Liz Truss Reflects on Her Ousting From No. 10: “I Was Never Given a Realistic Chance
By Liz Truss, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has said she was never given a “realistic chance” to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda by her party and by a “powerful economic establishment.”[0] In her first detailed comments since she was forced out of No 10, she wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that she assumed her mandate would be respected, but was instead met with resistance from the system and underestimated the extent of it.[1]
Truss was ousted from Downing Street after only 45 days in office, her so-called “mini-budget” crashing the markets and costing her two key ministers.[2] The opposition Labour Party has ridiculed Truss’s claim that she had been brought down by a left-wing economic establishment, saying she had been brought down by “straightforward economics.”[3]
Ms Truss claimed that she had been brought down by “the fragility of the British economy” and the “issue relating to pension funds,” of which neither she nor her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, had been made aware of. She said she was “deeply disturbed” at having to sack Kwarteng, but believed she had been left with no choice.[4]
The former Conservative party chair Sir Jake Berry told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that he did still agree with “Liz’s diagnosis of the disease that is facing the country and I think she accepts in this story that the prescription that we wrote – [for] which I have to take part of the blame – wasn’t delivered in the correct way.”[5]
Business secretary Grant Shapps said that Truss’s mini-budget “clearly wasn’t the right approach” before the government had tackled inflation, while he added that he agreed with the diagnosis of a lower-tax economy but not necessarily the cure.[6]
Truss also said she had underestimated “the resistance inside the Conservative parliamentary party to move to a lower-tax, less-regulated economy” and a drive on the global stage to “limit competition” between major economies.[1]
0. “Liz Truss is ‘already back with no apology and no humility,' Labour MP says” msnNOW, 5 Feb. 2023, https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/liz-truss-is-already-back-with-no-apology-and-no-humility-labour-mp-says/ar-AA177DIo
1. “UK's shortest-serving PM Liz Truss blames economic ‘orthodoxy' for downfall” CNA, 5 Feb. 2023, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/uks-shortest-serving-pm-liz-truss-blames-economic-orthodoxy-downfall-3255381
2. “Liz Truss blames ‘economic establishment’ for curbing her time as UK leader” POLITICO Europe, 5 Feb. 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/liz-truss-they-didnt-give-me-a-realistic-chance/
3. “Crispin Odey: ‘It will take a Labour government for the Tories to realise Liz Truss was right all along'” The Telegraph, 5 Feb. 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/05/will-take-labour-government-tories-realise-liz-truss-right-along/
4. “Liz Truss: I was brought down by the left-wing economic establishment” The Telegraph, 4 Feb. 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/04/liz-truss-tory-conservative-party-sunak-economy/
5. “Liz Truss condemned for comeback ‘fantasy' as defence sparks Tory backlash” The Independent, 5 Feb. 2023, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-comeback-rishi-sunak-tories-b2276223.html
6. “Truss tax cuts were ‘not right approach’ before tackling inflation, says Shapps” The Guardian, 5 Feb. 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/05/liz-truss-tax-policy-inflation-grant-shapps
