Is Liz Truss a real grown-up?

Tough call today for Liz Truss. She had to relaunch her premiership at her very first conference as leader. She walked on stage to the sound of the disco hit Moving On Up and for a horrific moment it looked as if she might do the Maybot dance. Luckily she remained still. To greet the applauding Tories she wore a smirk that seemed curiously poised between self-doubt and self-love. ‘I quite can’t believe I’m here – but I’m fabulous anyway.’ She'd chosen a stylish frock of mud-brown and sported the notorious necklace – with a zero dangling from its gold rivets – which is said to reflect her chances of winning a general election.

She got into the personal stuff straight away. Oppression was integral to her childhood, she told us. Poor Liz. She was raised ‘in the 1980s and 1990s’ and she's haunted by the ‘boarded up shops and the people left with no hope turning to drugs.’ Perhaps the root cause was the Conservative government that ran the country for most of the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, we know why she joined the Lib Dems: she equates Margaret Thatcher and John Major with economic ruin. She singled out a particularly traumatic incident from her early years which she may not yet have processed fully. During a family holiday, she was insulted by airline staff who awarded ‘pilot’ badges to her brothers but fobbed her off with a label marked ‘junior air stewardess.’ She remains ‘angry’ about this, she said, and she vowed to spare others from the lash of such condescending bigotry.

Then a pair of saboteurs struck. Yelling erupted from the middle of the auditorium and Liz’s speech came to a halt. All eyes turned towards a pair of young women, shouting raucously, and holding up a yellow sign. ‘Who Voted For This?’ Both protestors were attractive, well-dressed and beautifully coiffed – just like Liz. They might have been her cousins – or perhaps former activists from her Lib Dem days. The yellow banner was snatched from their hands but they whipped out a replacement and held that up. Excellent planning. The crowd rose against them. ‘Out! Out! Out!’ they chanted. The women were led away, both smirking manically. Mission accomplished. They can now enjoy their 15 minutes of fame. Order returned and Liz got an ovation. As disasters go it went pretty well.

There’s something not entirely grown up about the Prime Minister. She has a permanent air of naive euphoria – like a bouncy new teacher taking the class on a jolly exciting camping trip. ‘Come on everyone. This’ll be fun!’. The fact that she lacks originality of thought or expression doesn’t trouble her. Today’s speech was a set of shiny verbal beads with little to connect them.

‘Grow the pie so everyone gets a bigger slice… break out of this high-tech low-growth cycle… I believe in sound money and a lean state.’ Growth is her brand identity. ‘Growth, growth, growth’, she yelped at one point. But growth has a deadly opponent, she said. Not shrinkage or slimming but ‘anti-growth’. She identified a secret alliance, ‘the anti-growth coalition,’ whose members include, ‘Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the militant unions and Extinction Rebellion.’ The BBC are enthusiastic backers of this cabal as well, she told us, and they encourage fellow members to ‘taxi from their north London townhouses to the BBC studios.’ That’s a pretty salty accusation. She’s not afraid of making enemies – which is a mark of strength. Her premiership has been a wreck of Titanic proportions so far. Today, finally, a decent moment.