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Liz Truss considered scrapping all cancer treatment on the NHS in a desperate bid to repair the damage caused by her disastrous economic policies, according to a new book.
The extraordinary claim is made in a new biography of Ms Truss by Sir Anthony Seldon.
Sir Anthony, who is Britain’s leading political biographer, also states that Ms Truss’s allies feared her team could be targeted with a “cocaine” smear by unnamed figures at Tory HQ who wanted to stop her from becoming prime minister.
Sir Anthony’s book, Truss at 10: How Not to Be a Prime Minister, is deeply critical of Ms Truss, who was forced to resign in 2022 after she triggered an economic crisis by proposing the introduction of £45bn of unfunded tax cuts. She spent only 49 days in office.
The author claims that, in the immediate aftermath of the mini-Budget, Ms Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, launched a desperate attempt to find spending cuts in an effort to restore stock-market confidence in their strategy.
Sir Anthony says a group of Ms Truss’s Tory aides met to discuss the issue. One of her senior advisers, Alex Boyd, “was told that Truss and Kwarteng were thinking they could still sort out the black hole with severe cuts”: “We’ve been told that they’re looking at stopping cancer treatment on the NHS.”
Mr Boyd’s response was to ask “Is she being serious?” writes Sir Anthony, while other aides said she had “lost the plot”.
“She’s shouting at everyone that ‘We’ve got to find the money.’ When we tell her it can’t be done, she shouts back: ‘It’s not true. The money is there. You go and find it,’” they told the author.
But a spokesperson for Ms Truss said it is “completely untrue that she ever considered it.”
Speaking to The Independent, Mr Kwarteng added: “I wasn’t involved in any conversations about restricting healthcare, but that doesn’t mean the prime minister and her team didn’t discuss this.”
According to Sir Anthony, arch-Brexiteer (now Sir) Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to persuade Ms Truss to make him chancellor instead of Mr Kwarteng.
Sir Anthony mockingly compares Mr Rees-Mogg’s “passionate” attempt to “woo” Ms Truss into putting him in charge of the Treasury to the attempt by Malvolio, the pompous cross-gartered flunky in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, to seduce Lady Olivia.
The author says Mr Rees-Mogg urged Ms Truss to abolish inheritance tax, replace all tax rates with a 20p flat rate, and organise a stunt to promote nuclear power.
He writes that the then cabinet minister told Ms Truss: “We should get a nuclear submarine to dock at Liverpool and plug it into the grid. That would show it is safe.” Sir Anthony says cabinet secretary Simon Case dismissed the idea as a “non-starter”, adding that “the subs are needed in operations”.
He describes friction with other senior Conservatives, and says that Ms Truss referred to Michael Gove as a “snake” after he denounced her tax cuts.
Sir Anthony claims that Ms Truss suspected that a “dirty tricks” operation was being planned by unnamed figures in Tory HQ in an effort to stop her from becoming leader. He says her allies feared there would be an attempt to “intimidate her with talk of a thick dossier of her indiscretions, her drinking, cocaine use by others among her team”.
In the event, the dossier “never materialised”, says the author.
‘Truss at 10: How Not to Be a Prime Minister’ by Sir Anthony Seldon is out on 29 August
