Liz Truss has said she has the “toughness and grit” to lead the country while denying she is modelling herself on Margaret Thatcher.
The Tory leadership hopeful savaged high taxes and vowed to rip up the economic plans by using borrowing to fund tax cuts.
In her first broadcast interview since making it to the run-off vote against Rishi Sunak for the Tory leadership, the Foreign Secretary pressed her tax-cutting agenda.
READ MORE: Liz Truss has scant support from Scottish Tories
Truss said her tax plans would not increase inflation despite economists’ concerns.
She insisted: “My tax cuts will decrease inflation.”
Her stance is at odds with most economic thinking and with rival Rishi Sunak’s warning that tax cuts must wait until inflation is under control.
But Truss said: “We have had a consensus of the Treasury, of economists, with the Financial Times, with other outlets, peddling a particular type of economic policy for 20 years. It hasn’t delivered growth.”
Truss, a former Treasury chief secretary, said: “What I know about the Treasury, from having worked there, is they… do have economic orthodoxy and they do resist change.
“What people in Britain desperately need now is change. “For the past two decades there has been a consensus on economic policy and it hasn’t delivered growth”
She emphasised her loyalty saying: “I wanted Boris to carry on as Prime Minister..he delivered Brexit, he delivered the vaccine.”
Meanwhile, in an article for the Daily Telegraph, Sunak the former chancellor promised he “will govern as a Thatcherite” and referenced the former Tory leader repeatedly in an appeal to party members.
He tried to dial down the bitter attacks that were part of the early stage of the contest, saying Truss is someone “I like and respect”.
But in a sign the “blue on blue” attacks would remain, Sunak backer Robert Jenrick pointedly said the chancellor was “never a member of the Lib Dems”.
Jenrick also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It is the antithesis of Thatcherism to be going around making unfunded tax pledges merely to win a leadership contest.”
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