Liz Truss has rejected the Labour Party’s “pathetic” attacks over her mini-budget and suggested she was better-placed than Rishi Sunak to see off Reform UK.
The former Prime Minister, who sat down for a packed fringe event at the ICC, accused Chancellor Rachel Reeves of “going along with the Treasury orthodoxy” as Labour ramps up criticisms of Truss’ brief stint in No10.
Truss claimed it was “economic illiteracy” to blame her for her disastrous mini-budget, instead blaming the Bank of England.
During her 49-days in Downing Street, the former Prime Minister sparked market turmoil after introducing a tranche of unfunded tax cuts worth £45billion.
‘Pathetic!’ Truss rejects Labour’s mini-budget blame-game as ex-PM suggests she could see off Reform UKTELEGRAPHSpeaking to The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley, Truss said: “There was a real lack of interest amongst policymakers, politicians and the media in reporting what actually happened in 2022. I think that’s bad for the country and I think it’s fundamentally dishonest.
“But what happened was successive Conservative governments went along with the economic orthodoxy, loose monetary policy, giving control to the Bank of England, accepting the judgments of the OBR.
“They essentially outsourced economic policy so it wasn’t being decided by the Chancellor … I explicitly, back in 2022, had a mandate to take that on.
“What I found was those people and institutions were very powerful, they sought to undermine me and at the same time people in the Conservative Party wanted to undermine me. But they are fundamentally wrong.”
Truss, who lost her seat on July 4 as Labour overturned her 26,195 vote majority to win by 630 ballots, also appeared to take aim at the Tory Party’s so-called “Establishment” as she blamed Reform UK for losing her seat.
Reform UK’s Toby McKenzie received 9,958 votes, narrowly behind Truss’ 11,217 haul.
Speaking about the threat from Reform UK, Truss said: “I lost my seat largely due to Reform. Reform took a lot of my vote in South West Norfolk and I was frankly in quite a difficult position because I was running under a very orthodox Conservative Party while being an unorthodox Conservative myself.
“That’s what happened to us in many similar seats. Because Reform did so well, Conservatives lost and Labour got in. I don’t believe the people of South West Norfolk actually consciously wanted a Labour MP … They didn’t vote Labour because they were enthusiastic about the Labour Party, they voted Labour because they were fed up that we hadn’t delivered.”
When asked if she would have handled the threat from Nigel Farage better than Sunak, Truss argued: “When I was in No10, Reform was polling at three per cent. By the time we got to the election, I mean they got 18 per cent because we promised change that we didn’t deliver.
“Now, of course without the support of the parliamentary party it was very, very difficult for me to get my changes through. And if you have people in the parliamentary party saying ‘this is Liz Truss’s fault this has happened’… it is very difficult for me to deliver that change.”
Truss stepped short of claiming she would have won the election, adding: “I thought in 2022 that it was a very tall order to win.”
Despite Truss’ comments, the former Prime Minister remains the most unpopular politician in the UK.
Truss’ approval rating with all UK adults stands at -45 per cent, including -26 per cent among 2024 Conservative voters.
The figure is significantly lower than the -25 per cent for Sunak and -18 per cent for Farage.
Truss’ comments about Reform support being as low as three per cent appears to neglect the seismic shift after Farage announced he would stand in Clacton as the populist party’s leader.
Reform UK’s support was still in the single-digits in the weeks preceding Farage’s return, soaring to 14 per cent come July 4.
Truss also appeared to overlook Sunak trailed Sir Keir Starmer by just 10 per cent on July 4, with the ex-South West Norfolk MP languishing behind Labour by as much as 39 per cent.