If Boris Johnson were to vanish tomorrow, who should replace him? The American pollster Frank Luntz asked this of about 200 people at The Spectator’s live podcast last week, and the answer was Liz Truss. This took me by surprise – I’d have said Rishi Sunak – but there’s no doubting the Lizmania that was in the air in Manchester.
The new Foreign Secretary was pulling in the crowds, flirting with the right-wing think tanks (it’s time for her to be ‘reinfected with sound ideas’ she told them) posing for selfies and – later, in the nightclubs – dancing with her army of admirers. Her events were the ones with the biggest queues on the way in and the biggest smiles on the way out.
She first topped the ConservativeHome poll of best-performing ministers in January so this Lizmania is not new. I wrote about all of this peculiar phenomenon for my Daily Telegraph column and I discuss it with James and Katy on today’s edition of Coffee House Shots.
There’s no doubting the Lizmania that was in the air in Manchester
Tory members like power and follow anyone who brings it (as Johnson certainly has, with his Red Wall appeal).
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