Liz Truss has been a looming presence in Westminster ever since her time in No 10 was cut short with the UK on the precipice of economic meltdown.
Unlike her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, who has barely been sighted, Truss has not hidden away from Westminster and is seen frequently strolling through the atrium of Portcullis House and lunching in popular SW1 restaurants, including at the newly opened Old Queen Street Cafe, which is owned by the website Unherd.
This is not the action of someone wishing to keep a low profile – her recent lunch partners have including her former cabinet colleagues Simon Clarke and Ranil Jayawardena. Her 4,000-word missive in the Sunday Telegraph, as well as a planned interview with the Spectator on Monday, are the actions of someone keen to re-enter the political fray.
There are many in the Conservative party who are sympathetic to the overall aims of Trussonomics, including those on the party’s left who themselves grumbled under Boris Johnson that the tax burden was too high and growth too sluggish.
But is anyone actually interested in a comeback for Liz Truss herself? Since leaving office, Truss has hired a well-connected adviser, Jonathan Isaby, who founded the website BrexitCental, but has done most of the legwork herself. It very much has the feel of a one-woman comeback.
Kwarteng, her closest political ally, is no longer close to the former prime minister after being fired by her just before her collapse. He has given one interview of his own, including that he warned Truss that firing him would not save her.
Other key allies – Thérèse Coffey and James Cleverly – are still in Sunak’s cabinet and keen to stay there. Brandon Lewis, a big part of her campaign team, is keen for a comeback under Sunak as well and has been keeping quiet and well-behaved.
Other leadership candidates who backed Truss – Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat – have their own ambitions for the future. Other senior party figures, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith have distanced themselves from her, the former because of his own future ambitions and the latter snubbed for a weighty cabinet position.
There are many in the party who still believe in the fundamentals of what Truss describes in her essay – low taxes, especially tax incentives for businesses and growth districts like the enterprise zones she had planned, deregulation of the financial services sector and her environmental policy.
But even Sunak has faced the wrath of the party on issues such as planning – his own party rebelled to force the effective abolition of housing targets, meaning many local authorities froze building plans. It would seem to be the absolute encapsulation of the “anti-growth coalition”, which Truss railed against despite the fact it comes from her own party.
Those who want to fight for the future of the party to reject this kind of ethos have formed the Conservative Growth Group – at the helm are Truss’s lunch partners Clarke and Jayawardena.
But the MPs involved are under no illusions about the resurrection of Truss herself. Clarke is still close to Johnson but even if efforts to reinstall him are unsuccessful, ambitious MPs who have similar views to Truss have eyes firmly fixed on the battle post-2024 for the soul of the party in opposition.
Several MPs have said they have been told Truss’s intention is to be seen as a sage-like figure. She is a keen reader of US political history, and has apparently been making the comparison to the US presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who lost in 1964 to Lyndon Johnson in one of the largest landslides in US presidential history.
He has since been credited with sowing the seeds for Reaganism and the revival of US conservatism, as well as inspiring the libertarian movement. For Truss, there is appeal in the slogan used by his campaign: “In your heart, you know he’s right.”
But for many in the party, there’s also the warning from the successful attacks that Democrats used against Goldwater – “In your heart, you know he might” – a reference to him potentially using nuclear weapons. There are very few who would risk the possibility of Truss blowing up the party again.
