Thirty two years ago, on a cold November Thursday, Margaret Thatcher resigned as prime minister, pushed out of office following 11 years in government. In 2022, after just 44 days, Liz Truss stood outside Downing Street on another Thursday autumn afternoon, to tender her own resignation to the British public. It had taken a cabal of ministers to topple Thatcher, while Truss’s fate was decided by a single MP, Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee. These final differences aside, Liz Truss cosplayed her heroine Margaret Thatcher to the last.
Liz Truss’s emulation of Margaret Thatcher always had a whiff of teenage fantasy or fairytale about it. She was the Talented Ms Truss taking on someone else’s identity and living out a dream. ‘You shall go to the ball’, some celestial godmother had clearly cried at her in Tory heaven, waving a magic wand and coating her with true blue fairy-dust.
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