Missed Liz’s bestseller? You may have to wait for the next print run…

IT wouldn’t be a true Liz Truss book without some behind-thescenes chaos. And in true Truss style, Ten Years to Save the West, which has been flying off the shelves despite appalling reviews, has already experienced its first U-turn only a few days after publication.

It started out with a quote. One diligent reader noticed that Truss, in the middle of one of her chapter-long rodomontades about the deep state’s plans to thwart her government, had quoted a supposed line from the late Jewish financier Mayer Amschel Rothschild: “Permit me to issue and control the money of the nation, and I care not who makes it laws!”

There was a big problem: Rothschild never said it. The line was fabricated long ago by antisemitic conspiracy theorists and has been bandied about on the darker corners of the internet ever since.

When we asked Truss yesterday, a spokesperson explained: “Liz came across the quote and thought it a useful way of illustrating a point about the Bank of England.

Numerous online sources have stated that it was attributed to Rothschild, so she simply attributed it thus. Clearly nothing more was meant of it.” But blaming Google didn’t hold for long.

By evening, the Board of Deputies of British Jews had got wind of the false quote and asked Truss’s publisher, Biteback, for an explanation. They responded apologetically, blamed the fact-checkers, and promised to remove the offending line in all future editions. The Board thanked them “for their swift response”. Unfortunately the error might delay the urgently needed second pressing of the book, which has already sold out on Amazon. Don’t believe everything you read online.