Liz Truss has mounted a trenchant defence of her chaotic, short-lived stint as Prime Minister by arguing that the economy is in a more fragile state under Andy Burnham than during her 49 days in Downing Street.
Ms Truss uses a new book to claim that the radical measures she tried to introduce in her infamous 2022 mini-Budget would have left the public finances in a better state than they are now under Mr Burnham.
In Bank Job, published to coincide with Chancellor John Healey’s Budget on Wednesday, she claims the market turmoil leading to her removal from office was the fault of the financial ‘establishment’ and the Bank of England.
Bond yields spiked and the value of the pound plummeted after her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced £45 billion of tax cuts, including a reduction to the 45p rate of tax for higher earners.
Treasury sources say Mr Healey – constrained by low growth and the spiralling cost of servicing the Government’s debts – will deliver a ‘steady as she goes’ Budget, with modest help for household energy bills and targeted support for businesses. It is expected to be funded by a ‘soak the rich’ tax raid on banks and a trimming of the fiscal ‘headroom’.
Ms Truss writes in the book of Mr Burnham’s Britain: ‘Billionaires are leaving Britain at a rapid rate. We top the world league table for departures.
‘The City of London, one of the last remaining success stories, is being eclipsed. We are losing out in the tech race and the capital race.’
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss (pictured in 2022) has argued the economy is in a more fragile state under Andy Burnham than during her 49 days in Downing Street
In her new book, Bank Job, Ms Truss claims claims the radical measures she tried to introduce in her 2022 mini-Budget would have left the public finances in a better state than they are now (Pictured with former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng)
Bank Job will be published to coincide with Chancellor John Healey’s Budget on Wednesday
She adds: ‘People said my tax cuts would… worsen the public finances. We’ve now tried the opposite and the public finances are worse.
‘The 30-year gilt yield has gone past 6 per cent – much higher than back in 2022. This is now reflecting… a lack of trust in the entire system.’
Bank Job, described as a ‘short book on how the Bank of England broke the bond market and brought down the government’, also places blame for her fate at the feet of ‘Tory Traitors’ such as former minister Michael Gove, who ‘were more interested in being in office than saving Britain’. It also points the finger at the ‘media and political class’ who ‘continued to push a false narrative of unfunded tax cuts’.
The cover, pictured above, shows Ms Truss at a desk with five men – including Tony Blair and two ex-Bank of England governors – standing behind her in the style of the film Reservoir Dogs. She says: ‘I was Prime Minister for 49 days. The brevity is used as proof of folly. It is better used as proof of the system’s speed and how close I was to the target.’
She was yesterday cited as a warning to Mr Burnham by Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England, who said the PM must ‘take the knife’ to public spending in the Budget or risk a Liz Truss-style crisis that would ‘crater’ the economy.
Mr Haldane told The Times that Britain was ‘close to being taxed out and maxxed out in terms of borrowing’ and that the Government was failing to grasp the precariousness of the country’s fiscal position.
Ms Truss’s book has not been welcomed by some former colleagues. Her trade policy minister Sir Conor Burns said: ‘The markets and the party realised she was a nutjob and financially illiterate. And she was, mercifully, ejected.
She is now an international embarrassment with zero self-awareness.’
