The problem with worrying about megalomaniacs on the web and wildfires in Los Angeles is that we have been distracted from the very real plight of Liz Truss.
She is the victim of a very special kind of injustice: people think she was a terrible prime minister, whose doings were disastrous for the economy, resulting in her defenestration by her own party – and what’s worse, people keep saying so.
And so today we learn that Truss has lawyered up and sent a “cease and desist” letter to Keir Starmer, demanding he stops making “false and defamatory” claims that she crashed the economy. It runs to six pages. Reading it may take as much time as she spent at No 10. It says he harmed her reputation and contributed to her losing her seat in South West Norfolk, which must be true because everyone knows that everyone in that area takes everything the Labour leader says as gospel, especially when Liz – who had held the seat for 14 years and, presumably, was known to many of them – says something to the contrary.
And so here we are, with lawyers for Truss arguing that she couldn’t be described as having “crashed” the economy because the Armageddon that followed her infamous mini-budget did not lead to a fall in GDP or a rise in unemployment.
The terms are important, especially to all of those people whose mortgages soared in the aftermath, rendering the addition of vegetables into their evening soup a luxury. If you drive towards a wall and hit it, is that a crash, or just an unfortunate meeting of your bumper with bricks and mortar? Is it your fault? Is it the failure of your passengers to anticipate the danger? Should we blame whoever built the wall? Is the definition of a crash that Starmer might use as a lawyer the same as he might employ as an up-and-at-‘em politician? What would an insurance assessor say about what is a crash and what isn’t? And really, is this a hair that a politician whose skills transformed the door of No 10 into an unprecedentedly fast-revolving one should want to split?
Of course, she pretty much has to, for one suspects there’s rain and precious little sunshine in Truss-land these days. The lettuce jokes, the jibes, the assumption she must confront from day to day that she was the Mrs Bean of politics. The likely sense, even when there is a speech to be made about her dotty book Ten Days to Save the West or an appearance in front of rightwing oddballs such as the US’s Heritage Foundation, that as many are laughing at her as with her; and that quite a few would rather listen to the lettuce. Today she stuck out a poignant little film on X – in the austere style of a hostage video – berating Rachel Reeves and the Bank of England, and proclaiming that she “was smeared by the Labour party, and my own party, for having crashed the economy”. It’s quite the brand-salvage operation. If it succeeds, she might profitably jettison politics altogether to repopularise the unfiltered cigarette and the horror that was the Austin Allegro.
But, irrespective of the letter, despite the video, despite her j’accuse shtick stuck on a tape loop, it is unlikely to succeed. Starmer will no doubt say his characterisation of Truss’s clown car parade through Downing Street and the UK economy is pretty well covered by the protections of free speech as it pertains to politics. Indeed, today his spokesperson confirmed he will not cease and desist, and his associate Lucy Powell, leader of the House of Commons, styled Truss’s masterwork as the “kamikaze budget”. Which can’t be described as ceasing or desisting in any real sense.
So this has been a success in that we are talking about Truss again, but not in a good way, so she might think a bit about a rehabilitation strategy that doesn’t involve lawyers’ fees. On I’m a Celebrity people laugh at you, but at least you get paid.
Hugh Muir is the Guardian’s executive editor, Opinion
