Liz Truss: The interview

What went wrong for Liz Truss? In her first interview since leaving 10 Downing Street she talks to Spectator TV (watch it here), going through her leadership election, her 49-day premiership and her plans for the future. She says her plans to scrap Rishi Sunak’s corporation tax rise failed because the OBR rejected her analysis that ‘raising taxes is counter-productive’ and is ‘not actually going to lead to reducing debt’. The OBR, she says, should face greater scrutiny about the assumptions in its models given how much sway she believes they now hold over UK economic policy.

Truss admits to some mistakes and says she might not have launched her mini-Budget had she known about the ‘tinderbox’ of LDI pension liabilities: the biggest single factor, she says, in the market wobbles that brought down her premiership. She says she was never told about the LDI risk and indeed ‘didn’t know the existence of LDIs, which turned out to be the main problem’.