Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer – that’s a decent rule of thumb. And you wouldn’t imagine it’s any less likely to be true if the person you’re asking is Liz Truss. Last week, at the News Xchange conference in Dublin, RTÉ journalist David McCullagh asked her whether she “could see the funny side” of the Daily Star’s “Lizzie Lettuce” campaign. This was the stunt where a live webcam was pointed at a lettuce to see whether it could outlast Truss’s faltering administration – it turned out it could. The Star got the idea from a quip in the Economist, which is an unexpected piece of media cross-fertilisation.
I would say that is a stupid question to ask Liz Truss. How likely is she to see the funny side? It is a joke that was made entirely at her expense and gained widespread coverage at a very painful point in her life – a weird combined zenith and nadir of her career. If she was capable of chuckling at that joke, she should be sectioned.
