Liz Truss has blamed the Canadian prime minister for causing economic meltdown after the disastrous mini-budget that sparked her downfall.
The former prime minister said Mark Carney “did a terrible job” as governor of the Bank of England between 2013 and 2020 and “created a lot of the problems that blew up on my watch and that I got blamed for.”
In an interview with conservative American commentator Glenn Beck, Ms Truss said she was “puzzled” that the former central banker had been picked as leader of Canada’s Liberal Party.
And she said: “Mark Carney was the governor of the Bank of England who printed money to a huge extent, creating inflation.
“He was the one who created the pensions crisis in the first place by not regulating the pensions industry properly.
“He’s been a champion of net zero… he’s a World Economic Forum regular.”
Ms Truss’s tenure in Downing Street lasted just 49 days after her disastrous mini-budget triggered market turmoil and saw the pound tank to a 37-year low against the dollar.
Ms Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced the biggest raft of tax cuts for half a century in the September 2022 statement, but were quickly forced to climb down over their plan to scrap the top rate of income tax for the highest earners.
She has since admitted her plan to cut the 45p top rate of tax may have gone too far but insisted it was not fair to blame subsequent interest rate rises on her mini-budget.
As well as spooking markets with the tax cuts themselves, the former PM added to the uncertainty by shunning the usual forecasts from government spending watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), essentially leaving investors in government debt flying blind on the state of the public finances.
In the interview, Ms Truss went on to urge Canadian voters to back the country’s Conservatives in the 28 April snap election.
She added: “I think it is illegitimate that this guy has never been elected as an MP in Canada.
“Justin Trudeau has pursued a lot of the policies Europe has been pursuing, and America has raced ahead of us.
“They pursued all of these woke policies, high taxes, high spending, not using their natural resources, and Justin Trudea was the architect of that and Mark Carney has been the advocate.
“I don’t know what is going on in Canada, but in the same way as people in Britain need to wake up to what the threat to our country is, I think they need to wake up in Canada.”
