At home, the former prime minister is less well regarded across the political spectrum with recent memory of her 49-day tenure at Downing Street, the shortest in the country’s history, during which she tanked the UK economy with a disastrous mini budget, costing stock markets an estimated $500 billion and spiked interest rates in a way that is still being felt by working families. Surveys show that Truss remains less popular than former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
As for the future of government, the latest YouGov/Times voting intention poll shows the Conservatives on 21% ( down 2 points from the last poll) and Labour 46% (up 2 points). The UK electorate appears to be demanding change as Truss says, yes, but if pre-election polls are anything to go by it’s a pitch to the left, not the Tory right, that seems imminent, with Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party primed to take government in a landslide win.
Either Truss is in denial of all this or, giving her the benefit of the doubt and the bleak outlook for her return to politics, she just wants to sell some books.
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