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Liz Truss told to ‘take a holiday’ as ex-PM’s Maga reinvention alarms Tories

Exclusive: Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is not the only senior Conservative alarmed by Liz Truss’s attempts to reinvent herself as a Trumpian Brit

David Maddox
Political editor
Saturday 25 January 2025 08:40 EST
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Liz Truss endorses Donald Trump for US president

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Senior Tories want former prime minister Liz Truss to “take a holiday” and get out of the public gaze for “at least a year”.

The comments came after Ms Truss became a popular fixture, among Donald Trump’s Maga supporters and donors, on the inauguration party circuit in Washington DC last week.

On Monday night, just hours after Mr Trump was sworn in as president, the former prime minister, who lasted just 49 days in Downing Street, stood up at one of the official balls celebrating the inauguration and gave an impromptu speech.

Ms Truss is said to have repeated the line that Britain needs its own Trump, and praised the incoming US president for “saving Western civilisation”.

Liz Truss at an event during the inauguration
Liz Truss at an event during the inauguration (Reuters)

A source from the ball, which was packed full of right-wing backers of the new administration, said: “She got a huge ovation for her words.”

The brevity of her premiership did not stop Ms Truss asking to be referred to a “Prime Minister Truss” using the American tradition of keeping the honourific of a job title once you have held it however short the tenure.

She was also in town to promote her new media platform and was accompanied by Michael Pack, a right-wing documentarian who has been promoting his film about her short-lived tenure at No 10. Certainly, amongst Maga types there was an appetite for Truss’ claim in her recent autobiographical book that she had been the victim of the system and establishment.

But Ms Truss’s interventions are causing alarm in the Conservative Party, with a number of Tories concerned that she is “becoming an embarrassment”. On Thursday, The Guardian reported that the current Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, had suggested at a shadow cabinet meeting that she “wants Liz Truss to shut up for a while”.

One Conservative and one former Conservative (both friends) visiting Washington DC for the Trump inauguration this week told The Independent that “she needs to take a holiday”, with one suggesting it should be “for at least a year”.

The scars left by the former prime minister’s disastrous mini-Budget, along with memories of the Daily Star’s lettuce campaign, still linger.

Truss posed in a Maga hat in Washington DC last week
Truss posed in a Maga hat in Washington DC last week (@trussliz/X)

Ms Truss has not commented on the suggestions that she should disappear from the public gaze for a while, although an ally suggested that the comments were likely to have the opposite effect.

When The Independent caught up with Ms Truss at an inauguration event, she said she had “no intention of joining Reform” and would be staying with the Tories, arguing that “party support is a distraction at the moment”.

However, her conversion to Trumpian Maga politics has astonished some observers, particularly those who are concerned with culture war issues.

With Ms Truss now posing as a hardliner against LGBT+ and diversity issues, one former civil servant who worked for her when she was a senior minister in charge of these matters recalled that she was known for her progressive views at the time, although supporters point out she did advocate to protect single sex spaces for women. But her latest stance against diversity hire has won approval from Elon Musk on his X platform among others.

Ms Truss is a regular visitor to the powerful Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which led the way in developing the ultra-conservative Project 2025 policy manual for the Trump administration. She certainly has many fans, as the reaction to her speech suggested, not least Nile Gardiner at the Margaret Thatcher Center.

But her presence there has caused division among senior members of the Tory party, who are split over her past record as a minister.

One source noted: “Liz was originally against Brexit and was for David Cameron. She was the Queen of woke.”

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