Liz Truss Day comes around earlier each year

It seems to come round earlier every year – the moment in Budget week where Liz Truss pops up to make it all about her!

Following her disastrous mini-budget of 2022, which tanked the economy, triggered a domestic financial crisis and caused Truss to overtake George Canning as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, the former Tory leader has taken to popping up each year to offer the nation her wise counsel.

Last year, in the week Jeremy Hunt delivered his Budget, Truss’ Growth Commission think tank published its own rival version in a bid to challenge so-called ‘Treasury orthodoxy’ (the sort of orthodoxy which has historically tended to avoid £45bn of unfunded tax cuts for the rich).

Now, in a week Rachel Reeves’ first Budget coincided with the dying days of the Conservative leadership campaign, Truss has taken to the media again – to urge her party not to rule out doing a deal with Reform UK.

“I was always a supporter of joining up with Nigel Farage prior to the election,” Truss tells the Daily Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast. “I think that Reform is able to target voters that Conservatives may not be able to target.”

Truss’ sage advice is unlikely to be taken on board by whoever takes the Tory crown this weekend – both contenders have ruled out working with Farage, with Kemi Badenoch saying the Reform leadership are not “real conservatives” or “serious people” and Bobby Jenrick wanting to put the party “out of business”.

Still, at least she won’t be making her arguments from the Commons chamber. Truss also tells the podcast she had “no plans” to return to Parliament – something that she seems to think is her choice to make, rather than, say, the voters of South West Norfolk who swung 25.8% against her in July, handing a previously rock-solid safe seat to Labour.

(The flurry of publicity, incidentally, may not be unconnected to the paperback version of Truss’ widely pilloried Ten Years to Save the West, which is published on November 12.)