Liz Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, refuses to go away quietly. Her latest barnstorming idea is to launch her very own ‘uncensorable’ social media platform to counter the mainstream media and protect free speech in Britain. Truss told a cryptocurrency conference, held in Bedford, that the platform would launch this summer. Honestly, who wants this? As pointless new ventures go, it must be right up there.
The idea of a Truss social media network was first mooted at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Washington. At the event in February, she pledged that the platform would be ‘uncensorable’ and ‘uncancellable’.
Truss appears to have learnt nothing from her failure
All this free speech blather is a tad rich coming from someone as thin-skinned as Truss. Only last summer, she stormed off the stage at a public event after a banner showing a picture of a lettuce and the words ‘I crashed the economy’ was unfurled behind her. Will she allow pictures of lettuces on her new platform dedicated to free expression?
It also isn’t immediately obvious why Truss thinks there’s an urgent need for a new outlet where she and others who feel muzzled or unheeded can promulgate their views unhindered. As a former prime minister, she has plenty of opportunities to speak publicly, both in Britain and abroad. The problem is that the more she speaks, the less convincing she actually is.
Truss has something of a bee in her bonnet when it comes to media. She has attacked the ‘supine legacy media that pay lip service to free speech’, claiming that it ‘suppressed stories and distorted stories’. The former prime minister compared Britain – a country she led, lest we forget – to communist Russia. ‘This is the kind of thing that we used to see going on in the Soviet Union and it’s now happening to us and it is absolutely shocking that this is the case in modern Britain,’ she said.
Truss definitely has become something of a downer on this country, claiming Britain is ‘in the Dark Ages’. Well, maybe, but surely this is in no small measure down to her crashing the economy in record time. Self-reproach and self-reflection are clearly not high on her agenda. More’s the pity.
Truss explained that her new social media venture would take on what she refers to as the ‘deep state’ – another recurring fantasy of hers. In Truss World, she wasn’t brought down by her own incompetence and kamikaze actions in office but by a secretive cabal working against her. She has repeatedly attacked those she believes obstructed her during her 49-day premiership. As reported by the London Economic, which first broke the story, she told the conference in Bedford that she had been ‘cut off at the knees by the economic establishment and the elites’ and ‘the people who didn’t want change’. She went on:
That has made me think it is not enough just to get into No. 10. You might think you can just get into No. 10 and sign things off – you can’t.
Well, no, you can’t just sign things off if you don’t know what you’re doing or can’t convince people that you have a workable plan. Truss appears to have learnt nothing from her failure. The bottom line is that she was spectacularly bad at being prime minister – so bad that her party thought it justifiable to get shot of her as quickly as possible. That’s on Truss and no one else, an obvious truth that somehow continues to elude her.
Our former prime minister offers a very public lesson in how not to go about life after the top job. There is no nuance or light and shade in her world view. Instead, all she offers is an endless series of increasingly shrill warnings that things are not right and that she is one of the few who can see a way through the darkness.
It is understandable enough on a personal level that Truss desperately wants to restore her damaged reputation, but this really isn’t the way to do it. It’s a shame that she cannot see what is obvious to everyone else. Truss should do herself and everyone else a favour by taking some time away from the limelight.
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