Truss ends her time as prime minister with a speech full of falsehoods
Last words: Liz Truss delivers her final speech as UK prime minister. What a shame so much of it was untrue.
Typical. You have to spend a day seeing to family matters and everything kicks off at work.
This Writer was away from his desk on Tuesday (October 25) – so of course it was the day Liz Truss finally gave up being the prime minister, Rishi Sunak took over, and he went on to form a new cabinet of halfwits.
I missed the lot. Forgive me for playing catch-up now.
We’ll start with Truss’s final speech as prime minister. Here it is in its full, awkward glory:
Here’s that speech with a bit of fact-checking from Politics Joe:
Personally, I love the bit where she mentions “the philosophicer Sene…ca”. Was that bit written for her by someone else? Has she ever read Seneca? (I’ll admit I haven’t.)
She said her government had acted “urgently and decisively on the side of hard-working families and businesses” – but the headlines showed that the UK economy is expected to be weak until 2024, with rising costs hitting households and companies.
Also shown was a headline stating that a primary school running a foodbank said people are struggling hugely. Another said “toast is a luxury” and families have “never been more scared” over where money will come from. And a third said one-fifth of households are considering cancelling their Christmas celebration – with many considering loans to get them through the festive season, due to the cost-of-living crisis that Truss did nothing to ease.
Businesses stated that her energy assistance plan was no good, and her mini-budget caused political and market turmoil.
She said her government had “helped millions of households with their energy bills” – but headlines indicated that families were still struggling after energy bills skyrocketed from £74 to more than £1,300.
She said her government had “helped thousands of businesses avoid bankruptcy” – but headlines said supply and staffing issues, inflation and high energy bills meant the UK hospitality industry alone was expecting a “tidal wave” of closures.
“We are taking back our energy independence,” she said, “so we are never again beholden to global market fluctuations or malign foreign powers.
Firstly, let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that Tory governments of the past were warned about the dangers of allowing power over our energy supply to pass to foreign owners – and ignored those warnings.
Now, let’s look at the headlines, which stated that the whole UK electricity system is under private ownership due to Tory privatisation in 1989, and its dependency on imports has increased in the decades since (after being more or less self-sufficient previously).
“We simply cannot afford to be a low-growth country where the government takes up an increasing share of our national wealth,” she said, expanding on this later in her speech by saying, “It means lower taxes, so people can keep more of what they earn”. But the headlines contradicted her, showing that the International Monetary Fund had openly criticised her tax plans, adding that Jeremy Hunt, as Chancellor, has reversed her income tax breaks along with almost all other measures from the disastrous mini-budget of September 23.
She spoke about “restoring power to democratic institutions” and said “we must be able to out-compete autocratic regimes where power lies in the hands of a few” – ignoring the fact that “Rishi Sunak’s coronation as PM would shame a banana republic” because he was elected by fewer than 200 people – all of them Tory MPs. Another headline highlighted Sunak’s “lack of mandate”.
“And it means delivering growth that will lead to more job security, higher wages, and greater opportunities for our children and grandchildren,” she said. But figures show that “under-30s lost more than 20 per cent of disposable income in the last 12 months”, blaming rising energy prices.
So almost everything she said in her speech was contradicted by the facts.
Thank goodness she has gone. Can you imagine having to put up with two more years of this ridiculous, easily-dismissed doubletalk?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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She also rather stupidly reminded us of our “new found brexit freedoms”. Those “freedoms” that are a major component in hastening the economic downturn in britain compared with the other G7 countries. Silly woman.