Former prime minister Liz Truss has fired barbs at shadow chancellor Mel Stride after he savaged her infamous mini-Budget. The spat marks the latest flare-up in the Conservative Party’s internal fighting.
🗡️ “Creature of the system”
In a furious post on X, Truss labelled Stride “a creature of the system.” She fumed:
“In attacking the Mini Budget, Mel Stride ides with the failed Treasury Orthodoxy. Stride is a creature of the system. When he served alongside me as Treasury Minister, he always went along with officials. “He backed Sunak’s huge spending, but not my tax cuts which were smaller in size and would have increased growth. Britain’s system of government is broken. Nothing will change with people like him in charge.”
In attacking the Mini Budget, @MelJStride sides with the failed Treasury Orthodoxy.
Stride is a creature of the system.
When he served alongside me as Treasury Minister, he always went along with officials – including on the Loan Charge and IR35, damaging the self-employed and…
Truss served just 49 days in No. 10 before her mini-Budget triggered market chaos and forced her departure. Now she’s on the warpath.
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💥 Stride’s damning speech
Stride is due to deliver a major address on Thursday. In it, he will argue that the Tories’ “economic credibility” remains scarred by Truss’s tax cuts. He plans to say:
“For a few weeks, we put at risk the very stability which Conservatives had always said must be carefully protected. “The credibility of the UK’s economic framework was undermined by spending billions on subsidising energy bills and tax cuts, with no proper plan for how this would be paid for.” “Let me be clear: never again will the Conservative Party undermine fiscal credibility by making promises we cannot afford.”
Those comments strike at the heart of Truss’s brief premiership: £45 billion of unfunded giveaways that sent the pound into freefall and mortgage rates soaring.
🤔 Treasure trove of contradictions?
Truss insists her tax cuts would have spurred growth. Stride counters that her “smaller” reductions paled beside her predecessor’s generosity to the wealthy—yet still lacked funding. The result? A party divided over how to balance growth with prudence.
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😂 Reactions
1.
Good morning Liz Hope you get well soon and try to lay off the crack until at least lunch time
Has it actually never crossed your mind that with everyone from Cabinet colleagues, the Opposition. economists, charities, Unions, civil service etc challenging your ideology that actually it is you that was wrong all along
