Jess Phillips spoiled Liz Truss’ book in just nine words

In case you aren’t aware (let’s be honest, you probably are), Liz Truss has a book out this week, titled Ten Years to Save the West, and it’s supposedly about tackling “disastrous ideas” in Western politics among other things – and we assume she won’t be considering her catastrophic mini-Budget to be one of them.

And in the run-up to the book’s publication on Tuesday, the shortest-serving prime minister has been handing excerpts to the Daily Mail to publish, and is continuing to double down on the idea that her time as PM was brought to an abrupt end by the establishment.

Appearing on LBC with Iain Dale on Monday, Truss was asked about whether people “blaming everything that’s wrong in our economy” on her mini-Budget angers her, to which she said: “It’s a smear … When I meet people, quite often, out canvassing or out on the street, people will say ‘you did the right thing’.

“The left … are trying to smear me with economic results I’m clearly not responsible for.”

Meanwhile, in a tweet promoting a new Mail article on her book earlier that day, she said the extract explains “why I had to go and what my experience has taught me about taking on the establishment”.

To save you from having to read the lengthy extracts, the answer according to Truss concerns Suella Braverman’s breach of the Ministerial Code (over which she left her role as home secretary) and a Labour vote on fracking which ended up being framed as a “confidence motion”.

The South West Norfolk MP writes: “It soon emerged there’d been angry scenes during the vote, with our whips openly arguing with MPs and tempers running high.

“I then heard that the Chief Whip Wendy Morton and her deputy had both resigned, saying they were unable to put up with the abuse they were getting. This wasn’t a huge surprise. Right from the outset, they’d faced quite appalling behaviour from some of our own MPs, who made their life hell.”

She went on to add that their resignation was “the last thing I needed”, and that their decision “would only increase the likelihood of the house of cards falling down”.

“So I spoke to Wendy and Craig in my office and urged them to retract their resignations. They were very emotional, and I eventually persuaded them.

“I then headed over to the Whips’ office and found it in utter chaos. All around the Commons, I also saw looks of despair on the faces of colleagues. That’s when I thought: this is done. This is terminal.

“By that time, I had decided that my only option was to resign.

“I had already done what was needed to avoid an economic meltdown, but the political meltdown of the Conservative Party now appeared unstoppable.”

So there you have it. Spoilers. Sorry (not really).

Although we wouldn’t be the only one to have killed any level of hype around Truss’s book, as Labour MP Jess Phillips responded to a tweet from the ex-PM promoting the Mail extracts about her “final days in Downing Street” by saying they are “also known as her initial days in Downing Street”.

Ouch.

And Twitter/X users loved the political put-down:

Phillips, obviously, isn’t the only one to make a brutal dig at Truss’s short tenure, as “very right-wing” comedian Joe Lycett displayed a commemorative plate for her premiership at an art exhibition late last year.

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