Liz Truss says Queen Elizabeth told her to 'pace herself' and admits she didn't listen

Liz Truss has said that the late Queen told her to “pace herself” when they met during her brief spell as Prime Minister - and admitted that she “should have listened”.

In a new memoir the former PM recalled her final meeting with the monarch in Balmoral in September 2022, just two days before her death.

She wrote of the meeting in an excerpt published by the Guardian: “We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics. She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty.

“Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”

During her premiership, Ms Truss introduced a series of radical economic reforms that sent the pound tumbling and forced the Bank of England to raise interest rates.

She was ousted as leader of the Conservative Party after just 49 days – the shortest period served by a Prime Minister in history.

Ms Truss’ book, Ten Years To Save The West, will be published in the US and UK next week.

Elsewhere in the book, she describes how the Queen’s death came as a “profound shock” which left her thinking: “Why me? Why now?”

Ms Truss admitted that she had not expected to lead the period of state mourning that followed the Queen’s death, saying it was “a long way from my natural comfort zone”.

She recalls watching the Queen’s coffin being brought from Balmoral to Edinburgh, writing that she broke down “into floods of tears on the sofa” after becoming “suddenly overwhelmed by the emotion of it all”.

Ms Truss added that the “grief was mixed with a feeling of awe over the sheer weight of the event, and the fact it was happening on my watch”.

For Labour, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said the former PM was guilty of breaking the cardinal rule that “you don't betray the confidence of what's said to you as Prime Minister with the monarch”.

“I think the fact she still shows her face shows she is utterly shameless,” he told host Emily Maitlis on The News Agents podcast. “What she did in her short tenure as prime minister was utterly catastrophic for this country.

“And you know, it's a pretty crowded field, isn't it, the last 14 years, which is the worst Conservative Prime Minister we've had? It's been a crowded and competitive field, but I cannot understand how she continues to parade around as if she's done nothing wrong.”

Since leaving No10, Ms Truss has travelled the world giving lucrative speeches defending her time in office.

In a speech given at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) near Washington DC last month, Ms Truss claimed that an “administrative state” and left-wing interests had sabotaged her policies in Downing Street.

She said: “Conservatives are now operating in what is now a hostile environment and we essentially need a bigger bazooka.”

Ms Truss caused controversy after appearing alongside figures on the far right, including Donald Trump’s former campaign architect and chief advisor Steve Bannon.

Rishi Sunak, her successor as PM, joked about conspiracy theories promoted by Mr Trump and Ms Truss about the so-called deep state when he appeared before MPs last month.

Asked by one MP if the deep state exists and who is in it, a laughing Mr Sunak said: “It’s probably a question for her.

“I probably wouldn't tell you if I was though, would I?” he added. “We wouldn't tell anyone else either, would we?”