09 April 2024 , 16:50
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49-day Prime Minister Liz Truss said the late Queen Elizabeth gave her the advice when they met at Balmoral, only two days before the monarch’s death in September 2022
Liz Truss has admitted she ignored the late Queen’s advice to “pace yourself” before going on a tax-slashing spree that crashed the economy.
The 49-day Prime Minister said Queen Elizabeth gave her the advice when they met at Balmoral, only two days before the monarch’s death in September 2022. Ms Truss used the national mourning period to draw up her disastrous mini-Budget, which sent markets reeling and saw her ousted from office in October, making her the shortest serving PM in history.
In her new book, “Ten Years to Save the West”, Ms Truss continues her attempts at rehabilitation with an account of her time in Government. Describing her meeting with the late Queen in 2022, she said the 96-year-old monarch “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.
“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics,” Ms Truss writes. “She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty. Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being Prime Minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”
The meeting produced the last public picture of the late Queen before she died on September 8 2022 at Balmoral, her Scottish residence. Ms Truss was then required to lead the nation through a period of national mourning, which she admitted feeling ill-equipped for. She said the ceremony and protocol were “a long way from my natural comfort zone” - and said other PMs may have been better able to provide “the soaring rhetoric and performative statesmanship necessary”.
In her book, which comes out next week, Ms Truss is expected to double down on the discredited ideas that saw her ousted from Downing Street after triggering market meltdown. In the loftily-title tome, she will rant about the fight against the "global left" and express her "dismay" - despite being a former Remainer - at "the political class’s attempt to betray Brexit".
Publishers Biteback said Ms Truss will warn too many of her fellow conservatives have been "captured by the left-wing influences that set the agenda and frame the debate". The strapline describes the book as "Lessons from the only Conservative in the room".