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BIRMINGHAM, England — The briefest of British prime ministers is still drawing a big crowd on Planet Tory.
Liz Truss packed out a 300-seater auditorium at the Conservative party’s annual conference Monday, while dozens of disappointed activists were turned away.
And she isn’t ruling out making a political comeback, despite losing her previously-safe Tory seat in one of the biggest election upsets of Britain’s recent Labour landslide.
Asked in an on-stage interview with Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley Monday if she’d consider a return to the House of Commons, Truss replied: “I’ve only been out of Parliament for a few months, so I’m currently thinking about what to do.
“What is certainly true is I’m not going to give up on this fight. I think this is the fight of our lifetimes, is saving Western civilization, and that is what I’m focused on.”
Asked if she liked being in parliament — she replied — “err,” before talking up working in the private sector and saying Parliament has “become a shadow of its former self.”
Elsewhere, Truss, who won the overwhelming support of members in the party’s 2022 leadership contest but was ousted by her MPs amid economic chaos, was in fighting form.
Though the ex-prime minister said she didn’t want to “indulge in a slagging match” with her predecessor-but-one Theresa May, she blasted the former prime minister as “part of the establishment” — and insisted the Tories would’ve performed better at the last election with herself at the helm rather than Rishi Sunak.
She cited the surge in the Reform vote between her ousting and the election, conveniently glossing over Nigel Farage’s return as that right-wing challenger party’s leader at the start of the election campaign.
But she still reckons not ousting Boris Johnson — a Tory move that thrust Truss into her 49 day-stint in office in the first place — would’ve given the Conservatives their “best chance” of victory.
‘Trump might win’
Truss’s intervention comes as the Conservatives, fresh from defeat, try to pick a new leader. The conference in Birmingham will offer each of the contenders – Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat — the chance to set out their stall before members make their pick from a final two.
The ex-prime minister said she doesn’t “think” she’ll be backing a candidate, arguing none of them have acknowledged “how bad things are in the country as a whole and, frankly for the Conservative Party.”
If Argentina’s chief chainsaw-wielding libertarian President Javier Milei was a candidate, Truss said she would back him “like a shot.”
Asked if Britain is on the road to socialism, Truss hit back: “We are already a socialist country.” By her measure, state spending is too high and “huge swathes” of the economy are held back by regulation.
Truss was also asked to offer something hopeful to counteract her rather gloomy assessment of the state of the world.
“Donald Trump might win,” she said. “It would really cheer me up.”
