Liz Truss is offering lessons on how to be popular
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LONDON — Liz Truss wants to tell the Tories how to be popular again. Good luck, as they say, with that.
Truss, booted from office as U.K. prime minister after just 49 days in the job — an all-time record — is the star attraction Tuesday as her new Popular Conservatives pressure group holds its official launch in Westminster.
The newly-formed caucus of right-wing Tory MPs and candidates wants to “reform Britain’s bureaucratic structures to allow Conservative values to flourish” — and is promising to help Tories “advance these policies across the country, whilst demonstrating their popularity.”
Whether Truss is the right person to win over the British public is another matter.
Fresh polling by Savanta on the eve of the launch finds Truss is the least popular politician in the country, with a net favorability score of minus 54 percent.
“Liz Truss is very unpopular,” says Scarlett Maguire, director at polling consultancy JL Partners.
“Rishi Sunak is doing very badly with the public now, but we should remember that Liz Truss was doing even worse.”
Truss, of course, is still firmly associated with a disastrous seven weeks in office which saw her crash the U.K. economy, sending interest rates spiralling as a result, and then resign after losing command of her own party.
Savanta’s latest polling rates Truss even worse than her chaotic predecessor Boris Johnson, who sits at minus 25 percent; and her beleagured successor Rishi Sunak, who’s on minus 27 percent.