With daughters at her side, Liz leaves job she always craved
A DEFIANT Liz truss left downing Street for the final time yesterday, insisting she had been right to be bold on the economy.
After finishing her term as the shortest-serving prime minister in history, Miss truss made no apologies for her chaotic period in office and instead claimed she was ‘more convinced than ever’ of her approach.
She hailed her achievements from the freeze on energy bills to reversing the controversial national insurance hike.
And she made a stab at a Boris Johnson-like quotation from the classics – making reference to the Roman philosopher Seneca, who said: ‘it is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.’ Miss truss held a final Cabinet meeting yesterday morning before delivering her farewell speech outside no 10, five days after she announced her resignation and only seven weeks since she entered office.
Her husband Hugh O’Leary and their daughters frances and Liberty were watching, while aides and loyal MPs – including therese Coffey – gathered outside no 11.
Miss truss had shielded her children from the public eye throughout her time as an MP, and her husband has kept a low-profile. But the family faced the cameras as they left through the front door of no 10 together.
frances, 16, and Liberty, 13, stood with their father as Miss truss spoke, then followed behind their parents to Buckingham
Palace. As is tradition, the family were expected to meet the King after Miss truss’s final audience with the monarch.
She plans to spend more time with her family and will continue to serve her South West norfolk constituency from the backbenches.
Sources said Miss truss was in good spirits as she spent the morning finalising her three-minute speech with advisers, then thanked staff for their work and signed leaving cards.
She took photos with aides before her family joined her and her close staff in the Cabinet room for a final goodbye.
in her speech, Miss truss said it had been a ‘huge honour’ to serve as prime minister, in particular to ‘lead the nation in mourning the death of Her Late Majesty the Queen’.
‘in just a short period, this government has acted urgently and decisively on the side of hard-working families and businesses,’ she said from the lectern outside no 10.
‘ We reversed the national insurance increase. We helped millions of households with their energy bills and helped thousands of businesses avoid bankruptcy.
‘ We are taking back our energy independence so we are never again
‘I know that brighter days lie ahead’
beholden to global market fluctuations or malign foreign powers. from my time as prime minister, i am more convinced than ever we need to be bold and confront the challenges that we face.’
despite being forced to reverse almost all of the tax cuts announced in an ill-fated
mini-budget, Miss Truss insisted Britain ‘cannot afford’ to be a low-growth country where the Government ‘ takes up an increasing share of our national wealth’.
‘We need to take advantage of our Brexit freedoms to do things differently. This means delivering more freedom for our own citizens and restoring power in democratic institutions,’ she said.
‘It means lower taxes, so people keep more of the money they earn. It means delivering growth that will lead to more job security, higher wages and greater opportunities for our children and grandchildren.’
With the Ukrainian flag flying over No 10, she said support for the war-torn country was needed ‘now more than ever’, and urged her successor to ‘ continue to strengthen our nation’s defences’.
Miss Truss wished Rishi Sunak ‘every success, for the good of our country’, adding: ‘Our country continues to battle through a storm. But I believe in Britain. I believe in the British people. And I know that brighter days lie ahead.’
Her term as PM falls months short of the next briefest – Tory George Canning, who spent 118 full days in office in 1827 before dying of TB. After a disastrous time at the helm, Miss Truss announced her resignation as Tory leader on Thursday – following a catastrophic 24 hours which saw Government discipline collapse.
On Wednesday afternoon she sacked Suella Braverman as home secretary following a row about immigration , then had to plead with chief whip Wendy Morton and her deputy Craig Whittaker not to resign after a chaotic Commons vote on fracking, leading to growing calls from her MPs for her to quit.