Liz Truss has defended her record as prime minister and called for “institutional change” in Britain in the same way she claims Donald Trump delivered “revolution in the US”.
The former Conservative leader has spoken to Sky’s Wilfred Frost on his The Master Investor Podcast nearly three years after she resigned as prime minister – 44 days after taking over from Boris Johnson.
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Her downfall began when she and her then chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unleashed £45bn of unfunded tax cuts on the markets in a mini-budget which sparked weeks of economic turmoil in 2022.
However, Ms Truss has now told Frost the fault for what happened during her premiership lay with the Bank of England (BoE) as she “wasn’t captain of the ship”.
She said: “The last time I looked, it’s the prime minister who is the democratically accountable person that runs the country, not the Bank of England… The Bank of England’s role is to work with the government to ensure financial stability, and they weren’t doing that. They were pursuing their own agenda.”
Ms Truss, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister in history, added: “The fact is I wasn’t captain of the ship because I wasn’t running monetary policy. The Bank of England were running monetary policy. I’m very happy to take responsibility for things, provided I have the full ability to actually control them. I didn’t have the ability to control them.”
The former prime minister also accused the BoE and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) of briefing against her after the mini-budget.
She added: “My mistake, if you want to put it like that was underestimating the sheer malevolence of the economic blob in Britain.”
Liz Truss speaking in Washington in 2022. Pic: AP
‘We’ve lost our way’
Ms Truss also said there is “economic stagnation” and poor public services in the UK and this is at least party due to the “failures” of the BoE and the OBR as “institutions”.
She continued: “There’s no doubt we’ve lost our way. But I think what is happening now in Britain is the people are now realising how bad the situation is. And I think there is going be massive pressure… for institutional change in this country, and that is what we need, in a similar way to Trump delivering the revolution in the US.
“That is what we need. And I think that will happen.”
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Ms Truss later said she believes the UK is heading for “calamity” under Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and claimed the economy is in a worse state now than when she was in office.
She said she sees Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves as part of the “economic orthodoxy” and added: “That has ruined this country, and we are heading for a calamity because of that.”
Ms Truss also said she doesn’t expect the Conservatives to win the next election and this will be partly due to a failure to take on the “leftist establishment”.
“So I don’t think (Tory leader Kemi Badenoch) is going to be prime minister at this stage,” she added.
Asked by Frost whether she will ever return to frontline politics, Ms Truss said: “I never rule anything out… what I’ve always been obsessed with is I want Britain to be a great nation again, and I’m depressed about how far we’ve sunk. The dire state of our economy is in the deindustrialisation. The fact that we don’t make things the same way we used to.”
The full conversation also includes an extensive debate about the mini-budget. Liz Truss was speaking on The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost, available to watch here and listen here.
