Liz Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister of UK, blamed “the left-wing economic establishment” in Britain for her short stint at 10 Downing Street after remaining in power for over six weeks.
She said that he was never given a “realistic chance” to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda while partly blaming her party, the Conservatives, for the lack of support.
Truss was forced to quit after she and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s £45bn package of unfunded tax cuts triggered panic in the markets and lowered the pound to a record low.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, she said, “I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support.”
“I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was. While I anticipated resistance to my programme from the system, I underestimated the extent of it,” she wrote.
Truss said she 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.
“As I had spelled out during the leadership campaign, I wanted to go for growth … But this was not in line with the instinctive views of the Treasury (finance ministry) or the wider orthodox economic ecosystem.”
The former premier argued that the government was made a “scapegoat” for developments that had been brewing for some time.
“Frankly, we were also pushing water uphill. Large parts of the media and the wider public sphere had become unfamiliar with key arguments about tax and economic policy and over time sentiment had shifted leftward,” she wrote.
“Regrettably, the government became a useful scapegoat for problems that had been brewing over a number of months.”
Truss’s remarks on the failure of her premiership drew sharp reactions within the Tory party.
Tory peer Lord Barwell, who was Theresa May’s chief of staff, said Truss was brought down because “in a matter of weeks you lost the confidence of the financial markets, the electorate and your own MPs.”
(With inputs from agencies)
