The reason Liz Truss is selling her book harder than any of her PM predecessors

On a trip to New York in September 2019 while international trade secretary, Liz Truss posed next to a Mini under the Brooklyn Bridge to promote British car-making.

Now, the shortest ever serving prime minister is hawking something different across the pond: her credentials as a leader of the global conservative fightback.

While Ms Truss has been on a UK media blitz to promote her new memoir, many believe her real target is to grow her influence in US right-wing circles.

She has used the publicity campaign for Ten Years to Save the West to endorse Donald Trump; warned in an article for The Wall Street Journal that the “deep state” is conspiring to block his bid for re-election; and appeared on the right-wing Fox News.

Her repeated claims that the “liberal establishment” was responsible for ending her 49-day stint in Downing Street appeals to many of the former president’s supporters, one insider said. “She is seen as an influential figure whose agenda chimes with Trump.”

Ms Truss will launch the book at a Washington DC event next week hosted by the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation. The US version of Ten Years carries a different subtitle, “Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism, and the Liberal Establishment”, with the jacket including an endorsement from right-wing senator Ted Cruz.

It is likely that Truss will be in greater demand on the US speech circuit after the book is published. Last October, she received £15,834 from The Heritage Foundation for a speaking engagement.

And as i revealed last month, Ms Truss registered a £19,541 expense for flights and accommodation paid for by the Green Dragon Coalition to attend its “small gathering” in February of “some of the most influential conservative thinkers and politicians in America”.

The event came weeks before Truss spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.

Her potential earnings from speaking engagements are certainly more than her initial advance for the book. Biteback, her UK publisher, secured the rights to Ms Truss’s account for a mere £1,512.88 – just 0.29 per cent of the £510,000 deal Boris Johnson was paid by HarperCollins for his (still unpublished) Downing Street memoir.

She got a slightly more generous payday in the US, receiving £6,161,40 from Regnery, which styles itself as “America’s leading publisher of conservative books”.

However, i understands that Ms Truss is due to receive further payments from publishers, and is relying on royalty payments to make any serious money from the book.

Liz Truss spoke at the pro-Trump US Conservative Political Action Conference in February (Photo: PA)

The early signs are positive, even if some of the reviews are not. Biteback, which specialises in political publishing and is ultimately owned by pollster and former Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, has already made back its money after the book entered Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers list following its release on Tuesday.

An insider said: “She could have got a bigger advance from another publisher – Theresa May got £63,000 for a much duller book – but she is comfortable with the politics at Regnery and Biteback.”

The book’s gossipy asides have impressed some Westminster watchers. The book is scattered with revealing anecdotes, including her conversations with the late Queen and revelations about Downing Street’s flea-infested flat.

Ms Truss’s office said she did not use a ghostwriter, penning the book herself. But insiders believe Jonathan Isaby, Truss’s chief media adviser and a former political journalist, helped to add some “rhetorical flourishes” to give the narrative wider appeal.

Ms Truss’s media blitz – which has included extended interviews with LBC, the BBC and GB News – has left some unimpressed. “She comes across like an Apprentice candidate desperately trying to win a selling task to escape the boardroom,” sniffed one Westminster figure.

Yet the former prime minister has willingly thrown herself into the publicity campaign. “When you’ve written the book, you want people to read it, so you need to sell it,” said a Truss ally.