Has the Conservative Party had enough of Liz Truss?

Read time: 5 mins

In brief…

• Shadow chancellor Mel Stride has condemned Liz Truss’s mini-budget, which crashed the UK economy, saying the Tories would “never” threaten the economy again.
• Jeremy Hunt, who replaced Kwasi Kwarteng to reverse the mini-budget, tells The News Agents Truss will never accept the truth of her time in power, and her attacks on today’s Tory MPs are not helping the ailing political party recover.
• The News Agents say the Tories cannot shake the spectre of Liz Truss, and with little action from leader Kemi Badenoch, she continues to dominate the party’s narrative today.

What’s the story?

​​The Tories will “never again” risk the UK’s stability like Liz Truss did with her disastrous mini-budget of 2022.

That’s according to Mel Stride, shadow chancellor, who condemned the 49-day former Prime Minister in perhaps the harshest terms yet from a serving Conservative MP.

The Growth Plan, which was delivered in September 2022 sought to slash income tax and pay for this cut with a huge increase in government borrowing.

Instead, all it achieved was to crash the economy and cost the UK treasury an estimated £30 billion. It was quickly reversed, but the damage had been done and Truss stepped down from her role after less than two months, after the infamous tabloid stunt comparing her time as PM to the lifespan of an iceberg lettuce.

“Mel Stride has taken the party way beyond where they have previously been, even further than Kemi Badenoch, in terms of accepting the damage that Liz trust did in 2022,” says Emily Maitlis.

“It was £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts and spending pledges.”

The first head to roll after the impact of the disastrous mini-budget was realised was Kwasi Kwarteng, chancellor of the exchequer at the time, only to be replaced by Jeremy Hunt – who would go on to reverse the budget to prevent further damage to the UK economy.

Jeremy Hunt says Truss’s actions ‘not helpful’ for struggling Tories

Hunt tells The News Agents that when he became chancellor, a role he held until 2024, he believed he would potentially become the shortest-serving chancellor in history.

“If I'm honest, I didn't think Liz Truss was going to last very long, even when I took the job,” he says.

“We are realising as a party that we have to draw a line very publicly under that.

“It was a big mistake, and we reversed it almost immediately.”

But while the Tory Party is now trying to undo some of the damage done by Truss’s time in power, nearly three years on, she still refuses to take any responsibility for the financial crash, and hit back at Mel Stride after his comments on her damaging action.

“I am nervous about publicly criticising her, but it's absolutely not helpful what she's doing,” Hunt adds.

“I don't agree with it, and I think we do have to draw a line under the mistakes of that period, because they are being thrown at us week in, week out in Parliament.”

He says Truss will “never accept” it was the markets that brought her down – and not some shady establishment with a grudge against her.

“There is this weird thing in politics where sometimes you persuade yourself to believe something that's patently rubbish, because of the psychological consequences of accepting the alternative,” he says.

“The reality is, we are paying a very high political price at the moment. After the mini budget, Mel Stride, Rishi Sunak and myself, we didn't do enough to save ourselves at the election, but we did stabilise the economy.

“We brought inflation down to 2% and we got the economy growing. All that is forgotten at the moment.”

What’s The News Agents’ take?

Things aren’t looking good for the Tories at the moment. Opinion polls have placed them behind even the Liberal Democrats in 2025, and Kemi Badenoch has faced ongoing criticism for her performance in the House of Commons, and leaning too close to Reform UK on policy.

The News Agents say Badenoch’s failure to so-far stamp her mark on the Tories could be the reason behind Stride’s comments about Truss this week.

“Political history is all about setting the narrative or resetting the narrative,” says Emily.

“Stride wants to say: “That it was very much Liz Truss's fault’.

“What it tells me is they feel the need to do this because they haven't got enough policy or creative ideas to talk about with Kemi Badenoch right now.”

She says the damage done by Truss in 2022 is still affecting the Tories in 2025, and Stride’s words are the first sense of the party trying to reset the storyline.

“The reason they feel they have to say this is not that they suddenly think the country is owed an apology,” Emily adds.

“It's to do with the fact that they are struggling as a party to get past the narrative of Liz Truss.

“They cannot start carving a path for Kemi Badenoch – or for whoever, frankly, comes afterwards – to lead them anywhere if they don't box up Liz Truss and say she was an aberration. That's not who we are. That's not what we do.”

Jon Sopel believes many Tory voters still feel like Truss has “toxified the brand of the Conservative Party”.

Her response on social media won’t have done much to change that opinion.

“She's still utterly convinced that she is right and she's gonna go down fighting,” Jon says.

“It's all well and good that Mel Stride is trying to do what he's done today, but is she going to take any notice?”

Since leaving office, Truss has shared stages with extreme right-wing figures and made misguided moves such as her recent endorsement of a whisky produced by a bare-knuckle boxer who had been jailed for an assault on an OAP.

“Truss is very comfortable being on a platform with Steve Bannon and others in America from the far-right parties,” Jon adds.

“And she is still a member of the Conservative Party.

“I wonder how much further it has to go before someone says, they can't have her in the party anymore.”

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.