Should we take Liz Truss seriously?

Liz Truss has been the subject of political ridicule since she was outlived by a lettuce during her 49 day period as Prime Minister. Those mortgage holders,renters and businesses still paying the price of her attempt to re-fashion the economy may take a rather more serious view.

The focus on Truss as something of a laughing stock has increased since the publication of her recent 10 days memoir. Reviews have not been friendly but Truss ploughs on convinced she is right and others wrong. Of course there are numbers like that, who lack all critical faculties.

Conversley one or two commentators, Lewis Goodall for example, have argued that Truss should be taken seriously. Some others agree that Truss’s points about financial institutions having too much power which really should rest with elected politicians do have substance even if she does not.

In my view Truss should not be taken seriously but the ideas she promotes should be.

These are focused of course on what appear to be ever expanding conspiracy theories which see left-wing ideas in the most unlikely of places- the Bank of England?-and see ideas of a small State and a free market thwarted.

These ideas are widely held on the political hard right perhaps particularly in the US. Of course there are other right-wing perspectives which offer variants of this as well- see the recent hard and far right conference in Brussels addressed by Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage.

Truss I think really does believe the conspiracy theories or at least some of them. Whether other more serious figures do, or rather see them as a way to politically disrupt the status quo remains an open question.