The former British Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss regrets not having had the “opportunity” to implement her radical fiscal plan, which sank the financial markets, during her brief tenure in power, in an article published today by the “Sunday Telegraph”.
Massive Tax Cut
The announcement of a massive tax cut, which turned the markets upside down and plunged the pound sterling due to doubts about the financing of the national debt, caused Truss to resign after just 49 days as chief executive.
In her first detailed comments from her since her Downing Street march – the prime minister’s official dispatch – Truss admits she did not calculate the stiff resistance she would face from her party and the economic establishment.
While acknowledging some blame for how subsequent events unfolded after his tax proposal, Truss continues to maintain that his approach to boosting growth was the right one.
“I’m not saying I’m not to blame for what happened but I was not given the opportunity to implement the policies because of a very powerful economic system, coupled with a lack of political support,” he said.
He also points out that when he came to the Government he “assumed” that his mandate would be “respected and accepted” and that despite the fact that he anticipated that there would be “resistance” to his program, he “underestimated the scope” of it.
“Similarly, I underestimated the resistance within the Conservative parliamentary caucus to move to a less regulated, lower tax economy,” he muses.
Truss also claims that the tax plan announced by then-Economy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng represented a break with the “left” turn of economic thinking and admits that firing Kwarteng affected him “deeply” even though he had “no choice.”
“At that point, it was clear that the political agenda could not survive and my priority had to be to avoid a serious collapse for the UK,” he notes.
“While I regret not being able to implement my full programme, I remain optimistic for the future, with the UK now in a position to ford its own path as a free country,” he says.
The response to his article has not been long in coming. His Tory colleague, Lord Barwell, head of personnel for former Prime Minister Theresa May, sent him a message on Twitter today in which he reminded him that: “you were thrown out because in a matter of weeks you lost the confidence of the financial markets, of the electorate and your own deputies.
“During a deep cost-of-living crisis, you thought it was a priority to cut taxes for the country’s richest,” he says.
This article is originally published on quepasamedia.com
