Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room

by Liz Truss

Can the West Be Saved? Liz Truss, the former Conservative prime minister of Great Britain, thinks that’s an open question.

During her ten years at the highest levels of the British government, she often found that she was the only conservative in the room. She witnessed, first-hand, the machinations of globalists who would like nothing more than to impose corporate state-socialism on the world.

Freedom is at risk, she warns, and the Conservative Party in Britain—and the Republican Party in the United States—are ill-equipped to defend it.

The problem? Conservatives have accepted too many of the left’s taking points, allowed the left to set the political agenda, and capitulated endlessly whenever the left has sought to impose bigger government and curtail individual freedoms.

The dictatorial excesses during the Covid-19 lockdowns should have been a stark warning because they are a precursor of things to come if conservatives continue to waffle on principle, surrender on policy, and fail with the electorate.

In Ten Years to Save the West, Liz Truss reveals:

* Why socialism—despite its endless record of failure—remains popular, both with global elites and with the next generation
* The clear and present danger of the ever-expanding “administrative state”
* How conservative parties are complicit in policies of “managed decline”
* Why we cannot ignore the threat of an aggressive China
* Why Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher should remain the guiding lights for conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic

Urgent, detailed, and full of insights gleaned from the highest levels of politics, Liz Truss’s warning to the West cannot be ignored.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2024

Reviews

[Manny]

ChatGPT-4 writes:

The Lettuce and Liz Truss: A Short-Lived Premiership in Verse

Oh Liz Truss, in power for but a fleeting scene,
The shortest reign a PM's ever gleaned.
An economic plan dropped with a splash,
And the market confidence took a nosedive crash.

World markets quivered at the fiscal leap,
While Liz cried, "Growth!" as the hole got deep.
She battled the pound, the markets, the debt,
But another foe loomed that she'd not met yet.

Enter the lettuce, so leafy and green,
A challenger fierce with a silent demean.
Guardian of fridges, a crisp head held high,
Who'd think this veg could make her premiership die.

Liz took on the lettuce with valor and might,
The oddsmakers watching with skeptical sight.
Will it wilt or will she? The suspense was tough,
The lettuce said nothing, and that was enough.

She claimed she'd be steadfast, unyielding, stay put,
While the lettuce just sat there, not giving a hoot.
Days passed and the nation watched with distress,
Would Liz outlast romaine in this verdant game of chess?

Alas, the green opponent would lead to her end,
For lettuce proved steadier than fiscal plans to mend.
So the leaves of green outlasted the blue,
A salad's ingredient that caused quite the ado.

Now history recalls with a humorous air,
That a Prime Minister was bested by produce so fair.
Oh Liz Truss, no match for the lettuce, it's clear,
In the annals of politics, this tale is premier.

[Cecily]

“If you like political ideas and argument, this is a provocative and enjoyable read”, Chris Mason, Political editor, BBC News

I won't read this, so no rating, and I won't send this to the update feed. But I will hypocritically lap up other people's reviews.

Chris Mason's straightforward and kind review, Six things that stand out for me:
Text:
'Faltering' Conservatism

Truss writes that "the Conservative movement across the West has been faltering for almost a generation".

She says the West has become "decadent and complacent," adding that "we have Conservative politicians accepting extremist environmentalist dogma and wokeism".

She argues there are "leftists in the Conservative Party" and the Tories have been insufficiently hungry to overturn some of the decisions taken by the previous Labour government, such as the Human Rights Act.

The former PM says some of her Tory colleagues are what she calls CINOs - Conservatives in Name Only.

She argues the environmental debate is "the single greatest example of Conservatives over the last few decades losing arguments to the Left" and claims plenty of environmentalists are "watermelons" - green on the outside, red (i.e. socialists) on the inside.

She argues the greatest threat to the environment is "the rise of authoritarian regimes".

'The tyranny of the technocracy'

This is a big theme. She thinks there are too many officials with too much power and not enough accountability.

She blames the Bank of England Governor, Andrew Bailey, in part at least, for her downfall as prime minister and would like rid of him. Mr Bailey, for his part, has decided not to respond to her criticism.

She would scrap the independent economic forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility.

And she would pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Too many civil servants are actually political activists

"If you're an environmentalist, you go and work at the Environment Department and if you're an equality campaigner, you go and work at the Government Equalities Office," she said.

"Thus, we end up with activists as civil servants, which I don't think happened in the past and which can present real problems."

Furlough was too generous

"This has the effect of preserving the economy in aspic," she writes, "with little incentive for people to respond to the changed world by establishing new and innovative businesses."

'Snobbery' in the judiciary

Truss says her time as justice secretary "radicalised" her.

The judiciary is a "self perpetuating oligarchy," she writes. "[The] sheer level of snobbery… shocked me."

She would scrap the Supreme Court. And she would dismantle the Judicial Appointments Commission.

In short, she thinks power of judicial appointments should lie with elected politicians.

Candid about her own limitations

She says she went about her time as justice secretary "in a clumsy fashion".

"I am gregarious and I like people, but even my best friends wouldn't describe me as a great people manager," she writes, adding that her usual style is "full frontal".

Summary

Whatever you think of Truss, if you like political ideas and argument, this is a provocative and enjoyable read.

She gives direct answers to direct questions.
Some, of course, will never forgive her for her time as prime minister.
And some of those are very senior Conservatives.

Labour are delighted she is out and about again - they think her very appearance in a whole load of interviews is hugely helpful to their cause.

And if you are of a sceptical inclination, wondering why or whether she deserves attention, I would say all former prime ministers deserve scrutiny.

And hers is a voice still listened to and influential among her party members, as many Tories privately anticipate losing the election, and consider their future after it.

The former prime minister writes towards the end of the book that "the road to hell is paved with compromise and triangulation."

Image of Papua New Courier's review (by Henry Morris), or click HERE:


Stuart Jeffries says she is “shamelessly unrepentant” and “the extent of her ignorance is astounding” in his Guardian review "Unstoppably self-serving, petulant, and politically jejune:
Excerpts:
“They didn’t seem to understand,” writes Liz Truss on page 250 of this unstoppably self-serving reworking of Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, “that the UK was heading towards an economic cliff and that I was seeking to conduct a handbrake turn to avoid driving off the edge.”...

The then prime minister is livid about how a cabal of Cinos (pronounced “Chinos” – Conservatives in name only) and other blob-adjacent political invertebrates were trying to nobble the week-old mini-budget she devised with her chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng. By means of this reform, a new globally competitive post-Brexit Britain would emerge. This “unchained Britannia” would be unconstrained by planning regulations, free to frack as never before and able to explore the North Sea for oil despite the ululations of virtue-signalling eco-zealots and the rest of the anti-growth wokerati. This would be a Britain where the super-rich were less hamstrung by corporation or inheritance taxes, and in which the 45p income tax rate (what she calls here the “anti-success tax”) would be little more than a bad memory.

What Truss didn’t seem to understand, now as then, is the handbrake had long ago come off and that both she and Kwarteng, like some latter-day approximations of Thelma and Louise, were barrelling towards oblivion. At Birmingham, in the face of objections from fellow Tories and serious market jitters, Kwarteng U-turned on that tax break for the rich. Later, the pair’s whole plan for growth was junked. Why? Truss is keen to tell us it wasn’t her fault. It was the fault of the economic establishment, apparently, whose members include the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, her fellow Conservatives, the IMF and President Biden, not to mention the Office for Budget Responsibility whose “overegged” prognostications of the disastrous impacts hastened speculative panic…

Within days, Truss had fired Kwarteng… “We needed a new chancellor who would steady the ship,” she writes coldly. As for Truss, she knew she was doomed a week later when the man she appointed as Kwarteng’s successor, Jeremy Hunt, told the prime minister that her head was “the price the markets wanted”.

Truss tells us she was known in her first ministerial appointment at the education department as the human hand grenade. Which, with her typical inability to read any given room, she takes as a compliment. After 49 days at No 10, she pulled the pin and blew up her own administration. For that sacrifice, Ms Truss, we salute you.

For all that this is one of the most shamelessly unrepentant, petulant, politically and economically jejune and cliche-ridden books I’ve read, one passage did make me empathise with Truss. It came when, having decided to resign, she gets a phone call from her daughter. Standing in the middle of the school playground, she asks her not to quit. The rest of the book’s tone is typified by the risible hubris of a remark Truss makes at the end of a chapter about her battles with proponents of trans rights as Boris Johnson’s equality minister: “I am not prepared to leave the field until the battle is won.” But this is just folly masquerading as indomitability, a recipe not for victory but for being the last twit standing. In any case, throughout her decade-long career in government Truss has repeatedly done the opposite, scarpering without achieving her stated aims…

“This book is not a traditional political memoir,” she claims. But it is: it’s old school “I was right, you were wrong” in which you’ll find nary a “I’m sorry” or “My bad”. Ten Years to Save the West is at its drollest in its score-settling. Of Nick Clegg she writes: “He would rather be popular than do the right thing. He has now found a much more appropriate home in California and is working for Facebook.”

The book’s big reveal is not so much that Truss can’t say sorry, but rather that she didn’t know what was going on at the very heart of the British economy she sought to revivify. The extent of her ignorance is astounding. I kept writing “How did you not know?” in the margins of her chapters on her premiership. How did she, having served in government for so long, not recognise that she would face bureaucratic inertia or that the Bank of England and the OBR would try to scupper her plans? How, most culpably, did she and Kwarteng not have any idea that, as she puts it, “the UK was sitting on a financial tinderbox” at the very moment the pair tried to enact their revolution?


Image of Private Eye's "Sunday Telegram" review, or click HERE:


My favourite is John Crace's satire,
Digested Read. It opens:
“I was impatient to get going. Plans had been made. I picked up my phone. “ChatGPT. Write me a memoir in the style of an excitable five-year-old on acid.”
Here's the rest:

“We’ve only got 10 years to save the west,” I declared solemnly.

“We’d have had a lot longer than that if you hadn’t become prime minister,” replied my husband, Hugh. My rock, as always.

I was on the way to my audience with the queen, deeply aware of the huge honour I was doing her. There was fog over Aberdeen. Taking no chances, I parachuted into the grounds of Balmoral.

“Good morning, Your Majesty. The Trusster is at your service,” I said.

“We really are scraping the barrel now,” the queen replied. “My first prime minister was Winston. Now it’s come to this.”

I felt overwhelmed by the solemnity of the occasion and will never forget her parting words to me; the last words she ever spoke to a British prime minister. “Don’t forget to close the door behind you.” So typical of her lifetime of service.

Just two days later, I was in the Commons when news reached me that the queen was drawing her last breath. The moment I had thought would never happen was happening. It had never occurred to me that a 96-year-old woman might die. I was overwhelmed with sadness that the queen would never get to see me again. How proud she would have been that I mangled one of the readings at her funeral.

I phoned Buckingham Palace to offer my condolences. I felt a strange camaraderie with the new king. Like him, I was unelected and really had no idea what I was doing. “Why me, why now?” I sobbed, breaking down into floods of tears. Strangely, that was precisely what the rest of the country was thinking.

This isn’t going to be a typical political memoir. Largely because no previous prime minister has screwed up quite so catastrophically and so quickly. So the story of my final days in Downing Street is really that of my whole prime ministerial career. But I don’t regret a thing. I never even wanted to be prime minister which is why I allowed my name to be put forward to become prime minister. Is an editor even reading this drivel before it gets published?

My first ministerial post was in the education department, where I managed to achieve precisely nothing. That was because the coalition government was full of Marxists, such as Nick Clegg, and the civil service acted like an unelected elite lettuce. Woke thinking was very much to the fore, with the emphasis on being nice to foreigners. Meanwhile our schools were turning out children who could barely read or write. People very like me. My next job at the environment department followed a similar pattern. Leftwing net zero diktats against pouring sewage into rivers, banning onshore wind farms, building roads and continuing offshore drilling meant that I again achieved nothing.

In fact, this was the story of almost my entire ministerial career. At the justice department, the bien pensants blocked me from reforming the prisons service. Time and again I was prevented from transporting convicts to Australia. It was this type of group think that reduced my department to inertia. I had had enough of successive, socialist Conservative governments; it was time for a Conservative government.

I achieved more at international trade. Here I negotiated a stunning trade deal with North Macedonia which was worth a staggering 0.00002% growth to GDP over the next 50 years. I had looked the naysayers in the face and had proved them wrong. Largely thanks to me, Brexit was back on track. Here was the bonus I had promised back in 2016 when I had campaigned to keep the UK inside the EU. Not long after, I also landed trade deals with Australia and New Zealand that even my critics had to admit were completely hopeless and would provide no discernible benefits to the UK.

But it was as foreign secretary that I truly excelled. Who can forget my efforts to recolonise the West Indies and east Africa? Or indeed my Instagram account. My efforts at cosplaying Margaret Thatcher riding around in a tank made the front page of the Daily Mail. That showed Russia the UK was not to be taken lightly. Take that, comrade Putin!

All in all, though, my long ministerial career had almost nothing to show for it after the best part of 12 years. So when Boris Johnson resigned unnecessarily, I immediately flew back to the UK from Indonesia, where I was doing nothing, to throw my hat into the ring. Along with other cliches. As Hugh said to me: “We’ve already had three totally useless Tory prime ministers. So I guess another one won’t hurt.”

Why was I standing? I felt compelled to. Destiny called. A last chance to destroy the country. Immediately I activated my leadership campaign. It wouldn’t be easy. Rishi Sunak had had his campaign in place for months and had the support of most of the Conservative MPs who were all closet lefties. But my secret weapon was the Tory party members. They were all just as clinically insane as me.

My leadership launch in Smith Square was almost over before it had begun. I could hear my good friend, Kwasi Kwarteng, making the introductions and calling my name but I was being kept locked out of the room by the communists.

“How do I get in?” I asked Hugh in desperation.
“You could try the door,” he suggested.
“What’s that?”
“That thing with a handle.”

Eventually I fought my way past the Deep State door to give a stunning call to arms. “You can trust me not to deliver,” I said before choosing to exit the room via the first floor window. I wasn’t going to be thwarted by the door again. That’s how determined I was.

The endless hustings were something of a trial. For some reason people expected me to talk in fully formed sentences rather than a valium-fuelled staccato monotone. But I somehow made it through and by the time the Tory members were allowed to vote, I was confident I would win.

“We have no time to lose, Kwasi,” I said, on our first day in Downing Street. “Let’s get some lunch.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Hugh replied. “I am afraid Ocado haven’t delivered. They thought it must be a joke that I changed the address to Downing Street. When I assured them that it was for real, they said they might as well deliver to the old address as we would be bound to be back there soon.”

Downing Street wasn’t the most convivial place to live. For one thing, it was infested with fleas. At first I thought they must have come from Dilyn the dog. But we were eventually able to trace the source to a pair of Boris’s soiled underpants that had been given to him by Nadine Dorries as a Christmas present.

But I wasn’t in No 10 to enjoy myself. There was work to be done. The Tory woke establishment may have completely ruined the country, but my job was to finish off the task. Have I mentioned before that everyone but me and the Daily Telegraph are Chinese spies?

“First off, Kwasi,” I said. ‘You’ve got to promise me you will not consult anyone with any expertise for your mini-budget. Not the OBR or the IMF. No one who might actually know what they know what they are doing.”

“You can trust me, Liz. Only yesterday I slashed the NHS budget by sacking all the doctors and nurses. People need more get-up-and-go spirit to perform open heart surgery on themselves.”

“Great. Next we will get rid of all the judges and civil servants. This is going to be the first moronocracy.”

The mini-budget was a triumph. I was ecstatic. The pound plummeting against the dollar. The first prime minister in history to nearly bankrupt a country within days. Hours later I was swamped with messages from mortgage holders who were so grateful that their monthly payments had almost doubled. Previously they had had so much spare cash that they didn’t know how to spend it. Thank God we didn’t listen to the naysayers. Otherwise we might have heard of liability-driven investments.

Alas, it couldn’t last. I had dared to challenge the establishment orthodoxy that wrecking the economy wasn’t a terribly good idea and was to be punished. Everything began to unravel.

“I’m afraid I’ve got to sack you, Kwasi,” I said.
“Why? It was all your idea.”
“Because it might buy me another three days in Downing St.”
“Who are you going to get instead?”
“Jeremy Hunt.”
“But he knows nothing about economics.”
“Neither do you. But he looks plausible. In any case we agreed we weren’t going to have experts.”
Not long after, the game was up and I went back to the palace.
“Ah,” said the king. “I thought you’d be back here fairly swiftly.”

BUT WE STILL HAVE WORK TO DO. THERE ARE ONLY 10 YEARS TO SAVE THE WEST. HERE’S WHAT WE MUST DO.

1. ELECT ME AS PRIME MINISTER AGAIN.
2. STOP THE COMMIES.
3. WHAT NUMBER COMES AFTER 3?

There, there Liz. It’s time for your afternoon medication. There you go, a nice shot of fentanyl. Back to sleep …
Digested read, digested: IT’S A DISGRACE


“Why me, why now?” is really in the book, as her initial reaction to the Queen's death.

[charlotte · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don’t take political advice from someone whose time in office left them with a severe phobia of lettuces.

[Sally Cohen Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Liz Truss's book is a damning testament to her brief yet catastrophic stint as Prime Minister. In just 49 days, she managed to single-handedly crash the economy, a feat previously unimaginable. Her political legacy? Being outmaneuvered by a lettuce. Reading her account, one wonders if she could even run a bath, let alone a country. It's clear she couldn't save a game, let alone the Western world. Truss's narrative paints a picture of incompetence and chaos, leaving readers questioning how such a figure even entered the political arena. In short, this woman is nothing short of a political calamity.

[ROL · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book deserves more of a review than just "haha she's worse than a lettuce" and it's only natural that the ratings and reviews will reflect a judgement of Liz Truss' premiership rather than of her book.

Having said that, the book isn't particularly good. Pitched as being a memoir-cum-manifesto for the future, the book is very readable but ultimately fails to succeed at being either.

It is as a memoir that the book is most lacking. Truss somehow manages to write a book which reveals almost nothing new, despite being at the centre of the action for ten years; indeed, at some points she appears to be holding off from naming names (such as the purposefully unnamed MP she alleges bullied her Chief Whip over not being invited to Her Majesty's funeral). As a defence of her time in office, another key aim of any memoir, the book also leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair, it would be a tough job for even the best writer and Truss does succeed in some limited ways, such as demonstrating the claustrophobia that comes with the premiership and the effect it clearly had on her. Yet one senses that Truss is more focused on airing grievances against the civil service and Conservative MPs, rather than attempting to explain herself and her government. Not only do these grievances get tiresome (there's only so many times I can read the words "watermelon", "CINO" or "anti-growth"), but they counteract whatever sympathy she manages to build for herself elsewhere.

The book fares better as a manifesto, probably reflecting Truss' self-confessed difficulty with the personal side of politics and preference for the ideological. Here, she does identify some genuine challenges which I think are concerning - the over-reliance on unelected "independent" quangos and the reduction in government capacity to change things compared with, say, the 1980s. However, the solutions she crams into the final chapter offer little more than an incitement towards a "scorched-earth" approach to politics and, far from providing a blueprint for "saving the West", are heavily context-specific to the UK (and at a push the US).

And yet I would still rate the book 2.5/5 stars, not only because of how readable it is and the odd section that genuinely got me chuckling. No, the 2.5 stars (rounded down) are because as a character study of Liz Truss the person, the book is extremely revealing. Her ability to hold grudges and to nurture a grievance against the smallest of things (e.g. presidential motorcades) are the most obvious manifestations, but it is just as important to see her as an ideologue and a natural rebel if we want to recognise just how doomed her premiership was. While probably unintended, it is certainly instructive.

[Shaan Chatterjee-Kassam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unorganised, Unhinged, Barely-Coherent, Self-Absorbed Rantings from an Unimportant former PM

Every line of her book screamed of narcissism, when confronted with the death of the queen, she replies, "Why Me? Why Now?" In her barely-coherent biography she rants about how 10 Downing St. wouldn't be rated well on Airbnb, Dominic Raab left his protein shakes in Chevening House, which also had terrible cell reception, and other nonsense. She avoids taking any responsibility for tanking the British economy, ruining any chance the Tories had of re-election, and turning the PM's office into a international laughing-stock (which she blames on conspiring globalists), however she takes the time to complain that the Prime Minister isn't given a hair and makeup stipend or a private physician.

[Violet · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I disagree with Truss on some of her main stances, I found her book to be enjoyable and informative. She was thorough, honest and fair. I was (and always am) upset to see so many one star ratings, especially from people who are obvious haters and who most likely didn't even bother to read the book. That's called being a troll. I get it. You hate her and everything she stands for. Great. This is a site for people who read books and like to learn. I don't have to like or agree with the former PM to give her book the rating it deserves - However, I felt compelled to bump it up just to counter all the haters. Liberals and conservatives alike would be shocked to find how much more they could learn if they'd put their agendas and prejudices aside and open their fricking minds. It's the only way to improve one's own ideas.

[Clare Russell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t kill the queen
I didn’t trash the economy
I didn’t make the conservatives unelectable for a generation (actually thanks for that Liz)

Not read this and don’t want her to get a penalty in royalties

[Hafen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liz Truss’ memoir, Ten Years to Save the West, lacks concrete identification of problems and fails to offer plausible solutions to the existential threats (it claims) facing Western civilization. Yet, instead of dismissing the memoir with lettuce jokes, it is important to analyze its rhetoric, organization, and presentation of ideas to ensure that such dangerous and disconnected notions do not find a place in public discourse.
2 stars for an interesting read that gives insight into Truss’ brief premiership from September to October 2022, but beyond that, it offers little value. At the very least, it made my nine-hour Flixbus ride more bearable.

The narrative opens with a brisk, matter-of-fact description of the weather during Truss’ appointment with the Queen. The description goes on for pages detailing how “the weather was against” her, how “the fog made [landing] impossible,” and how “the weather frustrated [her] plans as torrential rain poured down.” Two days later, the nation receives the solemn news: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II dies. “Amid profound sadness,” Truss reflects on her role, expressing a sense of questioning as to why she was chosen for this momentous time: “I found myself thinking, Why me? Why now?”

These introductory remarks establish the tone for the rest of the narrative, presenting Truss as a well-meaning, morally upright civil servant controlled by forces outside herself. The use of figures throughout the memoir invokes a sense of an uncontrollable ecological process. The systems and establishments are portrayed as rigid, “ossified” and “static” refusing any intervention or change. It almost sounds like Truss is fighting against windmills. She is, from her perspective, the only conservative in the room (another Quixotic reference) and she had to go through a “stream of bad luck and negativity.” After reading the first chapter, one can anticipate the narrative's trajectory. Each problem or threat identified in the book is shrouded under a mystic veil, rendering everything abstract and intangible.

One of the most striking impressions this memoir left me was how Truss was out of touch with reality. Reading about how she complains about the low “job security” of a prime minister and how low the PM’s salary was as shameless as Truss’ successor, Rishi Sunak, saying he went without “lots of things” as a child growing up, citing Sky TV as an example.

Even after fourteen years of conservative-led government in the UK, Truss still perceives anyone who disagrees with the conservative policies as being “anti-growth” or communist. Her unoriginal and hostile rhetoric towards environmentalists is exemplified in her comparison of them to watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside. And we should note that this rhetoric comes from the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Even fellow conservatives, whom Truss refers to as “CINOs” (conservatives in name only), are criticized for appeasing the “woke brigade.” In that sense, Truss fails to acknowledge that not all policies are inherently ideological and that bipartisan consensus can be reached.

Anyone who opposes her decisions and policies is grouped under acting under “groupthink,” or “the establishment” (that appears 70 times, exactly). However, the distinction between references to “the financial establishment” and “the economic establishment” remains unclear. Truss does not make any meaningful sense of this concept of an imagined “establishment.” Is she accusing the Treasury, the Bank of England, or the IMF? Perhaps all of the above, as these references are occasionally accompanied by mentions of “eco-extremists” and the “anti-growth coalition.” In short, anyone who opposes Truss or conservative ideas is portrayed as a fundamental threat to the Western way of life. One of the most perplexing aspects of the memoir is Truss’ identification of Michel Foucault as a key antagonist. However, her references to Foucault come from a Britannica article on Foucault and postmodernism. Frankly, reading some of Foucault’s actual work would likely require less time than Truss’ premiership.

[Borntolose73 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to read this to experience for myself just how unrepentantly awful this third-rate Thatcher tribute act Is - and Mad Lizzie sure doesn’t disappoint.
Thankfully my library ordered this in for me as neither did I want to part with any money for it or have to don a disguise in order to purchase it from the bargain bin at my local bookstore. I did however want a big old belly laugh at her car crash calamity of a career.
She really does hate China doesn’t she, along with pesky things like regulations to stop capitalism causing further environmental/financial carnage along with such trivialities as human rights and such.
Marvel how she plans her first 100 days as Prime Minister but doesn’t even make it halfway, as the most useless UK government ever even had enough of her after just seven weeks.
But, of course, nothing is ever her fault. Especially the bit during the 49 utterly insane days in which she was somehow allowed to lead the country that she found time to devise her amazing mini-budget - wiping out the UK economy to the tune of over £30billion.
Thank goodness it wasn’t a maxi-budget, eh.
This is what happens when you hand the reins of power over to a delusional right-wing Frankenstein monster vomited out from Tufton Street think tanks.
Ten Years To Save The West? Liz couldn’t save her job within 50 days. However you can save precious time by not reading this utterly self-indulgent memoir of one of the most laughably incompetent, arrogant and clueless politicians of the modern era.
Unless, like me, you delight in scrutinising the stupid, so if you do, I can highly recommend this book.

[Owlseyes]

Maybe she means: only Trump can make us safe and secure.

"the West has been run by the left for too long, and we’ve seen that it’s been a complete disaster."
Liz Truss

"In the annals of British decline, she will be remembered for having been in office just three days when Queen Elizabeth II died and for her plan for an enormous and apparently unfunded tax cut, which she abruptly dropped after a run on the pound."
Tanya Gold
IN: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/op...

https://youtu.be/ONgcSFPUQHA

[Natalie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this out of a desire to challenge my echo chamber. I am the woke, liberal, leftist that Truss rails against throughout this book and after reading this, I'm only more convinced of my opinions.

In terms of positives, this book is relatively well written: it's very readable, and it's well structured. Each chapter focuses on Truss' time in a particular government department, culminating in her (brief) tenure as PM. This made for an engaging read, albeit a frustrated one, and a better insight into how government departments and ministerial positions operate. The only time I felt the slightest hint of sympathy for Truss is when she speaks of the isolating nature of being PM and how confining the position can be.

These few positives aside, this book is rage-inducing. I rolled my eyes at every other sentence. Instead of engaging in a reasoned critique of her opponents and alternative views, she brands all those who disagree with her as alternately anti-growth, a technocrat, or a quango. No depth or support is given to her arguments - she just says it as fact and the reader has to trust her. Jargon and attempted soundbites abound. She speaks positively of Trump and hopes for a second term.

This book is also riddled with hypocrisy - she loathes China and wants the UK to take a firmer stance in support of Taiwan, yet at the same time is incredibly pro-Israel and doesn't acknowledge the devastation that has been unleashed in Palestine over the past 70 years (this book was released before Oct 7 but I've seen no support for Palestinians from her since). It seems that if those committing genocide are willing to work with the UK they get a pass.

Predictably, she opposes the pro-trans movement, seemingly on moral and "common sense" grounds. Likewise she refers to environmental extremism at multiple interludes, denouncing it for being anti-capitalist and symptomatic of how left-wing the world has become. This is where I found myself completely bemused. Labour have also rowed back on environmental pledges so the environment is clearly not a priority among the political left (well as left wing as labour in its current iteration can be considered). Truss and other politicians prize economic growth above all else, but fail to realise that there's no point having a booming economy if the world is dead.

Truss does not back down from her mini budget. She blames the economic institutions for refusing to deviate from the prevailing orthodoxy. Personally, if a bunch of experts are telling me my plan is a bad idea and I am the only one disagreeing, I might start to reconsider my position or seek further views. She refers regularly to conservative majorities among the public, failing to admit these are simple majorities - Brexit being the prime example where the result was almost 50/50.

She concludes with 6 lessons for conservatives if they are to restore sense. These lessons are vague and amount to be right wing and fight the "enemy".

I know this book was not intended for someone like me but I tried to read it with an open mind. Suffice it to say, my mind was firmly shut by the end.

[lyndon edwards · Rating 1 out of 5]

Excuse for failure

This would have been a more appropriate title for this book. It would seem that in every role Ms Truss took on, she failed to deliver and it was always someone else’s fault. I’m surprised she didn’t say that the late Queen timed her death to stop the Truss experiment. Sadly not possible to give a minus * rating

[Matthew Ainsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hope lessons are learned

Liz points out how self-interested unelected officials are stifling our competitiveness and ability to confront totalitarian regimes, needed now more than ever, and Liz points out how difficult it is to change the system, I hope this gets tackled. It may be that future events highlight the need for change.

[Jamad · Rating 1 out of 5]

As John Crace said “A five year old on acid”. He wrote it better than I ever could so read his full review here.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to hear what Truss had to say after her reign as PM, especially after such criticism from leftists and people in her party, I gathered many hadn't even read her book.

While much of the political talk is a bit boring (I thought it would be) she does make a lot of good points. I don't agree with all what she says but she's the only conservative I have any respect for. Much of the Conservatives are not conservative or patriotic at all and Liz knows this.
The system itself is very corrupt and laden with red tape and leftist lawyers doing their utmost to keep things as they are.

A tough read at times but it is worth it.

⭐⭐⭐1/2 Stars.

[Rupert Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was much better than I was expecting it to be.
As the author herself writes in the introduction "This book is not a traditional political memoir I do not see it as simply a chance to tell the detailed inside story of my time in government and justify every decision I made while I was there."
Instead this is a take on her political views, illustrated by anecdotes and case studies from her time in government plus some often moving personal events. Along the way we get up close and personal to some of the dirty political backstabbing that goes on in politics and among the institutions that hold power in our governmental structure, and very unedifying it is too. We also learn something of the characters of people who have been in the news headlines - and in places this is done through telling incidents and behaviours rather than a direct statement which makes it more impactful.
Oh - and she does manage [or try] to justify some of her decisions.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It is well written and quite revealing. That said, it is one for people interested in politics and is not a lightweight holiday read.

[Mythili · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean, what is there to say about this book? It manages to be disappointing even for what it is, because I was really hoping to read lots of gossipy bits about the Tory part but instead it's like, 15% gossip and 85% City on a Hill-type grandstanding by someone who genuinely believes in the saving power of trickle down economics. It's not much fun to try and argue with someone like that, and it's even less fun to read her book. If you must, at least have someone next to you who can chortle at your frequent, exasperated chuffs.

Aka, if you read this book and no one knows about it, did you even read it??

Truss has the eyes of a believer, and luckily you know that from the cover itself. You're not going to get any admission of mistakes or missteps. Everything that happened to her can be blamed on (take your pick) Labour, the media, backstabbers, the spineless, bad luck, ill timing, or any other type of finger-pointed-at-rationale. It's fascinating to see the inside machinations of someone whose greatest skill appears to be a profound lack of self awareness. If anything, try to emulate this quality of hers next time you walk into your job. I imagine it might work somewhat well, even away from Whitehall.

Some bits--gripping. Minute by minute-ish recap of her ouster I could have read in much greater detail. Whining about China, I could take or leave (she isn't wrong about the threat that China poses to the resilience of the global supply chain, but also she blithely skips over neocon responsibility for this situation in the first place). Whingeing about COVID...needs to be read to be believed. But in general, whenever the book flips over to "From the Desk of Liz" I skipped ahead to the next chapter, eager to see what contextual setting she'd pull out for her ongoing war against everyone.

[Si Haithwaite · Rating 2 out of 5]

At times the rhetoric was a real struggle to get through, repetition of words and phrases got painful too (I never want to read the word “Quango” again).

It had the feel of a University essay sometimes. That being said, I was expecting to disagree whole heartedly with everything and that wasn’t the case.

Truss has some interesting arguments but they are too few and fleeting and stacked back to back with horrible points of view that value hypothetical economic miracle cures over human life. Amidst all of this is a shocking inability to find any serious flaw in her own decision making.

All in all the book is a very one-sided, tedious exercise in rewriting very recent history.

Spoiler alert, it fails.

[Joseph McHale · Rating 1 out of 5]

i mean right her political memoir side of it was interesting. however it came across as a I’ve done everything and no one’s helped and it’s all gone wrong even though it would’ve never worked. I read it with an unbiased view but she made it so most readers grew to hate her after the first chapter. in a way i’m glad i read it, i just know never to read it again now. Liz do another one just without the ego trip x

[Joshua Weatherall · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't read it and neither should you.

[Freddie Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Allow me to make the following introductory declaration: I possess no personal or political animosity towards Liz Truss, and in fact am a great believer in her policies and admire her attempt at challenging the anti-growth orthodoxy within the British government and the economic establishment. That being said... I have emerged somewhat disappointed with what will likely be Truss' last credible mark on the political scene. Those expecting a remotely conventional political memoir, discussing a life before politics (subjective use of the word), a fledgling ministerial career, personal anecdotes, and a solemn reflection upon one's career, will be left scratching their heads at this repetitive and declarative statement of values. Truss has evidently had a fascinating life, not just limited by the claim of shortest-serving Prime Minister, but a lengthy ministerial career spanning over a decade, peppered with an unconventional upbringing and a stint as a youthful and optimistic LibDem, perfect soil in which a knockout memoir could grow. However... this is not the case. Beginning our journey in the middle of her first government appointment in the Education Department, Truss never really looks back on her life or her decisions leading up to this appointment (and dubiously beyond it), seemingly asking us to believe she was born in government and expected to die in government. From here, her book seems to follow a simple pattern: explain a problem in need of fixing, give the ideological take, and attribute blame for her failure to fix it on one of three shadowy evils: the Civil Service, Tory wets, or institutional leftism. While I personally acknowledge great problems with each of those three culprits, a memoir is a place for consideration and reconciliation with one's own career and actions, not 350 pages of whining over past roadblocks. Truss also fails to pen a structured and constructive text, with each chapter (and even paragraph) instead seemingly independent and dealing with a separate issue to its predecessor or successor, and having fallen into a consistency of short, indescriptive, and inconclusive sentences, does not frequently address problems raised to any degree of substance. So in all, although a welcome reassertion of conservative values and principles, I suggest that Ten Years to Save the West could easily have been condensed into a 10-page report to precede a thoughtful memoir from one of the key players of the 2010–2022 governments, which I hope will be published once the political and mental dust has settled, and Truss has come to terms with her whirlwind ride of 49 days in No.10.

[Zachary Barker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have finished reading “Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the only conservative in the room” by Liz Truss.

Liz Truss is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

“We have Ten Years to Save the West. We Must Start now”.
Liz Truss.

One thing I have come to understand is that characters like Liz Truss are honest in their own way. Right from the start she promised at the start of her book that what I would read wouldn’t be a typical political memoir. She was right about that.

This book is half a political memoir and half a call for political action, the type of which means the word “compromise” is seen as a dirty word. As far as the author is concerned one cannot compromise what is true, which has to be what the believe in.

Anger and resentment is so present in the book, I can almost feel it radiating out of the ink. The case that Liz Truss makes is that while she made some minor mistakes in implementation, what she tried to do was correct, justified but ultimately fatally undermined by a divided Conservative party and a manipulative “establishment”.

Who are the “establishment”? The answer to that question can vary depending on whose political viewpoint you are calling on. For Liz Truss it is pretty much the entire British administrative state and the administrative state in most Western democracies, including the US. This interpretation of political reality is especially relevant to her version of events with the mini-budget debacle.

In her telling of the mini-budget saga, market volatility in the US helped undermine the pound around the same time as the release of the mini-budget. Simultaneously, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) and Treasury officials undermined this mini-budget by offering doom laden projections of how it would increase public debt. Liz Truss cast doubt on any institutions said to be “independent” but especially, the OBR, she cites it and the Treasury being populated by staff who are essentially ideologically biased against ideas guided by supply sided economics.

How much of this do I buy into? It is difficult to say, because the author has the convincing confidence of an extremist. Even when what she says on one page seems to contradict or not sit well with another. For instance, I found it bizarre how she used stronger language to denounce the European Union than she did Iran and China. She literally said that her attitude when negotiating with our allies was “the only thing they understand is pain”. Somewhat undermining the chapter which featured the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, she said that “the UK’s decision to leave was always going to be seen as an act of war by the EU”. Perhaps Ukrainians, who are also pushing for EU membership, are better qualified to show us what actual acts of war look like?

In the interests of full disclosure, it is safe to say that myself and the author’s political views are very different. Although, I will admit with the exception of our views on the EU there was a surprising amount of crossover on foreign policy and defence matters (I admit to being quite centre right on both areas). It is also hard to keep level-headed when my mortgage is still suffering from the ripple effects of the mini-budget.

This book’s main aims are basically a call for a particular vision of conservative purity which leans towards right wing libertarianism. It is by no means a consistent vision either. I do not know if Liz Truss fully understands the ideological inconsistency in backing Trump. Liz Truss wants to expand free trade. Trump represents a anti-free trade part of the right in which all international trade is basically either a sign of weakness or a zero sum game in which his country is bound to lose.

The chapter on “Wokery”? That was probably the lowest point out of a challenging read. It is basically a wholesale denunciation of liberal social attitudes mixed with J.K Rowling style transphobia.

Like many extremists and populists in contemporary politics, one can find some truth in what Liz Truss says if we look close enough. The No 10 operation is a shambles. Running a modern government out of a crumbling Georgian house built by a con man (the irony is strong in that building). No 10 should have a more professional operation complete with a dedicated medical team. It is effectively the presidency of this country, in form if not in title, so it needs to be resourced as such. Myself and the author both have concerns about the functioning of the Civil Service too, which we could probably find some common ground on, if she didn’t hate compromise so much.

The author argues for more democratic accountability by giving elected politicians more power. This is to counter balance what she terms the “administrative state”. I found this most problematic when she was talking about judicial reform, where she seemed to be arguing for a more politically directed judiciary in the US style. Frankly I can think of little worse, apart from the situation in Hungary or China with effectively government controlled judiciaries. She talks about her contact with the Conservative Party’s grassroots members, making her more convinced that government needs to be on the side of ordinary people. However, she leaves aside the glaring fact that Conservative Party members are a minority of the British population and are not representative demographically of them. She also seems to give short shrift to Human Rights, the post-war conception of which was supported by her party. Politicians like her have a worrying tendency to dismiss this conception of Human Rights as outdated, when the very idea of them is to stand the test of times, especially when there is instability.

Liz Truss openly denounces compromise, domestic or international; “The road to hell is paved with compromise and triangulation”. But the truth is one often has to compromise to grow or overcome obstacles. Not all problems can be tackled with her trademark “full frontal” approach or should be. Obviously, this depends on what you may be compromising. I compromised by reading this book. If I took a Liz Truss’ attitude I would never have picked it up. I would still be the Revolutionary Socialist I saw myself as nearly 20 years ago. But I have learned a lot since then. It depends on why one is engaging in compromise, because the difference matters. Is one compromising to appease someone else because they feel coerced or aren’t sure of their position? Are they compromising just to get ahead? Or are they compromising because they are honestly learning a new truth that challenges what they believe in? I am not sure if Liz Truss is able to distinguish between any of them. Liz Truss equates compromise with being weak. I would say it is context sensitive. But then one would be pressed to find anything “sensitive” in this book.

I compromised and read this book. Now I am returning it to the library.

[John Yelverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one part autobiography and one part manifesto with the former Prime Minister grinding plenty of axes which resulted in the briefest tenure in British history. Whereas there's nothing inherently wrong with what she says, it's obvious that she has none of the political savvy to achieve her goals.

[Don Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst I disagree with literally everything Liz Truss has to say, I found this book easy to read, concise in its messaging and ultimately a real eye opener into how the right view the left, which is of course everyone else.

The most enlightening aspect in my opinion was the exposure of the many inherent contradictions within her and other conservatives worldview. A perfect example - Throughout the book, Liz repeatedly calls for extensive deregulation to drive growth, however she also blames a lack of regulation of Liability-driven Instruments as the key driver of the market shock that ultimately caused her mini-budget to be received so poorly.

[Diana Cheal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course this book will be slated, but by people who haven’t read it. I was sceptical when it came out but it’s reviewed by some good writers and I was pleasantly surprised by how well Truss writes. It’s more an essay and structured with clear arguments. It’s a fascinating insight into a system that isn’t working, and what she believes needs to be done to fix it. It again, highlights how unwieldy the Civil service has become and how hard therefore it is to make decisions. I would highly recommend to everyone. Even if you think she’s the most awful person for her economic policies, read this. It gives you the other side, whereas all we have seen is what’s in the media. And I always believe if you are to form an opinion you should read and grasp both sides of the argument (whether you agree or not).

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/ten-years-to-save-the-west-by-liz-truss/

The format of the book is a little unusual. The very first chapter is about her meeting with the Queen, and the Queen’s death two days later. Elizabeth II’s last words to Truss were “Pace yourself.” “Perhaps I should have listened”, she reflects, in a rare moment of self-examination.

The chapters on her political career in government, which form the meat of the book, are sandwiched between incoherent political rallying calls for Conservatives to get their act together and defeat the Left at home and China abroad. The first of Matthew Parris’s allegations, lack of intellectual depth, is amply borne out by these more polemical sections. One is reminded of the old saying that while the problem with liberals is that they only read liberal literature, the problem with conservatives is that they read no literature at all. It’s not that she doesn’t really engage with the arguments made by her opponents; she doesn’t even really engage with the arguments of those she thinks she agrees with.

Her account of her time as a minister under Cameron, May and Johnson (for all of whom she retains a certain loyal affection and sympathy) is surprisingly dull, because she didn’t achieve very much and wants to blame other people for that. She is clearly, as Parris points out, unable to communicate clearly outside her own office, and fails to put the hours in behind the scenes to build up what we in our business would call a stakeholder coalition. She seems to believe that having been put in charge is sufficient for everyone to start doing what she wants them to do. In real life, this is never the case, even in the most autocratic power structures.

She writes of one night that she lay awake worrying about a prison officer, injured in a riot, but apart from that, there is a surprising lack of reference to the human dimension of her policies. There are almost no personal glimpses of colleagues and few of her family. One doesn’t get much sense of Truss as a social animal from her own account. Maybe she just isn’t; but for me that’s one of the crucial political skills.

And these things all collide when tragedy strikes and she becomes prime minister. She explains at great length how the economic plans that she and Kwasi Kwarteng proposed weren’t really all that radical, but simply misunderstood and subjected to unfair criticism; but I think even sympathetic readers (which I am not) will be lost by her depiction of a grand Left Woke conspiracy to kill growth which includes the Bank of England and the financial markets. I was irresistibly reminded of the French presidential election debate in 2012, when the challenger François Hollande killed incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy’s attempt to fight back with the telling line, “Ce n’est jamais de votre faute!” – “It’s never your fault!” In Truss’s world, it’s never her fault either.

In summary, this is a not very good book written by a person who was completely unsuited to the job which she had so ruthlessly pursued. It is clearly intended for the American right-wing conference circuit market – there are many explanations of basic British political concepts for the American reader, and also the annoying and frequent use of “math” rather than “maths”. You can skip it in good conscience; you haven’t missed anything.

[Rob Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Truss Doctrine: A Delusional Diatribe

Liz Truss's memoir, "Ten Years to Save the West," is a blatant and shameless attempt to launch her career as a political figure across the United States. From the outset, it becomes glaringly apparent that this book is a desperate attempt to pass the buck and absolve herself of any responsibility for her catastrophic 49-day premiership in the UK – a tenure marked by economic turmoil, plummeting approval ratings, and a rapid loss of credibility.

Rather than offering insightful reflections or genuine introspection, Truss's narrative is a delusional diatribe, replete with finger-pointing and excuses. She seemingly blames everyone and everything – the media, her colleagues, the administrative state – for her utter failure to implement meaningful economic reforms. "I assumed people understood what I was trying to do," she writes, displaying a stunning lack of self-awareness and an inability to accept responsibility for the chaos she unleashed.

Truss's complaints about the difficulties of making hair appointments and convincing Ocado that her Downing Street delivery address wasn't a hoax are not merely humorous anecdotes; they are emblematic of her detachment from reality and the profound disconnect between her and the struggles faced by ordinary Britons. While she fretted over trivial inconveniences, the nation grappled with soaring inflation, a cost-of-living crisis, and the fallout from her disastrous economic policies.

The book itself is abysmal, offering little in the way of substantive content or valuable insights. Indeed, one could argue that the ink used to print this tome was utterly wasted, as the pages are filled with self-serving drivel that does nothing to enhance our understanding of the current state of British politics. Truss's attempts to paint herself as a serious thinker in a frivolous political world are laughable, given the sheer silliness and ineptitude that characterized her brief tenure as Prime Minister.

However, if there is one redeeming aspect to this literary travesty, it is the unintentional insight it provides into the utter shambles that is the acting UK government. Truss's memoir serves as a damning indictment of the Conservative Party and the poor standard of leadership currently in power within the nation. Her inability to acknowledge her own failings and her eagerness to shift blame onto others is a microcosm of the party's broader dysfunction.

As a wave of memoirs from Conservative MPs and ex-MPs hits the shelves, it becomes increasingly evident that the party is in a state of disarray, populated by individuals more concerned with securing their own legacies and political futures than with effectively governing the country. Truss's book is a prime example of this self-serving mindset, sacrificing honesty and accountability on the altar of personal ambition.

In the end, "The Truss Doctrine" is a delusional rant, a pitiful attempt to rewrite history and salvage what little remains of Truss's tarnished reputation. It is a disservice to the British public, who deserve better than this exercise in futility masquerading as a political memoir. If you're seeking insight into the inner workings of the UK government, this book will leave you sorely disappointed – and questioning the competence of those entrusted with the nation's leadership.

[William Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

The question is centrally important: Can the west be saved? Two broad and overlapping global trends will make reversing the free-fall harder as the twenty-first century marches on. First, technology is getting more sophisticated—at a dizzying pace. The positives are huge. The internet democratizes education. Streaming innovations like Netflix enrich entertainment. New products like self-driving cars revolutionize transportation. Highly sophisticated research dramatically improves medicine. Pioneering technologies substantially broaden the distribution of necessities like food and clothing.

But the negatives are unnerving. Online innovations like deep fakes compound the internet’s harms. Poor cybersecurity undermines the safety of personal data and the control of computerized systems. Popular applications like Chinese-owned TikTok give rival governments control over Americans’ private information. Artificial intelligence jeopardizes humanity in ways neither clear nor certain. Industrial innovations like fracking plunder the environment. Battlefield inventions like drones change the face of warfare.

Second, international affairs are getting more complicated. It took America, for example, a full two centuries to achieve global hegemony—and merely two decades to lose it. As former United States CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a September 2023 Foreign Affairs essay The Dysfunctional Superpower, geopolitical threats to America are multiplying: “The United States finds itself in a uniquely treacherous position: facing aggressive adversaries with a propensity to miscalculate yet incapable of mustering the unity and strength necessary to dissuade them.”

But it’s not just the West's biggest rivals that matter. Within a few decades it’s likely that even small countries will have military capacities that in key respects exceed those of the superpowers today. The worst-case scenario arising from West's dysfunction that Truss outlines isn’t domestic mismanagement; it’s foreign policy miscalculation.

William Cooper is the author of How America Works … And Why It Doesn’t.

[Dave McBain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eye gougingly awful book that is curiously compelling. The contradictions start within 2 pages and continue throughout the book - she thinks we have nothing to learn from the Chinese, but their education system is so much better than ours, she wants small government, but more staff in every department she has worked in - I could go on, but don't want to put up a spoiler filled summary.

It really does get you into the mind of someone who is full of themselves but blissfully unaware of how out of touch she might be - for example in one anecdote she willingly took part in a publicity stunt riding on a tank, but could not get to grips with why the press focus on the publicity stunt rather than the fairly dull speech she gave. Stories like this are found throughout the book and add unintentional comedy to the narrative, but sometimes you wonder if she ever had a conversation with anyone with even mildly different political views as the narrative is quite obsessive on some themes which clearly do not resonate with many.

The book is interesting, compelling but does make the jaw drop every few pages and the overriding theme is a lack of empathy with almost anyone who dares to have even a mildly different outlook on politics.