When Tory MPs gossip about who might be their next leader, it’s fair to say that Liz Truss is not always the top item on the agenda. But if anyone in Westminster had doubts about the leadership ambitions of the chief secretary, she has done her best to simultaneously stamp them out and burnish her right wing credentials with a free-wheeling piece in the Telegraph [1].

In her latest attempt to show that she knows how to make Conservatism hip again, Truss talks up microwave meals and Instagram.

“We’re trendsetters, first to welcome brilliant inventions into our lives, from the microwave meal to Instagram.”

As the TUC expresses concern that one in nine British workers are now stuck in precarious employment, Truss also doubles down on previous claims about the excellence of the gig economy.

“Britain is a nation of Uber-riding, Deliveroo-eating, Airbnb-ing freedom fighters. And to turbocharge our future we need to champion these values, and let people off the leash by liberating every corner of the economy.”

Four years after becoming famous for railing against British cheese imports, Truss then makes an audacious bid to rebrand herself.

“As chief secretary to the Treasury, I aim to be the disrupter in chief; I want to challenge those who aim to block change, stop development and restrict success.”

Previewing a speech at the LSE, the Tory MP also takes not-so-thinly disguised swipes at cabinet colleagues Michael Gove and Gavin Williamson. But did she over-reach herself by comparing a row about advertising hoardings at her a local football team’s ground to the plight of a plucky fictional vigilante who confronts both the police and the tragedy of her daughter’s death by erecting roadside monuments to her grief and rage?

“In my constituency, a local football team put up advertising hoardings around the ground that brought in thousands to the community club. But someone complained, and the council ordered the club to take them down. If Frances McDormand can put up three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, why can’t we do the same outside King’s Lynn, Norfolk?”

Well...