When you find me wrapped in smugness, taking the piss out of people who believe everything they see in the media, falling for conspiracy theories, then all you need to do is remind me that I literally quoted Liz Truss for blaming the ‘left-wing economic establishment’ for destroying her period in Downing Street. I mean, the words were literally in the headline above 4000 word essay by Truss in the Daily Telegraph, setting out why she was right and everyone else was wrong. The problem is that she never said it. Someone else at the Telegraph did. It was probably meant to paraphrase her actual words but I followed the horde and misquoted her. Lesson learned?
Probably not. But it just goes to show, me at least, that I am not quite as smart as I thought I was, which to be fair isn’t that smart. I was confident in the strength of my bullshit detector and my political antenna, but both have clearly let me down.
I still haven’t read Truss’s piece other in than small bites from other media outlets, since I will never pay the likes of the Telegraph to read their content, but despite my many failings at least I am confident I’m still right that in Liz Truss we had one of the worst prime ministers of all time – a low bar, admittedly – who tanked the economy, drove up interest rates (and the cost of mortgages) and caused the Bank of England to trigger a £65 billion pensions bail out.
While the wretched Truss did not even have the decency to say sorry for messing up, may I take the opportunity to say sorry to my loyal reader for doing what I hate others for doing: promoting things that aren’t true. For someone who spends literally hours every day writing or researching what to write about, it was a salutary lesson. Or it should be.
All I can say in mitigation is that I am a humble, unpaid blogger – unless someone buys me a coffee – and I only have one unpaid sub-editor to point out my clangers.
Liz Truss is still an idiot but she didn’t blame the ‘left-wing economic establishment’. Happy to point that out.
