The Return of Liz Truss?

Image - Amir Arsalan Shamsabadi and Jay Allen

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Liz Truss made herself a familiar name in the UK’s political sphere when she remained in office as Prime Minister for just fifty days, ousted by her own MPs. She served from September to October 2022, making her the shortest serving PM in British history. During her time as an MP, Truss held a number of cabinet roles: environment secretary, justice secretary, lord chancellor, and foreign secretary to name a few. During her tenure, the pound fell to below $1.09 for the first time since 1985, whilst costs of government borrowing rose greatly in just a single day. Despite her unpopular mini budget and loss of confidence in her leadership, Truss was reselected as the Conservative candidate for her constituency in February 2023. Truss lost her seat in the 2024 general election, ending her fourteen years as a sitting Member of Parliament.

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Since leaving government, Truss has released her memoir - Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room which has managed to secure a 3.1 star rating on Goodreads. The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley described her writing as ‘so un-self-aware she’s almost an innocent’ whilst The Guardian’s Stuart Jeffries describes it as ‘one of the most shamelessly unrepentant, petulant, politically and economically jejune and cliche-ridden books I’ve read’. It is clear to see why Truss’ work has not been a best seller.

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During the summer of last year, there were whisperings of a potential defection to Reform UK. Nigel Farage has previously praised Truss’ budget on X as ‘the best Conservative budget since 1986’. However, Farage has perhaps halted further acceptance of the ex-PM as a recent poll by Ipsos found that one third (34%) of Britons say they would view Reform UK more negatively if Liz Truss defected to the party. This includes one in three (33%) 2024 Reform UK voters and almost one in five (18%) 2024 Conservative voters’.

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Truss herself seems to have focused her return to the political sphere on a more American approach. Many photos appeared online of Truss on her way to Trump’s inauguration, donning a MAGA cap. In early December 2025, she announced the launch of “The Liz Truss Show” which she marketed as a show that will ‘tell you exactly how bad it is, we will be hearing first-hand accounts of witnesses to the fall of Britain’. She does little, however, to explain what ‘fall’ she is referring to. Her current political stance is made clear, as she promises to ‘look at the Trump revolution and see how this can be achieved in Britain’. It appears none of Truss’ colleagues are so far willing to be featured on the show, perhaps wishing to distance the Conservative Party from her more populist rhetoric.

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Liz Truss’ return with her memoir and new presence on YouTube and social media via her show demonstrates much about modern British politics, particularly the shift towards media personalities over traditional policy makers. Audience engagement increasingly impacts voter intentions, with channels such as Truss’ targeting those who perhaps have turned away from mainstream outlets. Debate nationally has been increasingly fractured by such media coverage. Whilst they could be credited with making politics more accessible, these channels tend to manipulate the narrative to their own benefit or agendas.

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Her promise to tackle what she has labelled the ‘deep state’, which she suggests led to her downfall, and to protect Western values mimics the words of the MAGA movement. This demonstrates the increasing involvement and crossover between American political ideology and British right-wing thought. Continual commentary from the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk has led to an almost transatlantic convergence of political discourse, in which narratives of institutional corruption, cultural decline, and populist resistance circulate freely.

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Ultimately, Truss has not ruled out a comeback to parliament. Whilst it seems unlikely that the Conservative Party, or perhaps any political party, would select her as a candidate, she may return as an independent or under new branding. When being interviewed by Sky News’ Wilfred Frost on The Master Inventor Podcast, Frost asked if she would ever return as an MP to which she responded ‘I never rule anything out. Why would I do that?’ The question is, do parliament or the public want to see her return?