Liz Truss would love it if, for one week only, this feature could be known as “Lunch with the Deep State”. After all, only a few weeks ago, Truss launched an audacious attempt to become the FT’s new global brand ambassador, waving a copy of the newspaper around at a rightwing conference in Washington, declaring that the FT was a friend of the “deep state” and helped to terminate her two-month premiership. I say I’ll see what I can do.
Truss explains that she is having Lunch with the FT because “you’ve got to know the enemy” — before clarifying that she doesn’t regard the FT as part of the deep state per se, more a kind of flying buttress propping it up. Along with other sinister elements in a leftwing “anti-growth coalition” — she has singled out “Brexit deniers”, people with podcasts and those living in north London town houses — the FT apparently helped to ensure that Truss’s time in Downing Street famously had the longevity of a supermarket lettuce.
Truss is laughing about all of this. She laughs a lot during a two-hour lunch in an 18th-century Norfolk coaching inn — although many across the UK and in her party do not see the funny side. Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister, is still trying to repair the political damage caused by his predecessor, while many homeowners are still paying the price for the spike in interest rates that accompanied her wild 49 days in office.