Liz Truss: Former PM says she wasn’t ‘given a realistic chance’ as she speaks out following political return

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Liz Truss was prime minister of the UK for less than 50 days - she has now spoken out saying she wasn’t ‘given a realistic chance’

Former prime minister Liz Truss has spoken out about her time in number 10, saying that she believed her mandate “would be respected,” but that she was wrong on this. Ms Truss claimed the infamous title of shortest serving PM in British history when she resigned in October 2022.

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Her 44 day tenure as leader of the UK saw her follow in the footsteps of Boris Johnson. However, in her resignation speech, Ms Truss realised that she would not be able to deliver the mandate of a low tax, high growth economy.

Her very short tenure as PM did however make it so she was the last prime minister of Queen Elizabth II’s reign. Ms Truss was the 15th prime minister to meet the late Queen.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, she said: "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.

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"I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was. While I anticipated resistance to my programme from the system, I underestimated the extent of it.

"Similarly, I underestimated the resistance inside the Conservative parliamentary party to move to a lower-tax, less-regulated economy."

One of Ms Truss’ significant moments was dismissing her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng following the backlash received from the ‘mini-budget’ he put together. In the article, Ms Truss addresses this.

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The podium was only used by Liz Truss on a handful of occasionsThe podium was only used by Liz Truss on a handful of occasions
The podium was only used by Liz Truss on a handful of occasions | AFP via Getty Images

About the economic policy, she wrote: "Frankly, we were also pushing water uphill. Large parts of the media and the wider public sphere had become unfamiliar with key arguments about tax and economic policy and over time sentiment had shifted left-wards."

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