LIZ Truss used to pretend members of her family had died in order to avoid media appearances, one of her former aides has claimed.
Kirsty Buchanan worked for Truss while she was justice secretary under Theresa May and said she would tell producers “minor members” of her bosses’ family had died so she did not have to go on Question Time.
She told the Whitehall Sources podcast: “She didn’t like the media, so we used to spend quite a lot of time making up excuses and killing off minor members of her family so she didn’t have to go on Question Time.
“Only minor people like aunts and cousins and things — I’m not talking about major members of the family.”
“We used to ‘kill off’ minor family members” to keep Liz Truss off BBC Question Time. She didn’t like the media. So here’s what advisers did: pic.twitter.com/hwL0dNT2lN
— Whitehall Sources (@whitehallsource) October 19, 2022
Buchanan said she eventually “ran out of excuses” and Truss was forced to appear on the show, but feared going up against a rival she refused to name.
She added: “We turn up in the green room and there is the one person she didn’t want to be on the panel.”
Truss recently apologised on the BBC for her government’s record, despite only being in office for over a month.
And at a short press conference last week, she announced she would not go ahead with key parts of her mini-budget after sacking her chancellor and key political ally Kwasi Kwarteng.
She said: “It is clear that parts of our mini-budget went further and faster than markets were expecting.
“So the way we are delivering our mission right now has to change.
“We need to act now to reassure the markets of our fiscal discipline."
Truss went on to say she was "incredibly sorry" to lose Kwarteng, who she said shared her political vision.
Jeremy Hunt has been installed in his place and – despite tearing up almost all of the radical and reckless mini-budget, Truss claimed he also " shares my convictions and my ambitions for our country".
