We’re being asked to credit Liz Truss with a lot of unlikely things now that’s she almost certainly on course for No. 10 – that she’s a snazzy, relaxed media performer; that she can solve the eruption of problems caused by decades of cross-party can-kicking in a few weeks; that she has Churchillian resolve and Thatcherite implacability. But just recently a new claim is surfacing, very much not coming from her ‘people’, which is the hardest to swallow of all – that she is a fascist.
Of course, the boggle-eyed have said this about pretty much every Conservative leader – pretty much every Conservative – in living memory, but I’ve noticed in recent years how this silly slur has bubbled its way from up the student union bar and into the mainstream. The weekend just gone dished up three choice examples.
Newsreader Dan Walker reacted to a viral clip of Truss having a passing chuckle at the BBC during the hustings hosted by Alastair Stewart on GB News, by saying
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