From Lib Dem to PM – Liz Truss is U-turning into Number 10

Ben Wildsmith

For all the doom and gloomsters out there, we had some fabulous economic news this week.

Last month’s figures show that thanks to Platty Jubes, sales in the food sector were up a whopping 3%.

Granted, this was almost entirely accounted for by alcohol, but I think we can confidently chalk this up as a Brexit benefit.

Only since throwing off the shackles of the EU have we, as a nation, felt able to express our unanimous love and support for the Royal Family by skulling crates of Stella in the hot tub.

In republican France, for instance, a four -day public holiday can only be granted by the town’s Chief Bureaucrat if it has been signed off in a plenary session of the European Parliament.

Surely, Nigel Farage is due a peerage from Her Maj. in recognition of his services to patriotic binge drinking if nothing else.

Liz Truss, of course, led the way in our national celebrations.

South-West Norfolk was reportedly drunk dry of Jaegermeister as the Foreign Secretary took on all-comers in a three-day game of Fuzzy Duck before challenging Brexit hardman Steve Baker to arm wrestle for the rights to conduct the ceremonial vomiting of the camembert.

Maggie-chanelling

Liz, you see, has ‘been on a journey’.

Having grown up in a socialist household, weeping as her pleas for small, individual packs of cereal were ignored in favour of a communal box of Frosties, she initially broke from tyranny by joining the Liberal Democrats.

As a student, she spoke at conference calling for the abolition of the monarchy, a decision she apparently regretted ‘almost immediately’. I’d like to stick up for her on that one.

It’s hard to think of any entanglement with the Lib Dems that doesn’t result in lifelong regret; their heady cocktail of besandled centrism and moral superiority has banjaxed everyone from Shirley Williams to John Cleese.

Just say no, kids.

Liberal Demness comes in many shades of piss-weak yellow, though, and it’s a bit puzzling that our Maggie-channeling Foreign Sec. chose the one that includes snatching the sparkly hat from her royal namesake’s head.

Window dressing

Once ensconced in the bosom of the Conservative party, Liz found common cause with the fellow Europeans that she found there and campaigned for Remain.

There’s an easy logic to that trajectory: ditch the perpetual losers and latch on to the similar wing of a party that knows how to win elections.

That wing, however, has been mangled beyond repair by the rotary blades of Brexit, leaving the party to circle endlessly in pursuit of its own ideological rectum.

Liz’s transformation into an ardent Brexiteer isn’t particularly surprising. Ambitious politicians always view principles as window dressing.

The confusing element is that the true believers seem to have embraced her so unquestioningly.

It started with Jacob Rees-Mogg and Naddy D endorsing her as a stronger Brexiteer than even themselves.

The two statespeople opted to issue this address outside Number 10, thus confirming rumours that Liz was Johnson’s favoured successor.

Stubborn remainers

There’s a lot to unpick here, not least that Johnson’s own Brexit bona fides are as flimsy as Naddy D’s novels.

Primarily, though, we have to question why a Remain voter would appeal to these two more than Rishi Sunak, who was writing about leaving the EU whilst still a hugely popular and stylishly turned-out schoolboy.

And they weren’t alone.

By the end of last week, she had received backing from the Ian Paisley of Euroscepticism, Steve Baker, who explained that Liz’s ‘journey’ was one that ‘the whole nation needed to take.’

This suggests that the ERG intends to reach out to stubborn Remainers by offering up Liz as a lost sheep who has seen the light and turned to the path of righteousness.

Well, OK, but I don’t remember them giving a kipper’s fundament for the opinions of Remainers before and her presentational style is, shall we say, suboptimal, so what is going on?

Liz, against all economic precedent and advice, has agreed to cut corporation tax and to do it right now.

The high priests of Brexit, who have sold their project to the nation as a patriotic religion, are prepared to back a Remain-voting, former republican Liberal Democrat who stands next to no chance of winning a general election so that share prices will inflate and those with skin in the game can cash out.

When the winter bites, and gas prices surge, expect to be reminded of the Blitz whilst you burn some sovereignty to keep warm.