Liz Truss was once the bright young thing of the Conservative Party, a high-flying, Oxford-educated wonk with a reputation for ruthless ambition. Before that, she was a Liberal Democrat activist calling for the abolition of the monarchy. Fast forward a few decades, and she’s now throwing red meat to American far-right crowds, railing against the “deep state,” and warning of a shadowy globalist conspiracy. How in the heckety heck did we get here?

A Rebellion Against Socialist Parents?

One theory is that Truss’s transformation is just a particularly extreme case of teenage rebellion that never quite wore off. Born to left-wing parents—her father was a professor of mathematics and her mother a nurse and campaigner—perhaps young Liz grew up determined to rebel against the dinner-table socialism of her upbringing. Many of us flirt with ideological shifts in our youth, but few take it to the level of going from singing anti-Thatcher songs as a child to attempting (and spectacularly failing) to become the second coming of Margaret Thatcher herself.

The Tufton Street Brain Scramble

Another possibility is that she fell victim to the ideological black hole of Tufton Street—a warren of libertarian think tanks pushing a fanatical free-market agenda. Truss has long been associated with this cabal of deregulation evangelists who believe that the only thing standing between us and economic utopia is the state daring to interfere in anything, including environmental protections, public health, and even basic economic stability. The disastrous mini-budget she cooked up with Kwasi Kwarteng—so devastating that it tanked the pound and sent mortgage rates soaring—was essentially a Tufton Street wet dream made real. For anyone claiming to follow politics it should have been a shot across the bowels as to the reality of voting for the hard right.

It would make sense that, having been politically raised on this diet of free-market fanaticism, she has now gravitated toward the MAGA movement, where anti-government paranoia and deregulation zealotry go hand in hand. But surely, one would think, after being humiliated out of office in record time, she might have had some kind of reckoning? An acceptance that she might have got carried away. Instead the derailed runaway train in her head got back on the tracks and pressed turbo.

Is This a Mental Health Crisis?

This brings us to the more serious question: is everything okay with Liz?

It’s one thing to be a doctrinaire libertarian, but another to show up in the US spouting conspiracy theories about globalist elites and climate change hysteria like a Poundland Steve Bannon. Her recent behaviour, endless victimhood, bizarre public statements, and a desperate need for attention suggests something beyond mere political evolution. Losing power in such a humiliating fashion would be hard for anyone to process, but her reaction has been to double down, not reflect. Should we be worried? Should she?

Pantomime Villain or Real Threat?

At first glance, Truss’s new persona is almost comical. She struts around in front of MAGA crowds, seemingly unaware that most of them have no idea who she is. She rants about the dangers of “woke capitalism” and “deep state interference,” blissfully ignoring that her own political career was ended not by shadowy globalists, but by her own disastrous economic policies.

But should we just laugh this off? The problem is that figures like Truss, no matter how ridiculous, still wield influence. If you had told people ten years ago that Donald Trump—formerly known for dodgy business dealings and a reality TV show—would become the most powerful man in the world, they would have laughed too. And yet here we are. Truss, with her connections to hard-right libertarian networks, is positioning herself as an ideological warrior in the global battle against, well, everything.

So, is Liz Truss just a tragicomic footnote in British political history, or a genuinely dangerous extremist in the making? A desperate woman trying to stay relevant, or a useful idiot for powerful forces pushing a far-right agenda? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. Either way, it’s a baffling and deeply weird trajectory.

One that raises more questions than it answers.