It wasn’t me: Former British PM Truss blames ‘the system’ for his failure

LONDON (AP) – Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss says her failure was not her fault.

On Sunday, Truss blamed the “powerful economic establishment” and domestic opposition to the Conservative Party for the rapid collapse of her government and said she still believes her tax cuts are the right thing to do.

Britain’s shortest-term prime minister resigned in October after serving for six weeks after her inaugural budget plan sent the market into chaos.

Breaking her post-premier silence in the Sunday Telegraph, Truss said she underestimated the resistance her free-market policies would face from “the system.”

“I am not claiming to be innocent of what happened, but in fact, a very powerful economic establishment, in the absence of political support, did not give me a real chance to pursue my policy,” she wrote.

Truss took office in September after winning the Conservative Party leadership contest to replace scandal-stained Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Her promise to spur economic growth through tax cuts and deregulation encouraged Tory members, but a budget containing £45 billion ($54 billion) in unwarranted tax cuts, including income tax cuts for the highest earners, rattled financial markets.

The prospect of more debt and higher inflation sent the pound to its lowest point against the US dollar. The cost of government borrowing soared and the Bank of England had to intervene to prop up the bond market and avert a wider economic crisis that threatened people’s pensions.

Truss first fired her head of the treasury, Kwasi Kwarteng, and then resigned herself.

In the article, she argued that her government had been made a “scapegoat” for long-brewing instability with bond-based investment, a form of derivatives in the bond market in which pension funds invest heavily.

Truss said she still believes her low-tax, small-state program “was right, but the forces against it were too great.” She stated that “much of the media and the wider public sphere” is left-leaning and criticized US President Joe Biden for calling her plan a mistake.

The story goes on

Critics have accused the former prime minister of rewriting history and playing a populist playbook, blaming the system for its own failures.

Gavin Barwell, a Conservative who was former Prime Minister Theresa May’s chief of staff, tweeted Truss: “You were baffled because in a matter of weeks you have lost the trust of the financial markets, the electorate and your own MPs. During a deep cost-of-living crisis, you made it a priority to cut taxes for the richest people in the country.”

University of Cambridge economist Charles Reid said he warned the Treasury in early September that a sudden economic stimulus package “risks financial instability and a financial crisis.

“The mini-budget crisis last fall was predictable, preventable and avoidable,” he tweeted.

Truss’s article could put more pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the Conservative-appointed former treasury chief, to calm markets and shore up the government after she leaves.

Sunak says fighting double-digit inflation is more important than immediate tax cuts. But with the economy still struggling – the International Monetary Fund says Britain will be the only major economy to contract this year – and the party well behind Labor in the polls, some Conservative lawmakers are starting to worry.

A faction within the party still pushes for immediate tax cuts, despite the damage done by Trussonomics.

MP Jake Berry, the party’s former chairman, said that while Truss’s agenda “wasn’t presented properly”, she had the right instincts.

“Her point of view is that we need to lower taxes, we need to create a growing economy, this is what people want,” Berry told the BBC. ___

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