It wasn’t me: Ex-UK PM Truss blames 'system' for her failure

It wasn’t me: Ex-UK PM Truss blames 'system' for her failure

SeattlePI.com

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LONDON (AP) — Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss says her failure wasn't her fault.

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, Truss said she underestimated the resistance her free-market 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.

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 — including an income tax reduction for the highest earners — spooked the financial markets.

The prospect of more debt and higher inflation sent the pound plunging to its lowest-ever 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.

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...

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