A shaky camera phone tracks to a woman in a bright white room holding two books. ‘The West is in danger,’ she warns earnestly, ‘if we’re gonna win it back we need real conservative values being implemented.’ This is Liz Truss who, 18 months ago, was the head of government in the world’s sixth largest economy, a nuclear-armed power with a permanent seat on the United Nations’ Security Council. Now she is plugging her book, out this week, on X.
In her left hand is the UK edition, titled Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons From the Only Conservative in the Room. In her right, the US edition, with its helpful strap banner reminding readers that the author is ‘Liz Truss, former Prime Minister of Great Britain’. The initial advance for the UK version was a paltry £1,512.88, about 0.29 per cent of the advance Boris Johnson got for his forthcoming book. But that is just further vindication for Truss, who stood at the peak of the British establishment but now scorns it as the ‘deep state’, wallowing in her outsider status.
