Liz Truss has overlooked her own disastrous mini-Budget once again in a bid to badmouth Labour’s major fiscal announcement today.
The ex-PM, who was kicked out of office after just 45 days over her own reckless spending plans, claimed the new government is going to introduce plenty of “pain” to Brits with its Budget.
Speaking to Talk on Wednesday, she said: “The problem is the economic situation was already bad.
“We had the highest taxes for 70 years, the government is spending almost half the national income, the civil service has ballooned in size.
“This is what I tried to stop in 2022.
“Taxes were going higher and higher, businesses were closing down, people are leaving the country, we’ve got the highest rate of millionaires leaving the country of any country in the world.”
Truss claimed “Labour seem hell bent” on making the country and its economy “even worse.”
It’s worth remembering that Truss’s own mini-Budget from two years ago included £45bn of unfunded tax cuts.
It sent the pound into free fall and the markets into chaos, meaning the Bank of England had to step in with an emergency intervention to buy government bonds.
Truss lost her place in No.10 as a result, and was later kicked out of her constituency seat at July’s general election.
Her catastrophic “mistakes” are frequently cited by Labour to explain why it is taking such caution with their economic plans, especially as the government is looking to raise £40bn with this Budget.
In fact, chancellor Rachel Reeves said earlier this year that millions of people “are still paying the price” for Truss’s decisions.
But Truss still criticised the government’s plan to put taxes up by £35bn, claiming this “will stop businesses investing in this country”.
She also slammed Labour’s intentions to make the “net zero rules so tough it kills business because they can’t get cheap energy”.
She said: “We’ve seen the steel industry go under, we’ve seen refineries go under.
“And I think this is just the start of the pain I think it’s going to be a very painful day.”
“Next year. Labour are going to come back for more,” she added.
Understandably, quite a few people on social media were left asking just why she was offering economic analysis over the upcoming Budget...
... And a few Labour MPs also drew attention to her words, delighting in the fact that a former PM with such a terrible economic legacy did not back Labour’s Budget.