Liz Truss’ reaction to the Queen's death in her new book raises eyebrows

In case you’d forgotten, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister Liz Truss is releasing a book titled Ten Years to Save the West which, among other things, is set to tackle “disastrous ideas” proposed by the left (we won’t talk about ten years being several times longer than her premiership, and her “mini-Budget” being a disaster in itself).

And ahead of its release on Tuesday, the Daily Mail has published a few extracts which shed light on her feeling like a “prisoner” in a “soulless” No 10, the late Queen’s advice for her to “pace yourself” (yes, really – Truss herself writes “maybe I should have listened”), and more of the thinking behind the catastrophic budget which ultimately brought an end to her time in Downing Street.

Commenting on her time in the iconic building, she writes: “The place was infested with fleas. Some claimed that it was down to Boris and Carrie’s dog Dilyn, but there was no conclusive evidence. In any case, the entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching.

“The most difficult thing to get used to, however, was just being stuck there. Spontaneous excursions were all but impossible: I was effectively a prisoner.”

Truss also states she ordered some new furniture for the flat about No 11, but was booted out of Downing Street before it could be delivered.

Awkward.

The book also contains further defences of her mini-Budget and rebukes suggestions she “should have gone slower” with her government’s economic policies – to which she asks: “What would we have been waiting for?”

“I knew that many of these things would be politically difficult and not immediately popular. The longer you wait in politics, the harder things become and experience suggests it is better for politicians to strike while the iron is hot and make use of their mandate while it is still fresh.

“That might have been a miscalculation, but it was not an outlandish strategy.

“I am not always good at translating this internal dialogue into something for wider public communication. I assumed people understood what I was trying to do more than they did,” Truss explains.

Sounds like you’re insulting our intelligence here, Liz!

She also reveals that sitting in a car with then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng en route to Kent after he delivered the budget statement was “probably my happiest moment as prime minister”.

Her response to the passing of the Queen has also been raising eyebrows on Twitter/X, as Truss writes it felt “utterly unreal” to receive the news on her second day on the job, and that she ended up thinking “why me? Why now?”:

The release of Truss’ book next week comes just months after she blamed the “deep state” for her short term as prime minister, in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland.

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