Ex-U.K. PM Truss blames ‘system’ for her failure
LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss says her failure wasn’t her fault.
Ms. Truss on Sunday blamed a “powerful economic establishment” and internal Conservative Party opposition for the rapid collapse of her government, and said she still believes her tax-cutting policies were the right ones.
Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister resigned in October, six weeks into the job, after her inaugural budget plan sparked market mayhem.
Breaking her post-premiership silence in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Ms. Truss said she underestimated the resistance her freemarket policies would face from “the system.”
“I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support,” she wrote.
Ms. Truss took office in September after winning a Conservative Party leadership contest to replace scandal-tarnished Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Her promise to spur economic growth with tax cuts and deregulation enthused Tory members, but a budget containing 45 billion pounds ($54 billion) in unfunded tax cuts spooked the financial markets.
The prospect of more debt and higher inflation sent the pound plunging to its lowestever level against the U.S. dollar. The cost of government borrowing soared and the Bank of England had to step in to prop up the bond market and prevent a wider economic meltdown that threatened people’s pensions.
Ms. Truss first fired her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, then quit herself.
In the article, she claimed her government was made a “scapegoat” for long-brewing instability with liability driven investments, a form of bond market derivatives in which pension funds are heavily invested.