Liz Truss has much more in common with Donald Trump than just the first three letters of his surname.
Despite presenting themselves as “outsiders”, both enjoyed substantial political careers and reached the top of their profession as prime minister of the UKand president of the United States respectively.
In both cases, their periods in power ended in ways that outraged their opponents and many in their own Conservative and Republican parties. Economic chaos brought on by her rash policies forced Trussout of office after just 49 days in 10 Downing Street.
Many thought they were finished for good. But like those who had laughed at their ambitions earlier in their careers, the nay-sayers were wrong again. Both have been reprieved and continue to be respected as forces in their parties.
Image: Liz Truss speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. Pic: AP
Trump is currently the narrow frontrunner to beat Joe Biden and win re-election on 5 November, while Truss said this week: “I definitely have unfinished business. Definitely.”
Truss is still an MP and intends to stand again in her safe Tory seat in Norfolk. She was on her feet in the Commons this week to oppose Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak‘s attempts to prevent rising generations from smoking tobacco.
Book promotion
On Monday she will be back in Washington DC speaking at the conservative thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, to promote her grandly titled memoir Ten Years To Save The West.
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Most of the book could be more accurately described as Forty Nine Days To Lose My Job,yet Truss is determined to place her personal fate in the context of a wider global ideological struggle. Her final chapter lists “important lessons we can learn so we can win”.
They include “We Must Dismantle The Leftist State”, “We Must Restore Democratic Accountability” and “Conservatism Must Win Across The Free World, Particularly In The United States of America.”
Image: Donald Trump in court earlier this week. Pic: Reuters
Liz Truss has always been a shape-shifter. Born of left-wing academic parents, she was first heard of 30 years ago as a young Liberal Democrat calling for the abolition of the monarchy. She supported Remain during the 2016 EU referendum before becoming a hard Brexiteer.
Right-wing populist transformation
Her latest comeback tour “confirms her transformation into a radical right-wing populist”, according to Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, the author of The Conservative Party After Brexit.
Like Trump, Truss rails against “extremist environmentalist dogma and wokeism”. Her vision of a failing British state which has been “captured by leftist ideas” is of a piece with Trump’s vision of “American carnage” unless he is there to Make America Great Again.
Of course, Truss backs Trump over Biden in the upcoming election. It is not usual practice for former British political leaders to give such a blatant endorsement in a foreign election.
Image: Truss said she would like Nigel Farage to join the Conservative Party. Pic: Reuters
“I think that our opponents feared the Trump presidency more than they fear the Democrats being in office,” she says. “I believe that we need a strong America… the world was safer [when Trump was president]”.
By “opponents” Truss means the “totalitarian regimes in China, Iran and Russia”. Her unwaveringly aggressive stance is probably where she differs most with Trump, and some of his Republican cheerleaders. He openly admires dictators, while encouraging his followers to block aid to Ukraine against Russia.
‘Prime Minister Truss’
All the same, her rhetoric strikes a chord with the cold warriors of the Heritage Foundation who are treating her with the respect she craves.
Billed American-style as “Prime Minister Truss” her hosts describe her as “one of the few British politicians who really understand the United States and the direction America’s conservative movement is taking”.
Heritage’s “Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom” previously had her over in February to deliver its annual keynote lecture.
In truth, Truss’s knowledge of the real Thatcher seems to extend little further than raiding the dressing-up box for some cosplay photographs when she was foreign secretary and wearing a tank as a fashion accessory.
Truss is odd but so is Trump. Ironclad imperviousness to looking ridiculous is a trait she shares with the ex-president. Both operate in a post-truth world in which what they say and how they act trumps objective facts.
Never to blame
If things go wrong, they are never to blame. Others – especially “Deep State” bureaucracies – have conspired against them.
In her memoir, Truss says that when she was prime minister she did not know about important facets of the national economy such as the vulnerability of LDI pension funds. She condemns the Bank of England for not telling her.
She claims the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) and the Treasury did her down even though she did not allow the OBR to review her mini-budget in advance and sacked the Treasury’s top civil servant on day one.
Now she complains about “a mass of quangos, independent regulators, official advisory bodies and assorted public sector organisations constraining and obstructing ministers at every turn”.
She wants to abolish the OBR, the United Nations, the UK Supreme Court and wants the current governor of the Bank of England to resign.
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Taking absolute power by winning control of conservative factions and crushing any person or institution which stands in her way is the kind of “democratic accountability” she believes in.
Truss’s American friendships extend beyond the Heritage Foundation. She shared a platform at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with Steve Bannon, who served as a political strategist in the Trump administration and was subsequently indicted for fraud.
When Bannon described far-right figure Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the English Defence League, as “a hero”, she remained silent. Trump’s friend Nigel Farage, whom Truss said she’d like to see join the Conservative Party, was also at CPAC.
Failed leaders evaded exclusion
The disaster of her premiership should have disqualified Truss from further active involvement in politics. She made the cost of living crisis much worse for most mortgage payers.
Unabashed, she is still receiving a polite hearing in Tory circles – including from the journalists she hand-picked for a limited round of interviews on the book’s publication.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has raised Truss several times with the prime minister at PMQs, referring to the “political wing of the Flat Earth Society” and “the tin-foil hat brigade”.
Image: Rishi Sunak said Truss had ‘fairytale’ economic plans. Pic: PA
Sunak replied saying Starmer was “sniping from the sidelines”, with the PM not directly referring to Truss.
However, he previously accused her of “fairytale economics” during a leadership debate.
The Republican Party had a golden opportunity to get rid of Trump after the 6 January insurrection.
He would have been disqualified from future office if the Senate had voted for his second impeachment. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, thought about it but then the Republicans decided it was in their best electoral interests to keep him around.
Truss not to be underestimated
In this country there has been a lot of scoffing at Truss’s latest manifestation. It would be a mistake to laugh her out of court.
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Her “unfinished business” includes being a player who will drag the Tories to the right after a general election defeat. She would not need acceptance from the markets or the whole country to become party leader.
She would just need to win over the ageing hundred thousand or so voting members of the Conservative Party. They elected her once before – she was UK prime minister only 18 months ago – and nobody likes admitting they made a mistake.
If Trump manages to be re-elected, their type of conservatism may look appealing to some card-carrying “Conservatives” here.
Truss as leader or senior shadow minister would keep Trumpism alive in this country.
The British Conservative Party would be well advised to think carefully before being trussed up for five years of opposition with her borrowed, far-right, self-obsession.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,”OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.
Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”
“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.
Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph
Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.
Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue
Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.
US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas
The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”
Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.