Let’s say it plainly: Liz Truss did NOT crash the economy. That myth, gleefully peddled by the BBC, Guardianistas, and a gaggle of City doom-mongers, is now collapsing under its own flimsiness.
Even the Left’s own high priests have started whispering the truth after one too many flat whites: the story doesn’t stack up.
The Business Editor of the New Statesman, yes, that bastion of North London socialism, has confessed:
“One of the more dangerous lies in recent years is the claim that Liz Truss crashed the economy. Ask yourself: did you, or anyone you know, lose their job as a direct result of the Truss mini-Budget? Unless you’re a former Tory MP, the answer is probably no (and if you are a former Tory MP, I’d argue that other factors may have been involved). No company became insolvent as a direct result of Truss’s tax plan. The UK did not plunge into a deep recession. There certainly was an immediate reaction in UK government bond yields that was very concerning for pension funds, but this did not constitute ‘crashing the economy’.”
Exactly. The lettuce joke may have been good for the lefty meme cycle, but it wasn’t economics.
Look at the Figures
Under Labour’s stewardship of sentiment, aided by their allies in the financial priesthood, bond yields have risen further than under Truss. Mortgage rates? Higher. Growth? Lower. Investment? Fleeing. And yet, the media’s silence is deafening. Where is Starmer’s lettuce? Surely by now it should be shrivelled into compost.
Meanwhile, Truss’s so-called catastrophe was at least partly the detonation of two ticking bombs: quantitative tightening and the LDI pension fiasco. Both of those were squarely in the Bank of England’s backyard. But instead of owning up, the mandarins at Threadneedle Street sat back and let Truss be stitched up like a kipper.
The Real Scandal
Here’s the truth: Liz was guilty only of saying the unsayable, that Britain can’t tax its way back to growth, that net zero orthodoxy needs a rethink, and that we ought to use our own North Sea bounty instead of begging tyrants for oil. Two years on, even her critics are grudgingly agreeing.
On the OBR, on the Bank, on energy, Liz was ahead of the curve. The “crash” narrative was always a confection, a champagne-socialist fever dream, eagerly swallowed by the Remainer establishment and their media cronies.
We See the Stooges for What They Are
The public may not pore over gilt yields, but they know a stitch-up when they see one. They know Labour’s plan is nothing more than reheated Blairism with a woke garnish. And they know the same journalists who sniggered over a lettuce are now stone-silent as the economic picture deteriorates under Starmer.
Liz Truss did not crash the economy. She rattled the cage, she dared to upset the consensus, and the establishment made her pay. But history has a funny way of catching up with the truth.
And on this one, Liz will be vindicated.
By Claire Bullivant
