A world on the brink. Regime change in Venezuela. Greenland under threat from Donald Trump. Shadow fleet tanker seized by the US and the Brits in the North Atlantic. The Europeans battling to keep America onside in any Ukraine peace deal. A woman gunned down by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
So thank God that some things never change. Be grateful we still have Liz Truss. The UK’s lone fixed point. Our very own guilty secret. The prime minister we all try our best to forget we ever had, if only Liz would let us. But Truss is like that Japanese soldier who only realised the second world war was over in 1974. For Liz, global events mean nothing. She will keep fighting the Great Betrayal of 2022 for as long as she has breath. It’s all that gives her life meaning.
Shortly before Christmas, Radon Liz decided to launch her own ultra-low-budget YouTube TV and podcast show. No expense incurred. Now, it’s possible there are some who have watched the eight subsequent shows – Liz is a role model for masochists and crackpots – but there is no need for anyone else to bother. Unless, like me, you choose to drop in out of curiosity. To check that it’s as laughably deranged as you remember. And it is. Because each episode is essentially the same. Liz insisting she was the best prime minister the country ever had and that she was brought down by Dark Forces.
Perhaps you can best judge a show by the quality of its guests. You would have thought a former prime minister would have access to some of the world’s best. A time to call in favours. Maybe not Trump – he’s a wee bit preoccupied with imperialist adventures – but someone close to him. Marco Rubio or Pete Hegseth. Surely they are mad enough? Apparently not.
Then there were all those Tory politicians who couldn’t get enough of Lizzy three and a half years ago. Surely some of them would do her a favour. How about Kemi? Surely she could spare an hour to tell the world how much she admired the mini budget. But no. Not a single former colleague has stepped forward. Not even Chris Philp, who would do anything for attention. He’s let it be known he’s busy for the foreseeable future.
So that has left Lizzy to scrape the barrel with an array of conspiracy theorists and rightwing columnists who are just as desperate for attention as she is. Though it’s possible some are just coming along for a £200 paycheck and the laughs. And yet … imagine how many contacts Truss must have burned through in little more than a month for her to scrape the barrel with the mephitic Dan Wootton. The former showbiz editor of the Sun, famed for exclusives on how Prince Harry wore socks that didn’t match and why this meant the end of the Royal Family as we know it, turned sacked GB News gobshite.
Still, beggars can’t be choosers. So Liz began her “Podcast Extra Special” – the one no one had asked for – by reminding everyone she had been forced to resign, not for crashing the economy and being generally the most useless prime minister the country had ever had, but by the Bank of England and the Deep State, and welcoming Desperate Dan on to the show as one of the most brilliant political minds left in the country.
Dan was a giant of independent journalism, Lizzy told us. One of the few people who could see the world as it really was. Desperate Dan couldn’t help but modestly agree. His defenestration from GB News was solely due to him calling out the mainstream media every night. There was only so much truth the channel could bear.
Other versions are available. Everyone else remembers Wootton being sacked by MailOnline and who left after being suspended by GB News for laughing at foul comments on air made by Laurence Fox about a female journalist and then doing everything he could to try to save his job. But for Liz and Dan, he will always be a champion of free speech. Someone who walked away because it was the right thing to do. Reality is not their strong point.
Having established his credentials as one of the foremost thinkers of his generation, Dan began what turned out to be a 20-minute rant. He had had unique access to the machinery of state. He was the Ultimate Westminster Insider, not some halfwit on the make.
You could trust Dan to tell it like it was. Lizzy had indeed been brought down by the Deep State and the “Snivel” Service – such a way with words. The same people who had brought down Boris Johnson. All those stories about Partygate and Boris’s pathological inability to not tell lies were just made up. Liz and Boris should have been the saviours of our country. Instead they have been hung out to dry. Truss could only agree. She had been betrayed.
“This is why millions of people are turning to independent shows like this one,” said Dan. At the last count, just 2,000 had bothered to tune into this particular show. But small beginnings and all that. There’s plenty of time for the audience to grow. The awards for Best Unintentional Comedy Series should come flooding in. Desperate Dan went on to list the real enemies of the people. Sky’s Beth Rigby. ITV’s Robert Peston. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. They should all be locked up. How dare they go out and report the news! Journalism was no longer a profession. It was a racket.
Wootton went on to say how the biggest story in global history – Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally – had had almost no coverage in the mainstream media. But he, Dan, had recorded it all on his phone and it had been amazing. X was amazing. No mention of how it was used to create deepfake porn.
“We are incorruptible,” Desperate Dan declared. Deranged and deluded, more like. It was hard to work out who was the more stupid. Dan, Liz or the Lettuce. Time for Lizzy to wrap things up. There we had it, she said. Proof that she had been ousted by the Deep State. She was the once and future prime minister. A queen in waiting. So do tune in again next time. But only if you really hate yourself.
