Shameless Liz Truss blames Tories for not being right-wing enough after failure

05 February 2023 , 22:15

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Liz Truss has sparked a backlash after blaming others for her failings (Image: PA)

Shameless Liz Truss has tried to blame the economic meltdown she unleashed during her disastrous days at No10 on what she claims is the left-wing economic establishment.

As families continue to struggle with rising interest rates and soaring inflation, the failed former Prime Minister said the problem lay not with her policies but with fellow Tories not being right-wing enough.

Truss, who has now been an ex-PM over twice as long as the 49 days she was in the top job, moaned about her party’s failure to back her catastrophic mini-Budget plans for £47billion of unfunded tax cuts.

In a 4,000-word gripe in The Sunday Telegraph she complained of “pushing water uphill” in her bid to implement the giveaway to the wealthy.

She wrote: “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 left-wards.

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Ms Truss is the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British history (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

"This is partly because we Conservatives had failed to make these arguments enough since 2010 – instead triangulating with Labour policy.”

She also suggested the economic shockwaves were not caused by her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng ’s October mini-Budget, but that her Government merely “became a useful scapegoat” for the chaos.

She added: “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.”

Scottish Greens economic spokeswoman Maggie Chapman yesterday hit back at the “attempt to rewrite history”. She said: “ Liz Truss wasn’t brought down by any supposedly left-wing economic establishment, she was brought down by her own recklessness and economic mismanagement.”

Shadow Health Minister Liz Kendall said: “Liz Truss is back with no apology and no humility.”

Tory MP Richard Graham said it was “probably a mistake” to claim Truss “had the right ideas”. A Conservative source said Truss was “more deranged than we realised” and “the worst PM in UK history”.

Ben Glaze