She finally breaks the silence, after having resigned from her post on October 20th. Liz Truss, the former Conservative British Prime Minister, gave her first public expression since stepping down on Sunday, in the form of a long op-ed published in the Conservative newspaper Sunday Telegraph. “I don’t pretend to be beyond reproach in what happened, but basically I didn’t have a realistic chance to adopt my policy due to a very powerful orthodox economic system, coupled with a lack of support politics,” she said. His most emblematic measure aimed to abolish the highest income tax bracket and drew widespread criticism, both inside and outside the country. So much so that the pound sterling had experienced a historic fall in its course.
British political columnists see this return as a desire to weigh in on the debate among the Conservatives, a few weeks before the vote on a new budget and at a time when Rishi Sunak, the current Prime Minister, is at half mast in the polls after 100 days in power. Although she does not criticize him by name, “it is obvious that she thinks his policy is disastrous”, writes the Sunday Telegraph in its editorial. For a month, the government has been confronted with massive social movements of nurses, paramedics or even teachers, to demand salary increases, in a context where inflation still exceeds 10%. Rishi Sunak is under attack from both the opposition and his own ranks: he had to sack Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi over tax disputes and, at the same time, maintained his confidence in Justice Minister Dominic Raab, accused of harassment of his staff.
Johnson wants arms delivered to Ukraine
It is also in this difficult moment that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson reaffirmed his activism in favor of Ukraine, expressed in particular two weeks ago by appearing alongside Volodymyr Zelensky. Visiting Washington this week, where he met with Republican officials, Johnson urged on FoxNews the British government to “give Ukrainians what they need as quickly as possible”. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing if we donated more tanks ourselves,” he insisted on Friday, in an interview on TalkTV, with MP Nadine Dorries, one of his most loyal lieutenants.
Downing Street was forced to recall that Boris Johnson “was not acting on behalf of the British government”, recalling the practical difficulties of delivering combat aircraft. Both Truss and Johnson still enjoy wide support among conservatives, pro-Johnson criticizing Rishi Sunak for having caused their champion’s downfall by resigning from his government, while some parliamentarians defend the tax cuts brought by Truss.