“As you are a disastrously failed PM with the shortest tenure in history and were turfed out by the electorate at the general election, we shall file your contribution appropriately.”
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss has been brutally mocked after offering up her opinion on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ spending plans.
Yesterday afternoon, in a statement to the Commons, Reeves set out the true state of the public finances facing the country, claiming that Labour has inherited “a projected overspend” of £22bn from the Tories.
She told the Commons: “Upon my arrival at the Treasury three weeks ago it became clear that there were things that I did not know, things that the party opposite covered up. Covered up from the opposition, covered up from this house, covered up from the country,” she added.
“They had exhausted the reserve, and they knew that – nobody else did.”
The chancellor warned that ‘difficult choices’ lay ahead, announcing emergency savings, including a £1.5bn cut to winter fuel payments for better-off pensioners, the axing of road and hospital schemes and the dropping of plans to cap social care costs.
But she said this would not be enough, confirming that a Budget on October 30 would be painful.
The Labour government have however announced pay deals for public servants, and a deal to settle the long-running pay dispute with junior doctors in England. The latter have been offered a 22.3% pay rise to end strike action. The British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors committee has agreed to put the offer to its members, and if it is accepted it will end months of walkouts over pay.
Truss, whose premiership ended after just 49 days after her disastrous mini-budget which included unfunded tax cuts for the rich, caused financial turmoil and sent mortgage rates soaring, thought she was well placed to lecture Reeves on the economy and it didn’t go down well.
While Reeves announced that the independent forecasters of the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) would no longer have to accept government numbers before making their predictions, a stark contrast to Truss who decided to bypass the OBR altogether, before unveiling her disastrous mini-Budget. Truss is furious at Labour’s plans.
The former Tory leader posted on X: “Labour’s Bill today hands more power to bureaucrats just when the Bank of England admits the 2022 market crisis was ITS fault.”
She went on to add: “Rather than giving more power to unelected bureaucrats, the Chancellor ought to be ordering an urgent investigation into what her former colleagues at the Bank of England were up to prior to the 2022 LDI market crisis and holding them to account.”
Reacting to her post, one user replied: “You added thousands to millions of household’s monthly outgoings. You cost us all dearly. We will NEVER forgive you.”
Another added: “Dear Liz. Thank you for your thoughts.
“As you are a disastrously failed PM with the shortest tenure in history and were turfed out by the electorate at the general election, we shall file your contribution appropriately.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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