REVEALED: Liz Truss exposes Westminster’s ‘biggest secret’ | Politics | News
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss has launched a brutal attack on Britain’s political “establishment” claiming that elected MPs have far less power than the public believes and that “unelected bureaucrats” are pulling the strings behind the scenes. In the latest episode of the Daily Expresso, the former Prime Minister was asked by host JJ Anisiobi: “What is the biggest secret Westminster is hiding from the world?”
Liz Truss answered: “I think the biggest secret Westminster is hiding is the fact that MPs don’t really have very much power and there’s a lot of pantomime politics going on. They are really beholden to the bureaucrats in terms of what they’re actually doing.”
She added: “They’re lying about how powerful they are.”
Her comments came during the Daily Expresso episode in which she slammed the Budget set out by Chancellor John Healey today, revisited the dramatic events surrounding her short-lived premiership, defended her controversial 2022 mini-budget and levelled fresh accusations against the Bank of England.
Asked directly who really holds power in Britain, she also said: “The bureaucrats have the power.”
She added: “I think people falsely think MPs have a lot of power.” The former PM said they have power collectively but not individually. “It’s the bureaucrats who have who have power individually,” she said.
In the episode, the former PM blamed the Bank of England for the 2022 market turmoil. She also criticised what she described as decades of poor economic policy, pointing to high taxation, migration and energy costs as factors holding Britain back.
One of her most explosive claims concerned the Bank of England’s role in the financial turmoil that followed her mini-budget in September 2022. Liz Truss insisted that the central bank, rather than her tax-cutting plans, was primarily responsible for the crisis that engulfed her government.
She also criticised the Bank’s decision to begin quantitative tightening which involves reducing its holdings of government bonds, after years of quantitative easing.
She claimed the Bank of England governor intervened over who should be appointed as the head of the Treasury and pressured her to reverse policies.
Ms Truss branded the Budget set out today as a “complete nothing burger” and described it as “tumbleweed.”
She said: “I thought it was a complete nothing burger. I mean nothing’s changed. It’s like tumbleweed. The country is still going to the dogs. The debt’s still going to be higher, the economy’s stagnated.
“The economic growth forecasts were downgraded again and we’re still heading for the cliff, we’re still heading for a fiscal crisis. It’s only because Paris is literally burning down that we look slightly better than France.
“But our debt is in a dire situation, and they’ve done nothing to actually attract companies to invest in the UK, to get fracking, to do the things we need to do to actually transform our economy from the basket case that it is at the moment.
Liz Truss was the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the UK for less than 50 days, resigning after a mini-budget announcement rocked the economy. Her exit made her the shortest-lived Prime Minister in UK history.
Ms Truss first became the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk in 2010 and since served in several cabinet posts, including Foreign Secretary and International Trade Secretary.
Daily Expresso episodes are available every weekday at 5pm on The Daily Express YouTube Channel.
