For both Conservative and Labour strategists, the notion of the 49-day Prime Minister offering Nigel Farage and his party tips ahead of the local elections might seem like the first bit of good news they’ve had in a while.
Truss has reportedly been sharing her wisdom not on winning elections, but on how Reform can take on the “establishment blob” which, she argues to anyone who will listen, sabotaged her time in office. This is meant to signal that Farage is serious not just about winning power but about fundamentally reshaping the state once he has done so.
It has also kickstarted another round of rumours about whether Truss, who lost her seat in the supposedly Tory heartlands of rural Norfolk in July, might be mulling a change of party. Reform has already lured over ex Tory MPs Andrea Jenkyns (who is running for Reform to be mayor of Greater Lincolnshire), Marco Longhi and Aidan Burley, as well as dozens of Conservative councillors. Party insiders are always keen to suggest Farage is “in talks” with any number of disgruntled Tories, especially ones who have recently vacated parliament.
Truss’s name is the highest profile of those floated – in a purely speculatory way, to be clear – for a possible shock defection. Evidence in support of this conjecture can be found in her attendance of Farage’s sixtieth birthday party last year, their warm personal relationship and in the broadly supportive interviews Farage has conducted with Truss on GB News since her brief time in Downing Street. Make of that what you will.
Whether the former PM really is considering such a move, alongside her efforts to break into the Maga ecosystem across the Atlantic, is between her and whatever deity she might believe in. A more interesting question is: supposing she were, would it be in Reform’s interests to accept her?
Liz Truss is, in political terms, toxic. Whatever she believes about who was to blame for the economic catastrophe that occurred under her watch, the British people have made up their minds. Truss holds the dubious honour of the lowest ever popularity rating of any UK political leader. At the end of her short premiership, just one in 10 Brits had a positive view of her. And despite all her efforts to explain how it was really someone else’s fault, that figure has barely budged up in the intervening years.
Her name was still being angrily associated with rising mortgages on the doorsteps when hopeful Conservatives were out canvassing for the 2024 election. The Truss brand is so damaging, in fact, that some Conservatives quietly wish Kemi Badenoch would expel her former boss from the party. “Liz Truss is our Corbyn,” I was told by one Tory insider, frustrated that Badenoch hadn’t taken action against her predecessor as Keir Starmer did with his after assuming leadership of the Labour party. When I raised the prospect of Reform tempting Truss to come over, the response from multiple Conservatives was “Please, take her!”
It’s fair to say Reform figures are far from convinced about the expediency of welcoming Truss and all she represents into their ranks. One party insider called her “poison”. Another pointed out the damage she could do to Reform’s brand of fighting the so-called “uniparty”. If Reform’s key message is that both Labour and the Tories have been disastrous for the country, they argued, then accepting one of the main architects of that disaster sends a counter-productive message.
That said, others wonder whether the prospect of the shockwaves such a move would inevitable generate would prove hard to resist for a party leader who thrives on publicity. “If you asked Nigel Farage, I think he would say on balance yes,” I was told by one Reform source. It would give Farage, they said, a chance to remind the electorate yet again “what chaos the Conservatives are in” and to turbocharge his message that the Tories are finished and Reform is the de facto opposition.
It is also, I was told, quite hard turn down a former prime minister, even one as divisive (and short-lived as Truss). Insurgent parties trade on their novelty whilst at the same time craving legitimacy that will signal to voters that they can be taken seriously. Truss is, the source admitted, “a double-edged sword” on that front. But it’s hard to imagine Farage throwing away the opportunity without first gaming out any possible way to turn it to his advantage.
To be clear, Truss might be an odd fit for a party that has recently embraced taking key industries into public ownership and is now starting to try to court the unions. Once the poster girl for radical free market ideology, Truss’s politics have drifted in a more nationalistic direction since she began flirting with the Maga crowd – she had nothing but robust support for Donald Trump’s tariff regime, for example. It is unclear quite what her politics currently are, or how they would align with Reform’s strategy of drawing voters from Labour and the Tories alike.
But then, political reinventions are nothing new. In February last year, a messianic Truss launched her “Popular Conservatism” movement (PopCons) at an event in which she effectively blamed her downfall and the failure of the Tories on the same “establishment blob” she has been advising Reform about. Nigel Farage was there in his GB News capacity, drawing more attention from the audience than any of the headline Popular Conservatives onstage. One of those speakers passionately arguing how to make the Conservative Party popular again was Lee Anderson. Scarcely month later, Anderson had lost the Tory whip and defected to Reform, becoming the party’s first MP.
The PopCons are no more than a footnote in the wild ride that was politics in 2024. Reform is the big story now. As it stands, it probably serves both sides best to keep the rumours of a potential defection alive as long as possible. Reform can whip up maximum publicity intrigue without dealing with the messy consequences of welcoming Truss into their tent. And Liz Truss can pretend she is still relevant enough for anyone to care what party she’s in.
[See also: Giorgia Meloni’s “alt-West” vision]
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