Today’s King’s Speech was filled to the brim with bills – the most jam-packed since 2005. While Sir Keir can’t be accused of submitting a lightweight list of announcements, some of his political opponents have been quick to criticise. One of these is former prime minister Liz Truss, who is particularly displeased about how much her own name came up in Labour’s legislative agenda.
Within half an hour of the announcement, Truss took to Twitter with a scathing post about Starmer’s plans. Slamming the Prime Minister for having ‘no idea about the change Britain needs’, the former Conservative leader blasted today’s speech for expanding ‘the power of the unelected state’ and increasing ‘red tape’. Oo er.
But when the official government website published further details on the speech’s announcements, Truss became rather more annoyed to learn that she was, um, personally mentioned herself. In published background information on the Budget Responsibility Bill for economic stability, Truss’s name crops up exactly three times. First, in a reference to ‘the mistakes of Liz Truss’s “mini budget”‘; second, in a line on ‘the disastrous Liz Truss “mini budget”‘ and third in the final line that states: ‘Liz Truss’s autumn mini budget is a lesson in how not to do fiscal policy.’ It’s hardly subtle…
So frustrated is the ex-PM about the unexpected name-dropping in the civil service-written document, Truss has written to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to complain. Dubbing it a ‘political attack’, Truss goes on to fume:
Not only is what is stated in the document untrue, making no reference to the LDI crisis precipitated by the Bank of England’s regulatory failures; but I regard it as a flagrant breach of the Civil Service Code, since such personal and political attacks have no place in a document prepared by civil servants – an error made all the more egregious when the attack is allowed to masquerade in the document among ‘key facts’.
Crikey. There’s certainly some explaining to be done…
The former PM has urged Case to ‘urgently investigate’ the matter and is demanding ‘suitable admonishment for those responsible’ and the removal of the current version from the government website.
And now just under two hours later, it appears the Cabinet Office has listened…
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