Liz Truss was Prime Minister of Britain for just 49 days, but now she has a plan to save the West: The former Conservative leader draws inspiration from the MAGA crowd as she tries to reinvent herself

Liz Truss may have lasted only 49 days as British Prime Minister, but she is plotting a new course back to relevance as the darling of the American far right and as a bridge in a transatlantic conservative movement.

She has spent the past two days sharing platforms with the likes of populist rabble-rouser and election denier Steve Bannon at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland.

The event has long been one of the most influential conservative gatherings in the world, and today it is a showcase for Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

Her colleagues at home could learn something from the heated arguments on display, Truss said.

“I think as conservatives we have to win the battle of ideas, and that’s what we had to do in the 1970s, we had to win the battle of ideas,” she told DailyMail.com

‘And yes, I see the conservative movement in America as a source of inspiration for this.

“If you look at what Governor Abbott has accomplished in Texas, it’s an example of creating an environment that’s less hostile to conservatives.

‘And I believe that many people in Britain want to see good Conservative policies, but we are operating in a hostile environment.’

Abbott has fought the Biden administration on immigration, set up his own barbed-wire defenses and bused migrants to liberal cities far from the border, taken a tough stance on abortion with the Texas Heartbeat Act, and during the pandemic pushed back COVID-19 restrictions. .

It’s all new territory for Truss, who was once seen as something of a centrist in British politics. For example, she campaigned against Brexit and spoke highly of how European regulations were good for Britain – the kind of globalist language treated with suspicion by America’s isolationist right.

She took over as Prime Minister from Boris Johnson in 2022, but her plans for billions in tax cuts roiled markets, sending home mortgage rates soaring and sending sterling into freefall.

Since then she has been visiting the US regularly. This time she is working on a book, Ten Years to Save the West, which will be released in April.

It is a call to arms against the unelected “administrative state” that she believes has destroyed her premiership.

“For too long, the left has effectively controlled the free world. And they put it in the ground,” she said.

“We have these protesters on the streets of the United States, the border is completely out of control. Tax rates are higher. Regulations are going up.’

The danger is that these invisible forces undermine the West’s position in a global power struggle.

“I am a strong believer in Reagan’s ‘peace through strength’ doctrine. That’s what we need to see,” she said.

‘I think the West is in serious danger. China has never had a more powerful position. They are now very closely linked to Iran and Russia.”

The evidence is visible in the war in Ukraine and the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

However, her conclusions could be a tougher sell for the American right, which is in Trump’s isolationist grip.

“I am very clear: you know that the entire West must support Ukraine because they are waging our struggle on the frontier of freedom in the same way that the entire West must support Israel,” she said. ‘I am very disappointed about the decline in that.’

She emphasizes that everyone she has spoken to wants to support Ukraine. Yet she clearly disagrees with Republicans in Congress who are blocking a bill that would send $60 billion to keep Ukraine’s armed forces armed and fighting.

And there are even more potential differences with her new audience. She has no interest in denying the 2020 election and says Biden won fair and square.

‘I believe so. Yes,’ she said.

Her argument overlaps with Trump’s when it comes to the “administrative state” or the “deep state.”

Her mistake at Number 10 Downing Street was not pursuing the wrong policies, she said (cutting taxes, using fracking to drive down energy prices, building houses, scrapping European laws that even after the Brexit is still on the books in Great Britain).

Her mistake, she said, was thinking she could get it done despite the “administrative state.”

“What I discovered is the enormous power that unelected bodies now have in Britain, like the Office of Budget Responsibility, like the Bank of England, I even got the International Monetary Fund to weigh in on what we were doing,” she said .

“The point I make in my book is that just being in a position of power and having the right policies isn’t enough if you have a system that is hostile to conservatism, and that’s what I fear. have in Britain.’

Returning a Republican to the White House is part of that, she said.

“I think this year is a pivotal year in global politics,” she said. “And I want the Republicans to win this election. I fear our enemies will be strengthened if they do not.”

But the CPAC conference is a far cry from the British Conservative Party conferences held in posh seaside resorts.

A session at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center was titled ‘cat fight,’ with commentators criticizing former first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris as they weighed the chances of either of them replacing Biden on the November ballot .

A pinball game was played in the exhibitor hall on Jan. 6, prompting accusations that attendees were making light of the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

And a giant ad for Truss’s new book went hand in hand with an ad for a biography of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose recent interview with Vladimir Putin was so soft that even the Russian president mocked him for it.

None of that upset Truss. Although she admitted she was a little shocked by some of the outfits on display.

“There are fewer people in Second Amendment dresses at the Conservative Party conference or in Statue of Liberty outfits,” she said. “There’s definitely a lot more dressing up here.”