The comeback of Lettuce Liz Truss continues to surprise and delight, with the short-lived former PM spending last weekend palling around with Hungary’s far-right leader and plugging a whiskey being launched by a convicted thug.

With her new “free speech” social network seemingly some way off launch – Truss’s office employs only five staff and reports assets of just £112,657 in capital and reserves – she headed to Budapest for a meet-up of the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), alongside Donald Trump-aligned headbangers from across Europe. Truss rubbed shoulders with the likes of the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and the AfD’s Alice Weidel while host Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán described Trump as “a truth serum” and peddled conspiracy theories about a great population replacement.

“People used to flee Eastern Europe to Britain for freedom,” a thrilled Truss wrote on social media. “Now in 2025 I went to CPAC Hungary to talk about the free speech crisis in Britain.”

What better place to defend free speech than Orbán’s Hungary, which has, er, issued criminal charges to media which has published things it deems to be untrue, purchased and shut down unfriendly media outlets and targeted investigative journalists with privacy laws? The vast bulk of political news in the country now comes from outlets whose financing is controlled by Orban’s ruling Fidesz party.

Following that triumph, a video emerged of Truss promoting a new whisky launched by Dougie Joyce, a bare-knuckle fighter. “Liz Truss loves you,” she third-personed while raising a glass to her new friend. Alas for the hapless Truss, Joyce was jailed for 19 months by Manchester crown court in November 2023 for a violent assault on a 78-year-old man, later using a smuggled phone to film himself laughing in his prison cell.

A spokesperson for Truss said: “I thought the government believed in the rehabilitation of offenders” – although it was unclear if they were talking about Joyce or the cursed former PM herself.