Liz Truss’ chaotic 49-day term as Prime Minister began to crumble at its halfway point, when Britain’s shortest serving head of government burst into tears as she worked on her Tory party conference speech.
A new book about Ms Truss – who has recaptured her crown for having the shortest tenure in No 10 after Sir Keir Starmer reached 50 days in office this week – claims she wept during a study session in the days after her disastrous mini-budget.
It claims that ally and chancellor-to-be Kwasi Kwarteng attempted to warn her away from her radical economic plan that ultimately wreaked havoc on Britain’s economy during the Tory leadership contest triggered by Boris Johnson’s resignation.
But Truss is said to have ‘freaked out’ at this suggestion – while other Tory radicals such as Suella Braverman were lined up for big roles and Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested ‘plugging in’ a nuclear submarine to power the National Grid.
Truss at 10, by renowned political biographer Anthony Seldon, details these and other extraordinary episodes from the most chaotic prime ministership in history.
An extract of the book published in the Times details how advisers were told to ‘let Liz be Liz’ as she curated populist support among the Tories’ extreme fringes while moderates looked on in horror.
As she saw off competition during the Tory leadership contest until only she and successor-in-waiting Rishi Sunak were left, she was spurred on to embrace her ultimately economy-wrecking policies in the ill-fated mini budget.
Those watching from the sidelines, powerless to stop it because of Truss’ hungry desire to be seen to get things done, said her allies vied with one another to come up with the most outlandish ideas.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former North East Somerset MP, reportedly suggested plugging a nuclear submarine into the city of Liverpool to show Brits that energy produced this way was safe.
He is reported to have said: ‘We need more small (nuclear) reactors in the UK. We should get a nuclear submarine to dock at Liverpool and plug it into the grid. That would show people it was safe.’
Her own political allies, including Kwarteng, say Truss began to lose her perspective as it became clear she was going to beat Sunak in the leadership race.
One anecdote in the book details how she reprimanded one aide who laughed at the suggestion of Braverman as home secretary, telling him to ‘stay in his lane’.
She reportedly took to heart the flagship policies that would come to define her ill-fated legacy: the one per cent cut in income tax; the abolition of the 45 per cent tax rate; a reversal of plans to hike corporation tax and National Insurance.
Kwasi Kwarteng, her chancellor-to-be, is said to have taken her aside and begged her to slow down – pointing out that Margaret Thatcher waited two years before unleashing her era-defining 1981 budget to shore up the government’s tax coffers.
Despite marching against her in the 1980s as a Liberal Democrat activist, Truss later has made no secret of claiming to idolise the Conservative matriarch.
‘At that, Liz freaked out,’ the book quotes him as saying. He later admitted: ‘I should have put my foot down harder.’
But Truss – infamously drawing Thatcher comparisons when she was photographed in an Estonian tank in 2021 as foreign secretary – soldiered on, reportedly shutting down further discussions on her economic policies.
And when Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8 at Balmoral – just two days after Truss had been granted permission to form a government – and Britain entered a period of mourning, there were no more opportunities to fire warning shots across the new PM’s bow.
‘We’ve had ten years of stagnation and no Conservative policies. We need shock and awe,’ she is alleged to have said ahead of the September 29 disaster.
There were murmurs beforehand that things were going to go very wrong, very quickly. The government refused to follow convention by publishing the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts – a gut-wrenching red flag.
And so when Kwarteng stood up to present the mini-budget Truss had prepared, it all began to crumble.
Before he had even taken a seat, the pound was in freefall. The International Monetary Fund took the unusual step of openly criticising the Truss budget, noting in muted terms the plans would ‘likely increase inequality’.
Banks and building societies withdrew their cheapest mortgage offers the next day, fearing a hike in interest rates. In all, almost half of all mortgage products were withdrawn from the UK market.
The Bank of England, reportedly blindsided by the extremes of the Truss budget, was forced to buy UK Government bonds to keep pension funds heavily invested in them afloat.
And then Kwarteng sat in another fateful hotseat – that of Laura Kuenssberg’s flagship BBC politics show – and, reportedly briefed by Truss, uttered the ill-fated words: ‘There’s more to come.’
The fallout continued even as the U-turns began, with the abolition of the 45 per cent tax rate and the corporation tax cut canned in quick succession.
Truss lashed out at what she called the ‘anti-growth coalition’ during her Tory party conference speech – concocted in those teary, behind-closed-door prep sessions – while Britain’s economy did nothing but shrink before her eyes.
And as the prime minister reportedly floundered seeking support where there was none, she sacked Kwarteng and replaced him with Jeremy Hunt on October 14.
But by then, the damage was done, and it was capped off by the Daily Star’s ‘lettuce Liz’ livestream, showing a root vegetable next to a picture of the PM and the caption: ‘Can Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?’
It was inspired by a disparaging comment in The Economist which compared the lifetime of her premiership to the shelf life of the vegetable.
On October 20, the lettuce – by then decorated with shoes, hands, a cheesy grin and a blonde wig – won out.
Truss announced her resignation, and Britain’s shortest-tenure prime minister found herself inextricably linked with the leafy green for the rest of her political life. She was unseated as South West Norfolk MP last month.
Last week, she found herself fuming after political pranksters Led By Donkeys dropped a banner of a googly-eyed lettuce from behind her as she spoke during an event promoting her book, Ten Years to Save the West.
The book has been criticised for reflecting what appears to be a lack of contrition from the former PM for the policies that went wrong on her watch – and included falsified quotes dreamt up by conspiracy theories.
She has since said she was ‘horrified’ to learn of the false quotes’ true origins, which she said she found online.
Seldon’s book, Truss at 10, is released on August 29. He has previously written biographies of prime ministers Winston Churchill, Sir John Major, Sir Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.