TRIGGERnometry - My 49 Days as Prime Minister - Liz Truss

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00:00:59.840 I faced really, really quite strong forces pushing against my agenda.

00:01:06.520 We have a situation in Britain where we have a very powerful economic establishment

00:01:12.840 that has a particular set of views and did not like to be challenged.

00:01:16.960 And what I did was challenge those views.

00:01:20.120 Looking back at your time and power, what would you change?

00:01:23.800 I think the biggest thing I could have changed is whether I ran in the leadership election.

00:01:28.440 Looking at the Conservative Party now, I mean, to put it bluntly,

00:01:32.120 they're in pretty dire straits, aren't they?

00:01:35.120 Well, the polls are not good.

00:01:39.960 Liz Truss, thank you for coming on the show.

00:01:41.800 You haven't given many interviews since leaving Downing Street,

00:01:44.840 so we're delighted to have you.

00:01:48.280 Let's get to it. I mean, what happened?

00:01:52.280 We don't do much warm-up here.

00:01:53.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:54.760 So what happened?

00:01:55.960 Well, looking back on 2022, I was frustrated about the direction of the country,

00:02:07.520 the direction of the Conservative Party.

00:02:09.240 I decided that I had to run in the leadership election

00:02:13.800 because I believed we needed more Conservative policies, frankly.

00:02:18.320 Lower taxes, smaller government, we needed to get the economy growing.

00:02:23.680 And there wasn't really anybody else putting that case forward.

00:02:28.560 And I'd been spending quite a lot of time putting that case forward.

00:02:32.240 As a member of the government, you know, you can argue your corner.

00:02:36.720 But the general trajectory, I know that was partly because of COVID,

00:02:42.400 it was partly because of the war in Ukraine,

00:02:44.080 it had been towards higher taxes, higher spending, more intervention.

00:02:52.480 And I thought we needed a change.

00:02:54.720 And I very much believe that's what people in Britain vated for.

00:02:58.400 They vated for that in 2016. They vated for that in 2019.

00:03:03.280 And I wanted to deliver that.

00:03:05.360 And I knew at the time that it would be difficult.

00:03:07.440 I knew that I wasn't going with the grain of what people,

00:03:14.080 or particularly the sort of broader elite and intelligentsia in Britain thought.

00:03:18.640 But I thought it was the right thing to do, so I put myself forward.

00:03:21.840 And what happened, I mean, I write about this at length in my book,

00:03:27.040 Ten Years to Save the West, which goes through exactly what happened.

00:03:31.920 But essentially, I faced really, really quite strong forces pushing against my agenda.

00:03:40.000 And ultimately, those forces were able to stop it happening.

00:03:44.640 We're going to get into the forces, because I think that's a very interesting conversation

00:03:48.400 that we've had with previous politicians on the show.

00:03:50.880 So Ella Braverman was sitting in your chair only a month ago,

00:03:53.760 basically saying she couldn't do anything for the same reasons that you're giving, actually, in many ways.

00:03:58.800 But the first thing I want to get into is this idea of smaller government and lower taxes.

00:04:05.040 That got Margaret Thatcher elected and re-elected numerous times in this country within living memory.

00:04:10.480 But now that seems to be unsellable.

00:04:15.120 I'm not sure if it's true that it got her elected.

00:04:18.000 I think what got her elected was the winter of discontent.

00:04:21.440 It was the fact that things had got so bad that people were saying, we need change.

00:04:27.280 And she offered a coherent vision of change.

00:04:30.720 But she offered that off the back of it was clear that Britain wasn't working,

00:04:35.360 that our industry was doing badly, that our economy was doing badly.

00:04:40.000 And she had an alternative.

00:04:41.600 And I think we've lost those lessons.

00:04:44.480 So all the hard work that was done, getting Britain on track, getting our economy on track,

00:04:51.600 making the private sector successful, has gradually been undone over time.

00:04:57.360 And people don't always learn the lessons of history.

00:05:00.640 And I think people have forgotten what it was that transformed Britain.

00:05:05.120 And therefore, what we need to do.

00:05:08.480 So yes, those ideas have become unfashionable, even though they're right.

00:05:13.280 It's true.

00:05:13.760 Liz, you say forces at play.

00:05:19.280 What does that mean?

00:05:20.240 So what I mean by that is, first of all, I mean sort of general political and ideological forces.

00:05:29.840 Constantine was just talking about how it's not fashionable to believe in supply-side economics.

00:05:35.200 It's not fashionable to believe in monetarism.

00:05:37.600 You know, those ideas that were shown to be correct in the 80s have been superseded.

00:05:46.160 You know, they've become, they're no longer fashionable in our universities.

00:05:50.720 They're no longer talked about free market economics and profit.

00:05:56.000 You know, it has become something that is not popularly talked about.

00:06:00.720 So I think that was one issue that the general tide was not pointing in that direction.

00:06:06.560 But the second thing, and when I say forces, I mean people who are part of the bureaucracy,

00:06:14.640 part of the government administrative state, did not support those policies,

00:06:20.480 and in some cases made it harder for those policies to be delivered.

00:06:24.880 So I think there's a general problem about the intellectual tide,

00:06:28.960 the ability of conservatives to make arguments.

00:06:31.520 But, you know, we have a situation in Britain where we have a very powerful economic establishment

00:06:39.600 that has a particular set of views and did not like to be challenged.

00:06:43.680 And what I did was challenge those views.

00:06:46.160 And so was it also the civil service as well?

00:06:50.160 And do you include them in the bureaucracy?

00:06:53.280 Yes. Yes. So the bureaucracy is, of course, it's the civil service itself.

00:07:00.640 But it's also what I call the quangocracy. 1.00

00:07:04.400 So organizations like the Office of Budget Responsibility is part of the quangocracy. 0.96

00:07:10.640 The Bank of England is essentially part of the quangocracy. 1.00

00:07:13.440 And what do I mean by that?

00:07:14.480 I mean, organizations that are not directly democratically accountable.

00:07:20.000 Organizations that are appointed to have independent expertise.

00:07:24.960 That's what I'm talking about.

00:07:27.680 Whenever we talk to people, and you're not the first person to say this,

00:07:32.640 I keep thinking the same thing, which is, do we really have a democracy in that case?

00:07:38.640 Because we elect leaders to enact certain policies.

00:07:42.400 If those policies can't be enacted because the powers that be,

00:07:45.840 the forces, quote unquote, refuse to let them be enacted,

00:07:50.320 I mean, do we have a democracy? Really?

00:07:52.320 Well, it's not democratic enough. There's no doubt about that, in my view.

00:07:57.360 But that's a very, very serious problem because...

00:08:01.360 It is a serious problem. It's an absolutely serious problem.

00:08:05.280 And the other side of this argument, we'll talk about things like institutions,

00:08:11.680 they'll talk about, you know, tram lines that politicians should be operating in.

00:08:18.880 But what they fundamentally mean is that politicians need checks and balances

00:08:25.520 against enacting things that are democratically decided.

00:08:29.840 And what we've seen, and not just in Britain, right across the free world,

00:08:37.920 is we've seen a growth in the power of unelected bodies.

00:08:43.360 There's no doubt in my mind. And it's not just the Office of Budget Responsibility or the Bank of England.

00:08:50.160 It's also the Environment Agency. It's the Climate Change Committee.

00:08:55.120 It's people who are not democratically accountable are effectively making decisions.

00:09:02.400 And I think that's a problem. I don't think it's democratic.

00:09:05.120 It's a massive problem. And I think, as an ordinary person looking at this, which I am, I'm going,

00:09:10.720 I didn't vote for the civil service. I didn't vote for the OBR. I didn't vote for the Bank of England.

00:09:15.680 I didn't vote for the Environmental Agency.

00:09:18.720 So, at the same time, I'm also thinking, well, the Conservative government has been in power for 14 years.

00:09:25.520 Surely they would have been aware of all of this. Why haven't they done anything?

00:09:29.760 I don't think, well, so I first got elected in 2010.

00:09:34.240 And when you get elected as an MP, you assume a lot of things about the level of power and influence you're going to have.

00:09:43.360 These are not always true. And, you know, I became a minister in 2012.

00:09:49.440 I was, I was a junior minister. I found it frustrating that it was difficult to get things done.

00:09:55.280 But I assumed it was because I was junior in the organisation that if I was a secretary of state,

00:10:01.360 it would be easier to get things done. And as a secretary of state, I was able to do some things.

00:10:07.360 But it was still the case. It was hard going. It was hard going implementing Conservative policies

00:10:14.720 when that was not the broad view of the system.

00:10:18.000 Can you give an example? Sorry to interrupt. Could you give an example where you had a policy

00:10:23.600 that you wanted to be enacted? And then for whatever reason, it was scuppered or diluted

00:10:30.560 down to the point where it was simply unrecognisable?

00:10:36.240 So the first job I had was in the education department.

00:10:40.640 And I wanted to deregulate childcare to make it cheaper. We've got some of the most cumbersome

00:10:47.280 childcare rules in the world. And we've got some of the most expensive childcare. So I wanted to

00:10:52.480 change that. And what you find is that no one ever says, no, we're not going to implement the policy.

00:10:59.200 What they do is they take a long time about it. It's sometimes called consent and evade.

00:11:04.560 So he'll just say, yes, minister, we'll go and look at that. We need to do a bit more work on this,

00:11:09.280 blah, blah, blah. So what you'll find is it takes a long time to do things. And often,

00:11:17.120 the civil servants in the department will be in touch with the so-called sector,

00:11:22.560 which is generally the vested interest within which other area you're talking about, whether it's

00:11:27.360 environmental NGOs or the nursery sector or whatever. And you find yourself ending up having

00:11:37.360 to compromise to get things done quicker. This is also true of things like appointments as well,

00:11:43.600 but you'll have to compromise to get things done quicker. You'll find there's a lot of opposition

00:11:50.240 from the sector or the organization you're dealing with. So in the case of the childcare reforms,

00:11:57.040 I wanted to do, before I even got them out, I'd had to make quite a lot of compromises,

00:12:04.080 so they weren't as good as what I would have wanted to do and what I think is right.

00:12:10.800 Making them more like the system in France, for example, which is actually

00:12:15.520 better than the system in Britain. So it's hard to describe the process, but it's all very

00:12:21.920 long-winded, driven by endless layers of people having to look at things. So it just takes a long

00:12:31.760 time. And then by the time I'd finally got the policy out, Nick Clegg had been so lobbied by the

00:12:39.200 childcare sector and by Mumsnet that he blocked the policy. And therefore, a policy which would have

00:12:46.800 made lives better for families across Britain would have given them more flexibility didn't happen.

00:12:53.200 So that's the kind of thing that happens on each policy you were looking at. Or

00:13:02.160 a lot of the things we're talking about, take the Environment Agency, for example. In order to override

00:13:09.600 the decisions that organisation makes or to change the way the organisation works, you need primary

00:13:15.600 legislation. So that will take you two years to get a bill through. You've got to get the bill approved

00:13:22.800 in advance before you even get to the stage of primary legislation. So unless you are absolutely

00:13:32.080 focused on one thing and absolutely determined to drive it through and prepared to spend a lot of time,

00:13:37.440 it is very difficult to make things happen. And unfortunately, a system is being created where

00:13:43.280 you're operating in that sort of constant confinement, if that makes sense.

00:13:52.160 I mean, so…

00:13:53.280 Sounds like a straitjacket to me.

00:13:55.280 Well, basically, yes. So as Environment Secretary, I was in…

00:14:02.160 You know, the department was in court constantly. So we were in court with the Badger Trust,

00:14:07.280 we were in court with the climate change, the sort of clean air campaign. All sorts of

00:14:15.600 environmental bodies would be suing us all the time. So it's not just that there are civil servants

00:14:22.720 with a particular worldview, and by the way, there are. It's also that they are understandably

00:14:28.960 very frightened of being sued. And the sort of powers of judicial review allow that to happen.

00:14:35.920 So you've got a system that's constantly looking, covering its back, looking at what bad things

00:14:41.520 might happen. Therefore, making it very, very difficult to push a positive policy forward.

00:14:50.000 So reading between the lines then, and coming back to your own story,

00:14:54.560 you're a junior minister, you struggle to get too much done, even though you try. You think,

00:14:58.560 well, I better become a senior minister. You struggle to get as much done as you'd like,

00:15:02.320 so you're like, I better become prime minister. And then you get into 10 Downing Street, and I'm

00:15:06.640 guessing it's probably the biggest trade jacket of all. Is that fair?

00:15:10.000 That's a fair point. And you discover, because I sat there in governments under David Cameron,

00:15:18.720 Theresa May, Boris Johnson, thinking, why doesn't the prime minister do this? Why can't we short

00:15:27.440 circuit this? Why can't we get on with this? And what I discovered in the job as prime minister

00:15:34.080 is how constraining the overall, you know, it's not the case that when you get to the top,

00:15:43.200 there's more freedom of manoeuvre. Actually, there isn't. And what I tried to do,

00:15:50.400 essentially with the growth plan, which I developed with Quasi Quarteng, was to take on that economic

00:15:56.720 orthodoxy, which I think has been behind why Britain has had low growth and stagnation for

00:16:05.280 almost two decades. I tried to take that on. But I found that even at that level, trying to take on

00:16:14.160 these unelected institutions is extremely difficult. And I didn't realise how ruthlessly those people

00:16:21.680 would fight back. Just a very quick question. I thought that, you know, going through the system,

00:16:26.720 well, maybe there are political decision makers above me, you know, pulling the strings, making

00:16:33.920 sure that these things don't happen. You know, maybe there is a... But when I got to the top job,

00:16:40.480 I found that wasn't the case. Very quick question before Francis jumps in,

00:16:44.480 and it's a provocative one. But I think it's a logical one, given everything you're telling us,

00:16:48.640 and one that we know increasing numbers of young people are asking, which is why should I vote at

00:16:53.680 all? If this is the case, why should I vote in the next election? Well, I think it makes it more

00:16:58.560 important people vote. Because? I think it makes it more important. I believe we need to restore

00:17:05.760 proper sovereign parliamentary democracy in Britain. And I think we've drifted away from it. And I think we

00:17:12.240 have become a technocracy. And that is a problem. Part of the problem is, and it's been a sort of

00:17:20.880 chicken and egg thing, part of the problem is, a lot of people have become disengaged in politics,

00:17:26.640 because it has become so technocratic. It's become something for the political class to do.

00:17:32.960 And that has created even more division between what the public actually wants, and what is being

00:17:41.360 delivered by the government. So the only way to fix that is through more democracy.

00:17:48.640 Ultimately, Parliament is capable of changing this.

00:17:53.040 How?

00:17:54.000 We are suffering. We are capable of changing this. Like one example, the Equality Act. The Equality Act

00:18:00.960 creates huge issues for government. We've just seen how Birmingham Council has,

00:18:07.360 because of the public sector equality duty and its own mismanagement, gone bankrupt.

00:18:13.680 The Equality Act has created mountains of red tape across government. It's embedded the idea of

00:18:19.360 identity politics into the way the public sector behaves. And it's also done that in the private

00:18:25.840 sectors, particularly, we could repeal the Equality Act. It is one example of something we could do 0.96

00:18:32.560 to make this country work better. The issue is we don't have a parliamentary majority to do that.

00:18:39.840 The issue isn't that democracy doesn't work. The issue is that we need to make the case and get

00:18:47.200 enough MPs who believe things need to change.

00:18:49.440 Liz, there'll be people listening to this who are going, well, isn't it just not going to be the case

00:18:55.280 that you present that? And even if it gets voted through, the blob or the dark forces or whatever you

00:19:02.400 want to call them, are just going to drag their heels to such an extent that you end up back at square

00:19:07.920 one with a watered-down bill, which means that it's not that effective.

00:19:12.720 You see, what I didn't know in 2010, that I know now, is that these things that look benign on the

00:19:24.880 surface, you know, who objects to equality? Who doesn't want to help the climate? Who doesn't believe

00:19:31.520 in human rights? Another thing that we need to repeal is the Human Rights Act, which has been a disaster.

00:19:36.160 But on the surface, none of these things look bad. They all sound reasonable.

00:19:40.160 But what they have done is they have wrapped up Britain in a huge amount of red tape and

00:19:47.280 technocracy that makes it impossible to do things, and also embeds values that are not conservative

00:19:54.640 in the very heart of government. So I didn't know that in 2010.

00:20:00.160 And I know that now. So what I'm saying is, if enough people understand what needs to change,

00:20:07.600 which is why I've written my book, I want to explain to people what needs to change to create

00:20:14.880 pressure to actually make those changes. And parliament is capable of doing that. It's technically

00:20:19.760 capable of reversing all of this legislation. We just haven't done it. We just haven't done it. And

00:20:26.640 maybe it's, for me, it's taken me that time of being in government, of getting to the top,

00:20:36.720 to understand just how big a problem it is.

00:20:39.200 So what do we need to change then?

00:20:44.000 It's a very long list.

00:20:44.960 It's a very long list. But the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act,

00:20:53.520 the Constitutional Reform Act, 2005. I mean, this is a very important part of why

00:21:00.320 Britain doesn't work. We used to have a Lord Chancellor who was appointed by the Prime Minister,

00:21:07.360 who appointed senior judges. That role was effectively abolished by Taney Blair or denuded of

00:21:15.280 its power back in 2005. Instead, the appointment of judges is now down to a quango. So effectively, 1.00

00:21:22.240 you've created a self-appointing judiciary, rather than one that feeds into parliamentary sovereignty.

00:21:32.720 And a Supreme Court was created in Britain, which had never existed before, rather than having

00:21:42.480 the senior judiciary in the House of Lords. And I think that has created a problem. And we've seen

00:21:50.560 more activist judges, more activist lawyers. We've seen government policy like Rwanda challenged 0.75

00:21:56.560 now by the Supreme Court. So that is another act of parliament that I think we need to reverse.

00:22:04.240 I mean, I could go on for a very long time, but I think you go right back to the 1947 Town and

00:22:09.280 Country Planning Act, which is, why is it so difficult to build things in Britain? It's because we had a

00:22:15.680 group of socialists in government in 19, you know, post-war, who put in this socialist piece of

00:22:23.040 legislation that nobody has since reversed. But this is the type of discussion we need to be having

00:22:28.560 in Britain. And one of my many frustrations with politics is that so much of politics is focused

00:22:35.840 on the absolute superficial stuff. Like, you know, who's going to be the next leader of the Conservative

00:22:41.280 Party? Or why is X unpopular? What has X done wrong this week? Rather than, what are the fundamental

00:22:49.680 things that are stopping people in Britain pursuing happy and successful lives? You know,

00:22:55.520 that's what we should be focused on. I completely agree. And what you've spoken about has led to

00:23:02.240 people losing their faith in the Conservative Party. And I was looking at one bookmaker's odds

00:23:08.160 for the chance of the Conservative Party being re-elected, and it was at one percent. I mean...

00:23:15.600 This is just why I'm talking about the political media commentating on Flimplap.

00:23:19.120 I don't agree with that, actually. I think Francis has a very strong point, which is after 14 years

00:23:24.240 of a Conservative government, that could have done all those things. But you're talking about

00:23:28.000 repealing the Blair right reforms. You had 14 years?

00:23:30.960 I wouldn't just say the Blair right reforms. I think we need to go back to 1945. 0.72

00:23:35.680 The 1947 Blair wasn't around, but, you know, the human rights act, the equality act.

00:23:39.280 We can hold Blair responsible for a lot, but we can't hold him responsible for the 1947

00:23:43.760 town and country climate.

00:23:44.560 I agree. What I'm saying, and I think what Francis is getting at quite rightly,

00:23:48.800 is that after 14 years in which you had the opportunity, not you personally, the government,

00:23:55.120 of which you were a part for most of that time, had the opportunity to do all this stuff,

00:23:59.760 is now going to crash out of office, hand the keys to Downing Street over to Keir Starmer,

00:24:05.040 who's going to introduce more Blair right reforms, almost certainly. 0.53

00:24:08.320 Yeah, I mean, he's a turbocharged technocrat. You know, the guy wants to strengthen, you know,

00:24:14.400 the OBR. He wants to create new quangos within the Treasury. He wants to put more policy control

00:24:21.920 over to so-called independent bodies.

00:24:24.320 But I think my point is...

00:24:25.680 And more power to lawyers, of course, of which he has won.

00:24:28.240 My point is, Francis' point about the 1% odds of your party being re-elected reflects a failure

00:24:35.520 of the Conservative Party over 14, maybe even 15 years, close to 15 years, to do all the things

00:24:41.680 that you're saying they should do. Why weren't they done in the last 15 years?

00:24:45.440 Well, this is what I tried to do in 2022, is start turning it around. And frankly, I fell at the

00:24:54.320 first hurdle because I found that the economic establishment were not willing to back my policies.

00:25:06.320 They weren't willing to back my policies. You know, on the day before the mini-budget,

00:25:10.640 the Bank of England sold gilts, announced the sale of 40 billion worth of gilts,

00:25:16.080 and failed to raise interest rates as much as market expectations. And when

00:25:20.320 there was the issue with the liability-driven investments, the so-called LDIs,

00:25:26.800 rather than dealing with it, the Bank of England governor sought to lay blame at the government's

00:25:32.560 door. And frankly, it wasn't something I knew anything about. It wasn't something

00:25:36.560 quality knew anything about. So what I found is when I did try and deal with these issues that

00:25:42.800 you're talking about, these long-standing issues, I faced the most almighty backlash and the most

00:25:48.800 almighty pushback. And partly that was from the economic establishment, but it was also from people

00:25:55.360 within the Conservative Party and the Conservative Parliamentary Party. So the basic answer to your

00:26:01.040 question is not enough people in Britain, not enough people in the governing elite, and not enough

00:26:11.360 people in the Conservative Party actually agree that that is the problem. So we haven't even got to

00:26:18.240 first base, which is people understanding what the problem is. So you can't fix a problem if you don't

00:26:24.080 agree it's a problem. And you can't fix a problem if you don't understand what the problem is.

00:26:28.800 And the problem is that not enough people understand that.

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00:27:04.240 I'm going to ask a provocative question. If your diagnosis of the problem is correct,

00:27:10.880 and let's just say it is for the sake of an argument, then basically what you're saying is

00:27:15.200 the majority or a sizable portion of the Conservative Party are kind of clueless, if we're being honest.

00:27:23.280 I'm saying they don't agree. But if your diagnosis of the problem is correct,

00:27:30.720 and they don't understand that, then they don't understand the problem that we've got facing our

00:27:36.000 society and our democracy as a whole. I mean, that's a pretty damning indictment, isn't it?

00:27:41.200 Well, I would say that a lot of people in Britain, a lot of the public understand things don't work

00:27:50.960 and there's something wrong. But I don't think it is widely understood what the problem is.

00:27:58.560 And I think, you know, I've had a unique set of experiences. Being a minister for 10 years,

00:28:03.360 in six government departments, being prime minister, I think I've seen it to an extent other people

00:28:09.600 haven't. So, you know, before I became a minister, I did not know how the government worked or didn't

00:28:17.680 work. I now have a much better understanding of that. So, I think there is a, and as I say,

00:28:24.880 it's a reason I've written this book, is I want to explain to people the issues and problems I faced,

00:28:33.200 and what I think the problem is. But I don't think that there has been. I don't think that is a view

00:28:40.400 that's shared by the whole Conservative Party. Of course, it's not. And also by the commentaria.

00:28:46.400 You know, there are a lot of commentators who say, why doesn't the government just, you know,

00:28:50.240 stop the boats in the channel? Or why doesn't the government just cut taxes? Or why doesn't the government

00:28:54.320 just cut spending? What I'm saying is it's not that easy. There are actual reasons and push, you know,

00:29:02.640 pushback from the bureaucracy that makes these things very difficult, and from the legal profession,

00:29:08.160 and from the legal system.

00:29:10.240 But to me, Liz, that seems like a pretty obvious thing. Now, I get, or I understand,

00:29:16.080 if somebody... That might be why you're doing this podcast, because you think it's obvious. I don't

00:29:19.920 think it is obvious. Really? To somebody working in the government who's trying to get legislation

00:29:25.520 passed and is blocked at every route, that's a pretty obvious thing. I understand if the cabbie

00:29:31.600 outside doesn't know about it. But that's not a difficult concept to grasp for the average

00:29:36.960 person walking down the street, let alone somebody in government, surely.

00:29:40.240 But there's two different things. There's people who agree with the policy,

00:29:45.360 but don't understand how difficult it is to deliver. So they just say, well,

00:29:53.680 if you go in there and you do the right thing and you, you know, you're clear with the civil service,

00:30:00.320 they will do what you want. So there are people who believe that, who believe that the system works.

00:30:05.760 It's just a question of the policy hasn't been implemented correctly, or ministers won't get

00:30:10.720 enough at explaining that. But then there's a whole bunch of people, including in the Conservative Party,

00:30:16.480 who believe that even though institutions have moved to the left, we should accept that.

00:30:22.880 So we should accept wokery. We should accept the full implementation of net zero, 0.95

00:30:32.880 even if it's damaging our economy. So there are people who believe that

00:30:38.720 that having a straitjacket is not a bad thing. There are people who believe that in the Conservative

00:30:48.240 Party. So there are different shades of opinion here. And what I'm trying to do at the very least

00:30:56.240 is to say to people, if you do want these policies, if you do want to stop illegal immigration and actually

00:31:02.560 be able to deport people, if you do want to move away from our very rigid net zero policy,

00:31:10.640 it's not good enough just to change the policy. It's not even good enough just to communicate

00:31:15.280 the policy well. You're going to have to change the system because the system, the way it is structured

00:31:20.160 at the moment, will not allow you to even deliver the policy. So I'm not even aiming my argument at the

00:31:26.400 group two of people who basically don't agree with it. And there are some of those in the Conservative Party.

00:31:31.520 My argument is about people who agree with the policy

00:31:34.560 and yet don't appreciate where we've got to with our system in Britain.

00:31:40.000 So coming back to your story, you get elected as Prime Minister. It was a pretty fierce election,

00:31:44.480 pretty intense. What is it like walking into Number 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister?

00:31:50.000 Well, it was all very, very surreal because I'd spent the whole summer traveling the country,

00:31:56.560 making the argument, preparing, but there's no way you can prepare for that. It's a quite unique

00:32:06.800 experience. And there was all the, you know, the Queen being in Balmoral was very unusual because she

00:32:14.800 wasn't very well. So we had all the organization. I think in that type of situation, I was just very

00:32:20.640 focused on what I needed to do. You know, I needed to make a speech on the steps of Downing Street.

00:32:26.320 I needed to do things like appoint a cabinet. And I was just really aware of how big the

00:32:33.280 in-trade got because the Conservative Party had spent several months debating our leadership. Meanwhile,

00:32:39.920 there was some very serious, the war in Ukraine was taking place. You know, you had the rise in energy

00:32:48.800 prices, economic problems, all of these things have been piling up. So I was just very aware of the need

00:32:55.600 to get on with it.

00:32:57.600 And I think one of the main criticisms that people would make about your time as Prime Minister was that

00:33:05.440 actually, some of the policies and viewpoints that you've just espoused, you abandoned when you

00:33:11.040 were challenged on. I mean, 60% of the mini budget was giving money to families and businesses to help

00:33:19.360 with rising gas prices, which doesn't seem like a small government thing to do. Is that fair?

00:33:26.400 Well, that was... The way I would put it is what we did was an energy price guarantee. So we were

00:33:34.400 saying to people, if energy prices go over a certain level, then, you know, the government

00:33:40.480 will underwrite the energy suppliers. And the way I look at it is, over the past 30 years,

00:33:47.040 Britain's energy policy hasn't worked. You know, we haven't built the nuclear power stations,

00:33:52.160 we didn't get on with fracking, we didn't get on with making energy cheaper. And we were headed

00:33:59.440 for a serious recession. I mean, if energy bills had gone up to £6,000, households would have needed

00:34:05.760 money anyway. So the government were going to have to bail them out. And likewise, businesses would

00:34:11.040 have gone under anyway, just because of the sheer strain of those prices. So what I wanted to do is

00:34:16.640 protect confidence and protect business confidence and protect consumer confidence by giving some kind

00:34:22.640 of guarantee whilst we got on as quickly as possible with fixing the supply side. And that's why I

00:34:28.800 wanted to get on with fracking. It's why I wanted to get on with long-term energy deals. But these

00:34:35.120 things are always a judgment about what you need to do and political reality. And the political reality

00:34:41.760 was that there was going to be some kind of energy package. That was just the political reality of where

00:34:50.080 the Conservative Party was, where the country was, where the economic situation was. I mean,

00:34:55.440 it was happening around the world that governments were protecting people against very, very high

00:35:01.520 energy bills. I sought to do it in the most free market way that only paid out if the energy bills went

00:35:10.160 high. What we'd previously been doing is paying out money regardless of what the energy bills were,

00:35:16.480 which I thought was incredibly inefficient. And what I wanted to do was fix the supply issues in Britain

00:35:23.360 so that ultimately Britain became a net energy exporter. And look, I mean, there's always a

00:35:28.560 judgment in these things. But my view was the government was going to end up paying out money.

00:35:33.840 Let's at least pay out money only if the bills go that high. And in fact, the cost of it was far less than

00:35:42.160 was estimated because the energy prices didn't go that high.

00:35:47.040 I agree with your points about failure of government policy over 30 years on energy. And I suppose

00:35:53.280 that's kind of where we are on a lot of issues. You have government failure over a long period of

00:35:57.840 time to deal with certain things. And then, yes, the last resort is for the government to step in and

00:36:02.720 rescue people from the consequences of government failure.

00:36:05.360 But the other thing that really, I think, shocked quite a lot of people, including I know a lot of

00:36:11.600 people who are very, very clued into the financial markets and the economy, was this issue with LDIs.

00:36:19.040 Because I don't think people quite realize how close we came to essentially something resembling

00:36:24.800 another 2008. I mean, this was really, really significant.

00:36:27.920 Absolutely. I mean, what I have since discovered about LDIs...

00:36:32.960 Liability-driven investments, or derived investments, whatever they're called.

00:36:36.640 Yeah, exactly. And what they were is they were a way of pension funds investing in

00:36:44.880 bonds, say government bonds, that would deliver a higher return. But they delivered that higher return

00:36:52.240 on the basis that interest rates wouldn't go up. Which is obviously completely unrealistic,

00:36:57.120 because interest rates have been too low for too long. And the UK had 60% of the global market

00:37:04.800 in these investments. And we were highly exposed to changes in the interest rate.

00:37:11.040 Now, it's the responsibility of the Bank of England and the pensions regulator to maintain

00:37:19.520 proper regulation and financial stability. And it was the effect of interest rates rising,

00:37:28.640 gilt prices rising, on the LDIs that created the market turmoil. And that was something that I didn't

00:37:37.200 know about, Quasi Quarteng didn't know about. So we were blindsided by that. And I think to this day,

00:37:44.800 it's poor that the Bank of England hasn't had a proper investigation into what happened. Instead,

00:37:52.480 what happened was the Bank of England governor and the Bank of England tried to shift blame

00:37:57.680 onto the mini budget for something that was essentially caused by a failure of financial oversight.

00:38:05.600 And given how exposed this country is to these things, and these are pension funds we're

00:38:11.040 talking about. They're quite important in the health of the British economy and to ordinary people.

00:38:15.360 Do you think that the LDI should be banned, more regulated? What do you think should happen?

00:38:23.440 Well, look, a lot of the positions have been unwamped. And that's what happened after the exposure of the

00:38:32.000 LDI. And I'm not somebody who's in favour of banning pension funds, investing in particular products.

00:38:38.560 I think it was partly because they were so restricted on equity investment that they tried to find

00:38:44.160 somewhere else they could make a return. So it was the perverse consequence of overregulation

00:38:50.080 in another part. What I'm saying, though, is that the system didn't work. Why didn't the Treasury

00:38:57.440 know about this, the extreme exposure to changes in interest rates of a lot of British pension funds?

00:39:04.720 And what it seems to me is we've not only created a very powerful bureaucracy, we've also created a

00:39:13.360 very powerful siloed bureaucracy that often doesn't talk to other bits of the bureaucracy,

00:39:18.560 and that leaves us very exposed in those circumstances. So I'm not going to get into which

00:39:26.320 financial products should be regulated. But I think there's a problem if the system isn't talking to

00:39:32.240 the rest of the system about what is a major exposure.

00:39:36.560 Do you regret the way that you handled the issue with Kwasi Kwarteng? Do you think you should have

00:39:42.320 stood by him looking back on it? Well, I think by that point, we were in very serious trouble,

00:39:51.840 to be honest. So I don't think it would have made... Looking back on it, I don't think it would have made a

00:39:56.400 massive difference either way. I mean, the bank had successfully laid the blame on us.

00:40:06.960 Much of the Conservative Party in Parliament wanted to accept their version of events.

00:40:13.360 We simply did not have the support or the strength of support to continue with the policies.

00:40:29.440 As I explained, Kwasi was in the US, I thought it was a mistake for him to go there. I ended up handling

00:40:36.400 it all during that week, which is difficult not being the Chancellor, handling the fallout and the

00:40:44.160 need to change the policy. But essentially, the policy was changed. And the critical thing

00:40:51.120 was corporation tax. That was the absolutely critical policy. To my mind, putting corporation

00:40:57.520 tax up from 19% to 25% is a massive mistake for Britain. It's resulted in investors putting their

00:41:05.840 money elsewhere. It's not bringing into the Treasury what they expected. And I'm a believer in the

00:41:12.880 Laffer curve. I believe if you raise rates too high, you don't get the tax revenue. So the reason we were

00:41:20.640 forced to reverse that policy is because the OBR forecast was leaked of what the alleged hole in the

00:41:30.160 government budget was. So it was a forecast of £70 billion. Now, that forecast has turned out to be

00:41:37.680 untrue and wrong. But at the time, that forecast being leaked, which clearly showed that we lacked support

00:41:46.720 from the economic institutions, because it was either leaked by the OBR or the Treasury,

00:41:50.560 that essentially put huge pressure on us to reverse the corporation tax cut. And that was, you know, I was

00:42:05.360 essentially threatened that if we didn't reverse that, we might not be able to fund government debt.

00:42:11.920 And that would have created a huge crisis. So I couldn't, in all conscience, do that. That's why

00:42:19.600 the policy had to be reversed. Now, I don't know to this day whether or not it was the case that that

00:42:25.840 would happen, but I believed it was a credible threat. And once the policy had had to be reversed,

00:42:30.880 I thought it was very difficult for Quasi to continue, to be frank. So I think the issue was the policy being

00:42:38.640 reversed. Because you think if I put myself forward to be prime minister to deliver a change in Britain's

00:42:48.800 economic policy, to move away from the economic orthodoxy of high taxes, high regulation, close

00:42:55.280 alignment with the EU, high migration, stagnant, you know, stagnant growth. That's what I wanted to

00:43:02.640 move away from. I wanted to move to a dynamic, open for business Britain, lower taxes, keep better control

00:43:11.280 of public spending, don't raise welfare so much. Those are the policies I wanted to adopt. Get on with things

00:43:19.440 like fracking to actually liberate the supply side of the economy. And, you know, by then it was clear I

00:43:25.760 couldn't deliver any of those things. Conservative MPs wouldn't vote for fracking. They wouldn't vote 0.94

00:43:32.400 for restraining welfare spending. The OBR was leaking. The Treasury were leaking against the corporation

00:43:42.640 tax policy. So...

00:43:45.760 Do you... I guess what we're getting at...

00:43:48.480 It's all quite tricky.

00:43:49.440 No, no. True, that's a very British understatement. But I guess what we're getting at, and please

00:43:55.200 understand, this isn't a... It may sound like a personal question, but I actually think it's a broader

00:43:59.680 conversation about leadership and principles. Because Francis and I are friends. We started this together

00:44:05.440 six years ago. We have the same vision for it, as you and Kwasi did. If at some point we did something that we

00:44:11.760 both agreed was the right thing to do, and then something went wrong, and I was like, hey mate, actually, I think you

00:44:17.600 need to go. I would feel that one of two things would happen there. Either he'd be like, well,

00:44:23.360 why is it just me? But I myself would have thought, well, we did this together. We should leave together.

00:44:30.800 If I can't deliver the things that I agreed with my chancellor, you know, the game's up, time to go.

00:44:37.200 We gave it our best shot. Because... Are you still friends with Kwasi? 0.98

00:44:41.600 Yeah, yeah. And look, I think the... Kwasi had been out of the country all week at this IMF meeting, 0.89

00:44:47.840 so that was a very tricky situation. But what I felt was, these policies had been forced to be reversed.

00:44:56.720 I still believe they were the right policies. I still believe that the people who undermined the

00:45:03.120 policies were in the wrong. And that's a great shame. And I feel that Britain is in a worse position as a

00:45:10.160 result of that. But what I had to think about at that point is I had to think about the country.

00:45:18.400 And what I couldn't risk is if Kwasi had stayed on, he hadn't had the credibility in delivering 0.97

00:45:25.680 that U-turn, which needed to be delivered, and then we had not been able to fund our debt.

00:45:30.800 Could you not have first resigned, is what I'm asking?

00:45:34.480 That wouldn't have been a serious... If I'd resigned as well at that time,

00:45:39.520 then that would have created a crisis.

00:45:45.520 How much later did you resign?

00:45:47.600 Well, I think a few weeks later. But by then, Jeremy Hunt had been installed.

00:45:53.040 He was essentially following the Treasury orthodoxy. The markets had calmed down.

00:46:00.320 If I had resigned at that moment, when there was about to be a cliff edge on... Because this is

00:46:06.640 another issue. The Bank of England governor, on finding a solution for these LDIs, set a cliff edge.

00:46:15.360 Rather than saying that the Bank of England would support

00:46:18.160 into the medium term, he created a cliff edge, which was the following Monday.

00:46:23.760 Which created, again, a speculation cycle by the markets.

00:46:29.440 So I think it would have been a dereliction of duty, frankly, if I had stood down at that time as well.

00:46:35.200 I mean, I instinctively knew that I wasn't much longer for this world.

00:46:39.600 But the idea that I would just leave the whole thing in a terrible situation and resign,

00:46:50.560 I don't think that would have been the right thing to do.

00:46:53.440 Looking back at your time and power, what would you change?

00:47:00.080 I think the biggest thing I could have changed is whether I ran in the leadership election, because...

00:47:05.040 Do you regret that?

00:47:06.800 Well, I think, knowing what I know now, I think I was in a pretty impossible situation.

00:47:15.200 That there were the types of changes that Britain needed.

00:47:19.680 Probably needed a longer run-up to prepare.

00:47:24.480 And they needed...

00:47:27.840 Well, they probably need now, I believe, a sort of full electoral mandate to deliver.

00:47:32.960 And, you know, I knew it would be difficult, but as I said, I didn't realise how ruthless

00:47:42.560 the sort of forces of the economic establishment would be in taking it on.

00:47:47.200 But there were lots of small things I could have changed about the way we

00:47:52.800 delivered, you know, communicated, etc.

00:47:55.360 But I think it was pretty much impossible to actually deliver that programme that autumn,

00:48:03.760 because of the lack of support for it, both within and outside the government.

00:48:10.960 I mean, it was even hard, you know, it's back to the point we were talking about earlier.

00:48:14.480 It was even hard finding external economists who would back the policies up,

00:48:19.280 even though they exist, it's just not a fashionable thing to believe.

00:48:24.960 Some people in Britain are still saying, you know, the government's not big enough.

00:48:28.000 I mean, it's absolutely incredible when we spend 45% on GDP, but people are arguing for

00:48:34.400 industrial policies, they're arguing for more government spending in every possible area.

00:48:39.360 We're not in a broad atmosphere where supply side economics are seen as the logical thing,

00:48:46.560 which is what they were seen as in the 80s.

00:48:49.440 So, I mean, could I have done something?

00:48:54.240 Yeah, I think the other question is, is there anybody who could have gone in

00:49:03.040 in that?

00:49:04.560 Because, you know, if there was a possible way of doing it, I didn't have the skill set to do it,

00:49:09.200 frankly.

00:49:09.600 I mean, is there somebody who could have gone in that autumn and delivered those policies?

00:49:16.560 Well, I don't think they exist.

00:49:21.280 But what's certainly true is that no other prime minister has successfully cut taxes.

00:49:32.080 I did actually manage to reverse the health and social care levy, which was going to be a new tax

00:49:37.520 imposed on people in Britain. I did do that in my time in office. But what we've seen

00:49:42.880 is constant pressure on the government to spend more and tax more.

00:49:46.560 Before you move on to a different subject, actually, on this thing, Liz, I'll be honest

00:49:51.200 with you. I like small government and I think low taxes are the way to grow the economy. So I agree

00:49:56.960 with you. But if you listen to someone like Matt Goodwin, who's a regular guest on our show, he's a

00:50:01.840 political analyst and pollster and all sorts of other things. He'll tell you the country is not

00:50:06.720 there. The country wants to be right on culture and left on economics. The country wants big government and

00:50:13.120 it wants to be socially conservative. That's where the majority of the public are at.

00:50:17.760 Is it possible that the reason the policies you and I actually quite like

00:50:21.920 are just that it's not what the British people want anymore? They want big daddy government to come

00:50:26.240 in and wipe the bomb. Well, I think it's true that people do want culturally conservative policies.

00:50:33.680 So he's absolutely right about that. He's right on immigration. He's right on wokery. 0.99

00:50:39.440 Mm hmm. But if we look, you know, why is the government big? Why is growth stagnant? Well,

00:50:47.200 one reason is net zero and the fact we're not doing things like fracking. One is very high regulation.

00:50:56.480 And certainly a lot of people I speak to in my constituency are frustrated, particularly about

00:51:01.600 the level of regulation on their small businesses or their farms. So I don't think the voters I speak

00:51:08.320 to are not crying out for more regulation on their business or more regulation on their farm,

00:51:12.400 and they're not crying out for higher taxes. I don't agree with Matthew Goodwin on that.

00:51:18.560 But they're not crying out for any of those things. But as we know, you know,

00:51:23.520 the general public often don't connect things. People will demand lower taxes and more money

00:51:29.200 for the NHS in one. Exactly. So this is, it's like the point about fracking. If you ask most people,

00:51:35.360 do you support fracking? I don't think support for it's very high. But if you ask people,

00:51:39.440 would you be prepared to allow fracking if it meant your energy bill is half what it was,

00:51:44.800 then they might support it. Yeah. So it's a question of communication.

00:51:48.640 Mm hmm. Liz, looking at the Conservative Party now,

00:51:52.560 I mean, to put it bluntly, they're in pretty dire straits, aren't they?

00:51:56.320 Well, the polls are not good. I mean, all I can say, though, is, you know, to me, like to me,

00:52:09.520 Conservative policies are still the right policies. We just need to show people we can deliver them

00:52:16.880 and be be clear about what what is the problem. I think that's the start of being able to make the

00:52:25.040 argument as Conservatives, saying, here's why we're not able to currently do this policy.

00:52:31.040 Here's what we're going to do to change it. I think we've got an opportunity to do that in our

00:52:35.360 manifesto. We've got an opportunity to do it with what we say. But we have to be honest about where

00:52:42.240 we are now. Because the average bloke or woman on the street will be going, like Constantine has said

00:52:48.720 many times, you've had 14 years to implement these policies. Why is it going to be any difference if I

00:52:53.920 put an X next to the Conservatives now? We need to explain why. So we have delivered

00:52:58.720 good policies in 14 years. So on education, we've improved English education. You can see

00:53:05.680 by the comparison with what's happened in Scotland that England's maths and reading results have got

00:53:10.720 better. We've delivered Brexit, which is a massive constitutional change. We've delivered trade deals.

00:53:17.920 We've been on the front line of supporting Ukraine. So we've done good things in our period in government.

00:53:23.520 But I think we should be honest and say, the reason we haven't been able to deliver

00:53:28.320 the other things that you, the British public, want, you know, the reason there's wokery in your

00:53:33.920 schools, or the reason we haven't been able to deliver on immigration is because we didn't change

00:53:42.240 enough of the Blair legacy. We should just say that now. We should say, we didn't change enough of the

00:53:47.360 Blair legacy. Of course, we should have realized that quicker. We were wrong to say Tony Blair,

00:53:54.240 you know, as some of the Cameroon said, we were wrong to say Tony Blair was the master. We were wrong to say

00:54:00.160 Cameron was the heir to Blair. Actually, these Blair policies, such as the Equality Act and the Human

00:54:06.240 Rights Act, are part of the problem. We now recognize that and we're going to deal with it. 1.00

00:54:11.600 And I think people, you know, the public are not stupid. You know, they appreciate honesty.

00:54:19.680 And it's not easy to be honest as a politician. You often get absolutely hammered, as I've discovered

00:54:24.320 myself. But I think we've got to, we've got to say it like it is. We've said, here are the good

00:54:28.400 things we've done. We recognize in these areas, we haven't done enough. And here's why. And this is

00:54:33.920 how we've changed. But also as well. Because by the way, Keir Starmer has got absolutely no answer

00:54:39.680 to any of these problems. He's got no analysis on why the economy isn't growing. He's got no analysis

00:54:45.760 on immigration. He's got no idea about what to do. But also, I was going to say, is there the

00:54:54.080 political will within the Conservative Party to change it? Because earlier in the interview,

00:54:57.920 you just alluded to the fact that some, there's a sizable portion of the party that don't,

00:55:04.160 that doesn't think this is a problem.

00:55:05.680 For those people, you know, I want to convince them. And I think others need to convince them.

00:55:11.680 I think we need to make the argument.

00:55:14.880 Fair enough.

00:55:16.320 As you can see, I'm an incorrigible optimist.

00:55:19.920 But you know, what's, what's the alternative here? What's the alternative of actually convincing

00:55:25.040 Conservative activists, Conservative members, Conservative politicians, that we need this

00:55:30.960 systemic change? I think that is what we have to do. That is what we have to do. That's the only

00:55:35.920 alternative. No, the only thing that will convince them, I think, is a crushing defeat of the next

00:55:40.240 election. That's what's going to happen. That's what will get them to realize that going along and

00:55:45.200 business as usual isn't going to work. Let's be honest, in the spirit of honesty, as I say,

00:55:51.760 I agree with many of the things that you support. But let's, we, the people who have that point of

00:55:57.440 view have not won the argument. The Conservative Party's time in government is coming to an end.

00:56:04.320 And I think it's, you know, your book, 10 years to save the West, you're going to have five years

00:56:09.520 of a star in my government. And then you'd hope to come in with, let's be honest, a whole bunch of

00:56:15.440 new MPs with a very different set of views. That's the only way this gets saved, isn't it?

00:56:19.440 Well, the book is 10 years to save the West. So I'm talking about

00:56:24.960 the problems we face haven't just faced Britain. You know, they're there in the US. A lot of the

00:56:30.240 bad ideas have actually been imported from the US. If you talk about eco-extremism, transgender, 1.00

00:56:37.120 you know, sort of gender ideology, all of this stuff has much of it been promoted in the US. If you

00:56:46.640 look at what's going on in Democrat cities with crime, you know, defunding the police,

00:56:50.720 et cetera, et cetera. So we also need to change what is happening in Western democracies overall.

00:57:00.800 And part of what my book is about is a warning to the US and saying, if you don't change the system,

00:57:08.480 if you allow this left-wing ideology to flourish in your institutions, you are not going to be able

00:57:15.680 to deliver conservative policies. This is not just a problem in Britain. And this is not just a battle

00:57:21.520 that's happening in Britain. It's happening in Australia. It's happening in Canada. And I want

00:57:27.040 people to learn from my experience. I want people to understand. I try and explain in the book what it's

00:57:33.280 actually like being there. The subtitle of my book in Britain is called The Only Conservative in the

00:57:39.280 Room because I was there with people like Biden, Trudeau. None of these people are conservatives.

00:57:45.440 And the ideology that they back is fundamentally undermining the West. So this is, to me,

00:57:52.400 a big battle that conservatives have to win. Will we win the battle this year? Maybe, maybe not.

00:57:59.200 But we've got to keep fighting it. Liz, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the

00:58:05.520 show. The final question we always ask... Before we go to our locals and your questions. Yes.

00:58:11.280 Is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

00:58:16.560 I think we have talked about it here, but I don't think we're talking about democracy enough

00:58:33.840 and how under threat it is. And that is what is ultimately... I believe that empowering people more,

00:58:42.320 having a much more direct relationship with the electorate is what will save the West.

00:58:48.080 And what does that mean? What it means is that most people in Britain actually understand what

00:58:55.200 needs to be done. The problem is the transmission mechanism. The problem is that this bureaucratic

00:59:00.960 state... And it's wider. It's not just the state. It's what's going on in big corporations,

00:59:06.800 what's going on in charities, what's going on in the broader sort of London bubble. You know,

00:59:13.760 that needs to be challenged. Perfect. Well, head on over to locals where we ask,

00:59:19.200 Liz Truss, the former prime minister, your questions.

00:59:23.120 While conservatives in the conservative party... Which is put in inverted commas.

00:59:27.680 Yes. Being held hostage to the progressive agenda.

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TRIGGERnometry - May 05, 2024

My 49 Days as Prime Minister - Liz Truss

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