London: A friend in Australia texted this week with an observation from afar about the current state of British politics.
“Liz’s book sounds even more fun than her premiership,” he quipped.
It was starting to seem a distant memory, so it was a nice reminder when Liz Truss released the memoir no one was asking for about her 49 days as British prime minister in late 2022.
Liz Truss and her husband Hugh O’Leary enter Downing Street for the first time in her leadership.Credit: Getty
The book, Ten Years to Save the West, is peppered with anecdotes from her time in public life, but is pitched as a warning against authoritarianism and the threat from “fashionable ideas propagated by the global left” – which she blames for her demise.
But don’t let that put you off. The book is also full of comedy gold. Truss complains that when she moved into Number 10 Downing Street it was infested with fleas from Boris Johnson’s dog, Dilyn – which left her “itching” for weeks. She concedes that had it been an Airbnb, she would not have rated it well. She also complains that she was left to “organise my own hair and make-up appointments”.
Later, as Truss faced “the prospect of a catastrophic economic meltdown” following her mini-budget, she writes that she called Jeremy Hunt to ask him to take over as chancellor of the exchequer, but he initially rejected the phone call as he didn’t recognise the prime minister’s number.
Little wonder Armando Iannucci, creator of the brilliant political satire The Thick of It, says he won’t bring back his hilarious and spookily close-to-the-mark show for another season because his scripts would seem dull in comparison to the ridiculousness of real-life politics.
“Every time a stupid political event happens … people write to me and suggest I bring back The Thick of It,” he wrote. “No. Absolutely not. I now find the political landscape so alien and awful that it’s hard to match the waves of cynicism it transmits on its own.”
UK politics so much funnier than fiction, comedy writer finds it ‘hard to match’
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26.04.2024
London: A friend in Australia texted this week with an observation from afar about the current state of British politics.
“Liz’s book sounds even more fun than her premiership,” he quipped.
It was starting to seem a distant memory, so it was a nice reminder when Liz Truss released the memoir no one was asking for about her 49 days as British prime minister in late 2022.
Liz Truss and her husband Hugh O’Leary enter Downing Street for the first time in her leadership.Credit:........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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