In a leaked audio tape made public on Tuesday, UK Conservative Liz Truss, the favourite to become the next British prime minister, said Britons needed to put in more effort because they lacked “skill and application.”
The unfortunate leak comes as polls consistently show that Truss is decisively ahead of Rishi Sunak in the campaign to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister early next month.
AFP reports that the two-minute audio tape, was recorded between 2017 and 2019, when Truss was a senior minister in the finance ministry. In it she claimed that part of the reason for the UK’s comparatively low productivity was down to employees’ “mindset and attitude.”
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In the recording obtained by the Guardian newspaper, she said “It’s working culture basically,” adding that British workers needed “more graft.”
“If you go to China it’s quite different, I can assure you,” she said, adding “there’s a fundamental issue of British working culture… I don’t think people are that keen to change.”
In the leaked recording, Truss—who supported staying in the European Union during the contentious 2016 referendum before switching to support Brexit—also seemed to imply that the bloc and migration are unfairly criticised.
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“We say it’s all Europe that’s causing all these problems. It’s all, ‘it’s migrants that’s causing problems…But actually what needs to happen is, you know, a bit more graft,” she said, with a laugh, before adding “it’s not a popular message”.
The inflammatory statements made by Truss are an echo of the contentious claims made in “Britannia Unchained,” a book she co-authored in 2012 and in which British employees were referred to as some of the “worst idlers in the world.”
When questioned about the book at a leadership contest last month, Truss had claimed that co-author and supporter of Sunak Dominic Raab, who is presently the justice minister, had written the controversial arguments.
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Raab later claimed that the book’s authors, which comprised a number of other prominent Conservative ministers, had accepted “collective responsibility” for the information included in it.
As per AFP, the leaked remarks were described as “half a decade old” and “lacking context” by a Truss campaign source, who also acknowledged that Britain does “need to boost productivity.”
The insider continued, “As prime minister, Liz will deliver an economy that is high wage, high growth and low tax.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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