What does Liz Truss’s book tell us about her American ambitions?

In her new book, the former British prime minister Liz Truss directs scathing attacks and mockery at Joe Biden, president of her country’s closest ally. Biden was guilty of “utter hypocrisy and ignorance”, Truss writes, when the US leader said he “disagree[d] with the policy” of “cutting taxes on the super wealthy” in the mini-budget Truss introduced in September 2022, shortly after taking power.

“I was shocked and astounded that Biden would breach protocol by commenting on UK domestic policy,” Truss adds. “We had been the United States’ staunchest allies through thick and thin.”

Such harsh words between British and American leaders, in or out of office, would normally seem unusual. But Truss has scores to settle. By the time Biden spoke, in an ice-cream parlor in Portland, Oregon, Truss’s mini-budget had already caused panic over British pension funds, threatened to crash the UK economy and been withdrawn – a humiliating reversal for any prime minister, let alone one little more than a month into the job. Six days later, Truss was forced to resign.

A year and a half later, offering the public her version of what went so terribly wrong, Truss still manages to thunder: “What the Bidenadministration, and the [European Union], and their international allies didn’t want was a country demonstrating that things can be done differently, undercutting them in the process.”

Perhaps. Either way, Biden is still president while Truss is now a mere backbench MP for a constituency in rural Norfolk. But the release of her book, Ten Years to Save the West, alongside her founding of Popular Conservatism, a new pressure group, says a lot about where she sees her future.

Far from taking her allowance and pursuing traditional, relatively sedate