Liz Truss book - latest: Ex-PM claims she was ‘too busy’ to back Brexit – as she endorses Trump

Liz Truss has claimed she was “too busy” to back Brexit as she backs Donald Trump to win November’s US presidential election.

It comes as Ms Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, said the “world was safer” under Trump’s presidency as she criticised incumbent Joe Biden.

The former PM, who was in office for 49 days, suggested she may have backed Vote Leave if she had “time for more existential thinking”.

Ms Truss said wanting to leave the EU was “considered quite a far out, fringe position”.

But she added: “Had I spend more of my time thinking about it during those years, I might have come to share that view… but I had been busy as a minister, knee-deep in floods and other distractions”.

Ms Truss also launched into a scathing attack on President Joe Biden saying it “has to be” Donald Trump to win.

“I don’t think (President Joe) Biden has been particularly supportive to the United Kingdom. I think he’s often on the side of the EU. And I certainly think I would like to see a new president in the White House,” she told LBC.

Key Points

• Liz Truss tried to cancel Cop26 climate conference

• Liz Truss claims it is ‘very stupid’ to say she crashed the economy

• Liz Truss says she would have backed Brexit but was too ‘busy'

• Liz Truss details meeting with Queen

Liz Truss refuses to rule out another run as Tory Party leader

14:20 , Barney Davis

Liz Truss could run for leader of the Conservative Party again saying “it’s never wise to rule anything out in politics, is it?”

The Tory former prime minister claimed she had “unfinished business” at the top of politics, as she toured the media ahead of the publication of her book, Ten Years To Save The West.

Her tenure in Downing Street lasted just 49 days, after the mini budget, which included unfunded tax cutting measures, triggered mass market turmoil.

Asked by LBC if she would want to return to frontline politics in the event the Conservatives lose the coming general election, Ms Truss said: “I definitely have unfinished business. Definitely. And I think the Conservative Party has unfinished business.

“I think, if we’re honest with ourselves, we haven’t done enough to reverse the Blair legacy.”

Ms Truss insisted she had not written her book “to run a leadership campaign”, but wanted to build support for her political ideas.

But pressed if she would rule out standing for the Tory leadership in future, she said: “Well, it’s never wise to rule anything out in politics, is it?”

Liz Truss’ explosive new memoir Ten Years to Save the West is out now – here’s where to buy

13:40 , Barney Davis

Having famously been outlasted by an iceberg lettuce in a blonde wig, Truss’s new book is an attempt to explain the failures of her time in office – including her radical free-market policies that crashed the British economy.

If you’re interested in getting your hands on a copy Daisy Lester’s writes:

Where to buy Liz Truss’ new book Ten Years to Save the West

'Liz Truss’s memoir is ludicrous and shows how unworthy of office our shortest-serving PM was’

12:38 , Barney Davis

Read Sean O’Grady’s scathing one-star review of Liz Truss’ “self-serving and poorly composed” ‘Ten Years to Save the West’, in which she recaps her doomed, disastrous 49 days in office.

Liz Truss’s ludicrous memoir shows how unworthy of office our shortest-serving PM was

‘14 years to ruin a nation’ Labour mock Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak on fake book cover

12:20 , Barney Davis

The Labour Party are having fun mocking Liz Truss’ memoir by splicing an image with Rishi Sunak on the front and changing the title on her publication day.

The ex-Tory leader, who took over from Boris Johnson in the summer of 2022, has offered a look behind the scenes in her memoir Ten Years to Save the West.

But Labour changed the title to ‘14 years to ruin a nation’ in a dig at Tory rule adding tongue-in-cheek quotes from Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Rishi Sunak.

Liz Truss only offered £1.5k advance on memoir

11:52 , Barney Davis

Liz Truss was paid just over £1,500 for her advance on the UK rights to her memoir 10 Years to Save the West.

On her register of interests for 7 March 2024, it says she received £1,512.88 from Biteback Publishing Ltd as an initial advance on a book.

She was received £6,161.40 from Regnery Publishing for the US rights.

In comparison, Nicola Sturgeon got the first of 4 £75,000 advances totalling £300,000 for her “deeply personal and revealing” memoir, after a bidding war between nine publishers.

Liz Truss called for National Insurance to be scrapped - in 1997

11:20 , Archie Mitchell

Liz Truss has revealed that she called for National Insurance (NI) to be scrapped in 1997, a pledge which Rishi Sunak has adopted in recent weeks.

As senior Labour figures including Wes Streeting warn that a vote for Rishi Sunak is a vote for Ms Truss, the ex-PM’s book reveal that she called to abolish the tax at Tory conference in front of Margaret Thatcher 27 years ago.

“It was a fake tax, claiming to be an ‘insurance’ against unemployment and sickness. In fact, it was just another way of fleecing the British public,” she said.

Mr Sunak said last month it is his “long term ambition” to scrap the levy, describing it as a form of “double taxation”.

Shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth said Mr Sunak was “drawing from the Liz Truss playbook” and risked “making the same mistakes” as the ex-PM, who sent mortgage rates soaring.

Partygate investigator Sue Gray gave Liz Truss a hug

11:12 , Archie Mitchell

Sue Gray hugged Liz Truss after the ex-PM was demoted from justice secretary to chief Treasury secretary by Theresa May, the memoir reveals.

Ms Truss has described being taken by Ms May into the Margaret Thatcher study and told that she was being demoted to the more junior post outside the cabinet.

The then deputy cabinet secretary Ms Gray was on hand for consolation, however.

Ms Truss wrote: “Before I left Downing Street, I had to see the Cabinet Office official responsible for the mechanics of ministerial appointments, Sue Gray.

“To my surprise, she took it upon herself to commiserate with me by giving me a hug, before telling me that as a result of my demotion, my salary was being cut.

“I didn’t welcome her unsolicited embrace – I am not a hugger – but given how delicate I was feeling, she got off lightly.”

Ms Gray went on to author the daming Partygate report into Boris Johnson’s No10 during lockdown and now works as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

Liz Truss mixed up Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden’s wives

10:54 , Archie Mitchell

The former PM said she mixed up US first lady Jill Biden and Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte.

Writing about an event at the Ukrainian Institute of America, Liz Truss said: “Across the room I saw a blonde lady I recognised. I called out ‘Hi, Dr Biden!’ to the woman I believed was the US First Lady.

“As she got closer, I realised it wasn’t her at all, but French President Macron’s wife, Brigitte. I hope she didn’t hear.”

Liz Truss warns Donald Trump that the ‘deep state’ is out to get him

10:35 , Barney Davis

Liz Truss has warned Donald Trump that the “deep state” will try to bring him down if he is victorious in the election.

“The administrative state undermined Mr Trump’s first term and undermined my tenure as Britain’s prime minister, forcing me out of office after 49 days,” she writes in the Wall Street Journal.

“I assumed that I would be able to drive through the agenda on which I was elected. How wrong I was. The opaque British bureaucratic state undermined my proposed reforms, and their American equivalents will have Mr Trump in their sights if he is victorious in November. The deep state will attempt to undercut him even more than it did in his first term.”

Liz Truss endorses Donald Trump for US President: ‘The world was safer’

Liz Truss wing of the Tory party fighting against smoking ban - Labour shadow minister claims

10:07 , Barney Davis

Wes Streeting has accused the Liz Truss wing of the Conservatives of trying to choke off the smoking ban that is due to be debated today.

He posted on X: “Rishi Sunak might be weak but Labour will not allow the Liz Truss wing of the Conservative Party to choke off the Smoking Bill today.

“We will give our full support to this Bill so that the next generation are even less likely to smoke than they are to vote Conservative.”

Liz Truss says she was ‘too busy’ to back Brexit

08:55 , Archie Mitchell

Liz Truss has said she was “too busy” to back Brexit during the 2016 referendum campaign.

The ex-PM, who campaigned for Remain in the run-up to the Brexit vote, said she may have backed Vote Leave if she had “time for more existential thinking”.

Ms Truss said wanting to leave the EU was “considered quite a far out, fringe position”.

But she added: “Had I spend more of my time thinking about it during those years, I might have come to share that view… but I had been busy as a minister, knee-deep in floods and other distractions”.

She also said she was reluctant to back the Leave campaign because she “did not think it could win” and out of loyalty to David Cameron and George Osborne who had “put me where I was”.

Liz Truss tried to cancel Cop26 climate conference

08:17 , Archie Mitchell

Liz Truss has admitted she tried to scrap the Cop26 climate conference, hosted in Glasgow in 2021.

The former PM was chief secretary to the Treasury at the time and, in her memoir, says she “strongly questioned” whether the “jamboree” should be a priority for the government - pointing to the £200m+ price tag.

Ms Truss’s predecessor and then boss Boris Johnson said Cop26 was a summit that “proved the doubters wrong”, hailing it as a success that drew 120 heads of state to Britain and saw the world “unite in calling time on coal”.

Ms Truss wrote in her book that she was in “a minority of one” in questioning the conference, which she described as “environmental virtue signalling”.

She added that, after trying to ditch Cop26, then environment secretary Michael Gove described her as “the Grinch who wants to stop Christmas”.

Tory minister ‘not planning to’ read Liz Truss book

07:49 , Archie Mitchell

A senior Tory has said she is “not planning to” read Liz Truss’s memoir, describing it as an attempt for the former PM to “vindicate her time in office”.

Laura Farris, the minister for victims and safeguarding, said “I perhaps don’t agree with everything that she has to say”.

Asked by Sky News about the Liberal Democrat claim that Ms Truss is a “national embarrassment”, Ms Farris said she would “not get into personal criticisms”.

She added: “I know that she has an account of her time in office, what she thinks happened… I have always been very supportive of the prime minister [Rishi Sunak].”

Liz Truss claims ‘unconscious racism’ was more important than reading and writing at school

07:06 , Archie Mitchell

Liz Truss has said lessons about “unconscious racism” were more of a priority at her school than “ensuring everyone could read and write properly”.

The ex-PM, who went to a state secondary school in Leeds in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said “political correctness pervaded everything it did”.

She said she did not want to describe it as a “sink” school, but that it was simply “not particularly bad and not particularly good either”.

Ms Truss wrote: “What wound me up was the political correctness that pervaded everything it did, and the sense that lessons on unconscious racism seemed more of a priority than ensuring that everyone could read and write properly.”

Nick Clegg ‘much better suited to California and Facebook’, Truss says

06:59 , Archie Mitchell

Liz Truss has added ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to the growing list of figures she has attacked for thwarting her Conservative ideas.

Attacking his June 2013 decision to block a package of childcare reforms she was attempting to champion, Ms Truss said Sir Nick would “rather be popular than do the right thing”. “He has now found a much more appropriate home in California and is working for Facebook,” she added.

Sir Nick is the president of global affairs at Facebook’s parent company Meta.

Truss reveals Tories saw Lib Dems as ‘spies’ in coalition

06:52 , Archie Mitchell

As well as moaning about uncooperative civil servants, Liz Truss used her book to complain about the headaches of coalition government.

“I also had to deal with the fact that back then we Conservatives were serving in a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats,” she wrote.

She added: “Each government department had a Liberal Democrat minister working alongside the Conservatives (known to us as spies).”

Ms Truss accused the party of seeking to score “political points with the progressive left” and said it was the “way of life” for education ministers to bypass the Lib Dems and the “rather wet” Conservatives in No10.

‘I was branded a “martinet” by civil servants,’ Truss claims

06:45 , Archie Mitchell

Liz Truss has hit out at civil servants for delivering her reforms too slowly, and claimed she was branded a “martinet” for phoning them directly to ask why deadlines had been missed.

Writing about her first government job, as a junior minister in the Department for Education, Ms Truss said she felt like “a child emperor”.

“Your every whim about how you would like your coffee served or your papers stacked is pandered to,” she said.

But she added that when it came to her “challenging the way the system operates”, there were “endless ways requests could be evaded”.

The ex-PM said civil servants were “not impressed” when she began phoning them directly to ask why deadlines had not been met, while “friends across government” had “quiet words” with her about the approach.

“Articles appeared in the press describing me as a ‘martinet’ (a strict disciplinarian),” she added. “And all just for asking officials to do things and adhere to deadlines!” she exclaimed.

Liz Truss: ‘Very stupid to say I crashed the economy’

06:08 , Archie Mitchell

Liz Truss has said those who accuse her of “crashing the economy” with her disastrous tax-cutting budget are either “very stupid or very malevolent”.

The former PM, whose so-called mini budget helped wipe around £425bn from UK pension funds in 2022, said those who make the claim “are not telling the truth”.

In a Daily Telegraph interview to promote her book Ten Years to Save the West, Ms Truss said: “The people who claim I crashed the economy are not telling the truth.

“They’re either very stupid or very malevolent. Because it’s clearly not true so they should be ashamed of themselves.”

Labour has repeatedly accused Ms Truss of having “crashed the economy” with the September 2022 financial event.

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has accused Ms Truss of making a “twisted victory lap” to promote the memoir, repeating the claim that the Conservatives under Ms Truss “crashed the economy”.

Closing blog

Saturday 13 April 2024 15:53 , Athena Stavrou

We are closing this liveblog for now. You can see the latest news on Liz Truss here.

Pictures: Liz Truss’ meeting with the late Queen

Saturday 13 April 2024 14:00 , Athena Stavrou

Liz Truss thought ‘why me, why now?’ after Queen’s death, new memoir reveals

Saturday 13 April 2024 13:00 , Athena Stavrou

Liz Truss has revealed she thought “why me, why now?” when she learned the Queen had died just two days after she was sworn in as prime minister.

In her new book, Ten Years to Save the West, Truss admitted she went into “a state of shock” when told of Queen Elizabeth II’s death in 2022.

Of her historic meeting at Balmoral in Scotland, which occurred just two days before the monarch’s death, Truss says the 96-year-old Queen “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.

Read more:

Liz Truss thought ‘why me, why now?’ after Queen’s death, new memoir reveals

Truss says husband predicted premiership ‘would all end in tears’

Saturday 13 April 2024 11:45 , Athena Stavrou

In an excerpt of her new book, former prime minister Liz Truss revealed how her husband predicted her premiership “would all end in tears”.

In her memoir, Truss describes the moment she learnt that her predecessor, Boris Johnson, was forced to resign.

She was in Bali at the time as foreign secretary and said: “As I walked along the beach in Indonesia I started crying.”

“Even Hugh [her husband], who predicted it would all end in tears, accepted that this was the moment I was expected to run and that if I didn’t, people would say I had bottled it,” Truss writes.

Liz Truss blames Boris Johnson’s dog for fleas in No 10

Saturday 13 April 2024 09:45 , Athena Stavrou

Liz Truss has suggested Boris Johnson’s dog left fleas in No 10 in extraordinary extracts from her new book.

The bombshell revelations include that she spent several of her six weeks as prime minister “itching” because Downing Street was “infested” with the pests.

“The place was infested with fleas,” she wrote. “Some claimed that this was down to Boris and Carrie’s dog Dilyn, but there was no conclusive evidence. In any case, the entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching.”

Liz Truss defends approach to tenure

Saturday 13 April 2024 09:41 , Athena Stavrou

Liz Truss served in office for just 49 days, making her Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.

Many attribute her downfall to the government’s radical tax-cutting policy agenda that tanked the pound.

But the MP for South West Norfolk defended her approach in her memoir, suggesting the “pro-Remain” Treasury, Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility were “barriers to our plans”.

She said she had been considering whether to “appoint new senior leaders in the Bank of England and Treasury” but admitted this would have “amounted to a declaration of war on the economic establishment”.

“It would also have taken time we didn’t have,” she said.

Saturday 13 April 2024 09:36 , Athena Stavrou

In her new memoir, Liz Truss said that the “machine kicked into action” when word reached Number 10 that the Queen would not able to join a planned meeting via videolink, as planned.

“My black mourning dress was fetched from my house in Greenwich, south London.

“Frantic phone calls took place with Buckingham Palace. I started to think about what on earth I was going to say if the unthinkable happened.

“On Thursday, we received the solemn news that the Queen had died peacefully at Balmoral. To be told this on only my second full day as Prime Minister felt utterly unreal. In a state of shock, I found myself thinking: ‘Why me, why now?’”

Full extract of Truss’ meeting with the Queen

Saturday 13 April 2024 09:32 , Athena Stavrou

In an extract published on Mail+ of her memoir Ten Years to Save the West, Ms Truss said: “That Tuesday, September 6 2022, she was standing up as she greeted me in her drawing room. I was told she’d made a special effort to do so but she gave no hint of discomfort throughout our discussion.

“This was only my second one-on-one audience with her. On the previous occasion, after I’d been removed from a different job in the Government, she’d remarked that being a woman in politics was tough.

“For about 20 minutes, we discussed politics — and it was clear she was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty. There simply wasn’t any sense that the end would come as quickly as it did.”

Liz Truss details meeting with Queen

Saturday 13 April 2024 09:26 , Athena Stavrou

Liz Truss has detailed her short tenure in Downing Street including her meeting with the late Queen in her new memoir.

In the first excerpt of her book, titled Ten Years to Save the West, the former prime minister said that she asked, “why me, why now?” when Queen Elizabeth II died just two days into her premiership.

Of her historic meeting at Balmoral in Scotland in September 2022Truss says the 96-year-old the Queen “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.

“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics. She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty,” she writes in Mail+.

Ms Truss, whose tenure in Downing Street lasted just 49 days after her disastrous mini-budget unleashed economic chaos, also revealed the late Queen told her to “pace yourself”.

“Maybe I should have listened,” the former PM said.