The second coming of Liz Truss

Might we be about to see the second coming of Liz Truss? Asked on self-styled Brexit hardman Steve Baker’s Free Future podcast whether she would stand for election again, the mayfly-like former PM responded: “Maybe”.

Pressed on which lucky party that might be for, she said: “I just said maybe, Steve. I’m not… I’m keeping all my options open. I’m not… I’m not even contemplating, I’m just not ruling it out.”

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The choice, though, might not be hers. Given Kemi Badenoch has blocked Grant Shapps and, it appears, Penny Mordaunt from standing for the Conservatives again as she wants “people to know that this is a new Conservative Party”, it seems remarkably unlikely that the party’s worst-ever leader would get the nod.

Sources in Reform have repeatedly said that it would spurn any attempt to defect by Truss as she is so unpopular that they would “damage Reform’s public image”. Nigel Farage has confirmed that any approach would cause a heated debate in his party over the wisdom of admitting her.

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Might the increasingly far right Truss be tempted by Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain? She is a huge admirer of Elon Musk, who it was reported at the weekend had offered the party as much money as it needed, but was turned down.

At least a return to politics would be a respite from her failing media career – last week she took her little-watched podcast, The Liz Truss Show, to the YouTube channel of Mike Graham, the broadcaster dismissed from TalkTV after the company said he had failed to cooperate with an investigation into a racist post that appeared on his Facebook account.