Asking Liz Truss for advice on how to make conservatism popular seems as wise as consulting Paula Vennells on how best to treat your employees. That hasn’t stopped the ex-PM from giving her blessing to the new Popular Conservatism group. But at least one of her fellow PopCons might suggest it isn’t their former leader that the Tories should look to for salvation, but across the Atlantic.
Recently selected for the seat of Epsom and Ewell, Mhairi Fraser is a City lawyer who has dabbled in Donald Trump fangirling. She travelled to America to see the ex-president win in 2016 because she had ‘never been as excited’ about a politician. Fraser claimed she found Trump’s style ‘incredibly refreshing’, didn’t see him as sexist or racist, and agreed Russia wasn’t the West’s ‘natural enemy’.
There is clearly a chunk of the Tory right that is sweet on the ex-president
Blessed with the hindsight of four years of the Trump White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the need to win Surrey’s mild-mannered voters, Fraser has rowed back on her earlier enthusiasm for all things the Donald.
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