Since embarrassingly leaving office as the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister in history, Liz Truss has come out with some nonsense – but this might take the biscuit.
More than years on from her infamous mini-budget, Truss is still adamant she had it right.
Despite the fact her £45bn in unfunded tax cuts managed to crash the pound, send government borrowing costs and mortgage rates to the moon and force the Bank of England to step in to stabilise the market and save pension funds, the former Tory MP believes her vision would have unleashed Britain’s economic potential.
In her new book, Bank Job, this is what Truss tries to argue. She claims, as the title suggests, that it was the Bank of England that was responsible for her being booted out of Number 10, and that the ‘deep state’ had it in for her from the start.
The entire concept of the self-described ‘short book’ is laughable, but Truss arguably saves the best until last with the final chapter, titled ‘2040.’
Here, Truss lays out an alternate future of how Britain would look in the year 2040 if she had been allowed to serve a full term in office.
In this future, the Equality Act, Human Rights Act and the Climate Change Act would all have been repealed. As stupid as this would be, it is not an unlikely scenario, given that Kemi Badenoch is pledging similar things as Tory leader.
Then, Truss truly jumps the shark, as she claims the UK would be sending people to Mars thanks to her.
As reported by Metro, Truss writes: “Several missions to Mars have now been launched from Britain’s space port.”
The UK currently has two space ports, one of which, SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, is capable of vertical rocket launches.
But a huge amount of upscaling would be required for it to send rockets and crews on 7-9 month journeys required for a Mars mission.
After reading this, you may not be surprised to hear that Truss’s literary work has been panned and mocked in equal measure by critics.
Bank Job: A Short Book on How the Bank of England Broke the Bond Market and Brought Down the Government, to give it its full title, was labelled “the most deranged things I’ve ever read” by the Telegraph’s Simon Heffer.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times described it as “as sober, serious and measured as you’d expect from someone who wants to abolish the United Nations.”