When Liz Truss took to the stage at the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards, she used her speech to send up her Cabinet colleagues and boss – cracking jokes about the indefinite length of the backstop, Karen Bradley’s loose grasp of history and – in a dig at her own department – called for a ban on Treasury forecasts. So, given Truss’s straight-talking attitude, I’m delighted to have the Chief Secretary to the Treasury as my guest on the latest episode of Women with Balls:
In the interview, Truss talks about the regrets of her youth ( … joining the Liberal Democrats), why she cares strongly about British cheese to this day and how The Thick Of It made life more difficult for female politicians:
‘As a woman in politics you do face a particular criticism sometimes and there is this myth aboard and I blame The Thick of It with the sort of Nicola Murray type minister the sort of sensible woman who is a bit clueless, who doesn’t really have a mind of her own and just gets bossed around by spin doctors and I think that myth sometimes perpetuates. I am an independent-minded person but I don’t deny being ambitious, what’s wrong with that?’
Truss also explains why she thought her first ever conference speech – on cheese imports – went well only to find out later it was a viral meme:
‘I was amazed and I think I was one of the first memes but it didn’t even come out straight away so I thought the speech had gone quite well but I think a lot of people were quite two-faced. They told me it was brilliant but then probably behind my back were saying something quite different. But then it got on Have I Got News For You and after that that’s what sort of made it a viral thing.’
As for our cheese imports now? ‘It’s still not good enough,’ Truss says.
We hope you’ll enjoy the latest addition to Spectator Radio. And if there’s someone you think we should feature, please do send in suggestions.
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