Liz Truss shows Putin she’s got the mettle of Margaret Thatcher

It was a photo opportunity designed to send the message to Vladimir Putin that Britain is serious about protecting Ukraine from aggression on its Eastern border. But the sight of Liz Truss astride a Challenger 2 tank in Tapa, Estonia, on Tuesday recalled the West’s resistance against another Russian leader: Mikhail Gorbachev. Thirty-five years before, the Foreign Secretary’s political hero Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, was pictured in a similar pose, riding in an earlier iteration of the same tank at a Nato training ground near Fallingbostel, West Germany. Wearing a mac, scarf and goggles, Mrs Thatcher used a laser-guided weapons system to fire a 6lb practice shell from the tank. She later declared she “loved it”. The next day’s edition of The Daily Telegraph described her outfit as a “cross between Isadora Duncan and Lawrence of Arabia”. On Tuesday, with a coat and body armour to ward off temperatures of -6C (), Ms Truss - dubbed “the minister for Instagram” - posed in her own tank beneath