Liz Truss has sent Keir Starmer a cease and desist letter demanding he stops saying she crashed the economy.
The former prime minister – who was in office for the historically short period of just 49 days – has rallied her legal team to warn the Labour leader that such remarks are likely to “cause serious harm to her reputation”.
The letter, first seen by The Telegraph, claims Starmer’s comments made in the run-up to the general election from May 2024 were “false and defamatory”, and contributed to Truss losing her South West Norfolk seat.
It claims Starmer made the statements “at a time when you knew or ought to have known that those statements were false and the statements were likely to materially impact public opinion of our client”.
“Our client requests that you immediately cease and desist from repeating the defamatory statements at any point, from causing them to be repeated or from otherwise re-publishing the defamatory statements or any part of them,” her lawyers said.
Labour has regularly pointed to Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget to explain its own economic decisions.
The civil service also referred to the fiscal event three times for the King’s Speech last year – prompting the ex-PM to ask for them to be removed.
Truss was kicked out of office after her mini-Budget of October 2022 – complete with £45bn of unfunded tax cuts – sent the markets into freefall, so much so the Bank of England had to step in to stabilise the economy.
She then took the title for serving the shortest tenure in No.10 in UK history.
Truss also lost her parliamentary seat by 630 votes in the July general election to Labour, having won 69% of the votes in 2019.
But Truss’s legal team argue that her mini-Budget was not responsible for crashing the economy as there was no fall in economic output or rise in unemployment.
It pointed to a report from a fellow of the right-wing think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, Andrew Lilico, which claimed the economy actually grew faster just after the fiscal event.
Truss has repeatedly blamed the Bank of England for the crisis instead, claiming its actions towards pension funds left companies more vulnerable to fluctuations in gilt interest rates.
Asked for his response this morning, the prime minister’s spokesperson told reporters: “I don’t think the prime minister is the only person in the country who shares the view in relation to the previous government’s handling of the economy.
“I guess the question is whether she will be writing to millions of people up and down the country as well over her economic record which put mortgage bills up.”
He also said the PM “absolutely stands by” what he has said about Truss’s handling of the economy.
Truss’s letter comes after borrowing costs reached their highest level for almost 17 years on Wednesday, months after Labour unveiled its first Budget.