US right says Truss’s impact will be limited as venue declines to host book tour

WASHINGTON, DC – “Can a Maga gal with a British accent make it big in the USA?” pondered one seasoned Washington observer this week, considering the outlook for Liz Truss and the book tour bringing her to America. It’s an open question.

Her memoir went on sale here on Tuesday, and she is preparing for relentless efforts to promote it, especially among dyed-in-the-wool “Make America Great Again” supporters of former President Donald Trump who increasingly view her as a fellow traveller.

But in portraying herself as Trumpian to the core, she has alienated Republican moderates who have no plans to help her flog books over the next week. i understands that one prominent, moderate Republican think-tank declined Truss’s request to make an appearance at the venue.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former rival in the race for the party’s nomination, is also notably absent in the hullabaloo over the book. Times have changed since June 2022, when the former US ambassador to the UN raced to London to secure a photo-op with Truss, sensing that they were both on track to become leaders of their respective nations.

Might Trump warm to Truss, and invite her to speak at the Republican party’s nominating convention in Milwaukee in July?

Dr Shea Bradley-Farrell, president of the Counterpoint Institute, a non-profit that seeks to amplify conservative voices in America’s foreign policy debate, is dubious, saying Truss’s utility to the Trump campaign will be limited.

“Nigel Farage has much more name recognition in America than she does,” she tells i.

John Gizzi, chief political columnist for right-leaning Newsmax TV and a veteran of America’s convention scene, believes that Truss will learn more from the US than it will learn from her.

“Liz Truss smells what the Maga movement is in the United States and will try to follow it, perhaps sensing that it may come to Britain one day,” he tells i. “There’ll be some interest [in the book] because of who she is, but as for what she has to say, I suspect a lot of American readers, particularly from the Maga faction, have heard it all before in different tones and by American authors.”

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He concedes that Truss has a short-term opportunity to generate some financial returns in the US. “We’ve seen Boris Johnson getting five-figure honorariums for lectures and book signings,” he says. But he thinks Truss, who secured just 0.29 per cent of Johnson’s book advance for her memoir in the UK, will also struggle in the US to make a full time career lecturing or appearing on TV. “After all,” he observes, “we’re talking about someone who is barely remembered at this point.”

Over the past few months, Truss has sought to persuade Americans that she should be remembered for more than just her failure to secure a political lifespan longer than that of a lettuce. Sadly for Truss, many Americans remember the lettuce but not the former Prime Minister.

Her quest to turn that around begins in DC next Monday. The “formal launch” of her book in the US market takes place at the Heritage Foundation, long considered intellectual ground zero for America’s conservative movement.

The foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, will introduce her, and has been talking up the memoir in recent weeks. Calling her a “rare figure in the political arena today”, Roberts says the former PM is “a genuine leader of principle and conviction who is willing to stand up and fight for policies that actually advance freedom”. He says her message “should be heeded on Capitol Hill and in the White House”.

In the Biden White House, there’s not much chance of that. (“I feel that Joe Biden needs to be kicked out of the White House. I think that is vital for the future of the West,” Truss argued recently on GB News). But on Capitol Hill, Trump-backed Republican figures are embracing her. Promotional blurbs for Truss’s book have been issued by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas (“The odds are stacked against us, but Truss knows what’s worth fighting for”) and Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah (“Truss is a true movement conservative who has served at the highest levels on the world stage” and “will be a leader in this fight for years to come”).

Truss’s US media blitz will seek to capitalise on the existence of an array of conservative media outlets with an army of committed viewers, listeners and readers sympathetic to hear her newly defined worldview.

In a Fox News appearance from a studio in London on Wednesday, she attracted amusement on social media for her failure to hold her book the right way up on camera. In media appearances when she arrives on American shores, she is expected to double down on her claim at February’s Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Washington that “unless conservatives become more active in speaking out… western civilisation is doomed”.

“There are so few figures from across the pond who make a strong impression here,” said Gizzi. “There really haven’t been a lot since Margaret Thatcher.

“Who would twang the heartstrings of the rising Maga movement? Well, it might as well be Liz Truss, who paid the ultimate price for wanting to lower taxes and deal with spending, or so it’s perceived over here.”

Truss has been at pains to encourage a sympathetic view of her defenestration from No 10, insisting at Cpac that she had been “operating in a hostile environment” and “faced an almighty backlash” from – among others – the media, the Bank of England and even Biden.

“I look at her and respect what she’s doing,” says Dr Bradley-Farrell. “Certainly she’s respected in conservative circles who know about her.”