Liz Truss has rebuked Rishi Sunak’s economic plan as she doubled down on her radical tax-cutting agenda in a shock comeback to frontline politics. In an extraordinary 4,000-word opinion piece in the Sunday Telegraph, Ms Truss blamed the “powerful economic establishment” for bringing her down. Ms Truss left office after just 49 days at No 10 when her controversial mini-budget, which included £45billion worth of unfunded tax cuts, sparked a financial meltdown and tanked the pound to a record low.
However, the shortest-serving prime minister was unrepentant and said her economic plans were “not given a realistic chance”.
She pointed the finger at Treasury officials, the IMF, the Office for Budget Responsibility, and a lack of support within the Conservative Party for making her job impossible.
Ms Truss said her radical and bold ideas were still the solution needed to revamp Britain rather than “manage decline or to preside over our country’s slide into stagnation”.
The intervention is set to stir divisions among Tory MPs, with many disappointed with Prime Minister Sunak’s failure to cut taxes, as well as his less aggressive stance on China.
Jeremy Hunt, who Ms Truss appointed as chancellor, has already said the budget in March will not include tax cuts.
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In a pointed dig at her successor, Ms Truss criticised the forthcoming rise in corporation tax from 19p to 25p in the pound as “economically detrimental”.
Within the party, Ms Truss’ allies have recently formed the Conservative Growth Group to push for her tax-cutting agenda.
A senior Truss supporter said: “There is a wellspring of support for her ideas but it is not about Liz, or Liz v Rishi, at all.
“It’s about the ideas which powered her to her victory.”
She has vowed to maintain a high public profile, despite her short, disastrous tenure in office.
In what is billed as a ‘hawkish’ speech, she will urge the world to be “better prepared” for conflict with China and hit out at President Xi Jinping’s rule.
One Truss ally said: “She’s expected to address Sunak’s decision to brand China a strategic competitor rather than a threat.”
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said Ms Truss’s policies “made working people pay the price”.
She said: “The Conservatives crashed the economy, sank the pound, put pensions in peril and made working people pay the price through higher mortgages for years to come.
“After 13 years of low growth, squeezed wages and higher taxes under the Tories, only Labour offers the leadership and ideas to fix our economy and to get it growing.”
Ms Truss’s return to the political stage follows Boris Johnson’s own staged comeback, having made visits to Ukraine as well as to the US in recent weeks.
