Truss Says She Is A Fighter, Not A Quitter As She Faces MPs

(Bloomberg) --

Embattled UK premier Liz Truss said she is “a fighter, not a quitter,” as she faced lawmakers for the first time since firing her finance minister and junking most of her economic program just weeks after announcing it.

“I am somebody who's prepared to front up,” she said during her weekly question-and-answer session in the House of Commons on Wednesday. “The right thing to do is make changes, as I've made.”

#PMQs for the chaos sparked by her government's mini-budget but says the "right thing to do is to... get on with the job" https://t.co/Usqck8CJ0u pic.twitter.com/JfGw1P3mcL

Support for Truss and her ruling Conservatives has plunged to record depths following her program of tax cuts announced on Sept. 23, which triggered chaos in the financial markets and forced up borrowing costs and mortgage rates. Newly-installed Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of the policies to restore financial stability, but also put the Conservatives on course to impose another round of punishing austerity on Britons already struggling with a cost-of living crisis.

The debacle has left Truss clinging to power, with her own MPs openly plotting to oust her just weeks after she entered 10 Downing Street. As she addressed Parliament, the prime minister was under intense pressure to show her party she can regain control.

Truss Faces Tory Rebellion If She Scraps UK Pensions Pledge

Labour leader Keir Starmer's party is now riding high in the polls ahead of a general election that must be held by January 2025. On Wednesday, he skewered Truss with a list of policies she had announced and then been forced to scrap. After each item, he was joined in a chant of “gone” by his MPs. 

‘Crashed the Economy'

“We're a government in waiting and they're an opposition in waiting,” Starmer said. “They crashed the economy.”

Truss is braced for further challenges to her authority from within the Conservatives in the coming days, but she has been helped by the lack of an obvious successor. Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt -- both defeated by Truss in the Tory leadership contest over the summer -- are privately being discussed by MPs as potential candidates.

In Office But Not In Charge: How Is Truss Still Prime Minister?

As Truss sought to reassert control, she pledged:

• Public spending would increase for the next two years
• To protect the so-called “triple-lock” on pensions, which guarantees that the state pension will rise the highest of inflation, earnings or 2.5%. Doubts had been sown in recent days after both new Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt and Truss's own spokesman, Max Blain, had refused to commit to the policy.
• To begin a consultation on the system of local consent for fracking

Truss also reiterated a promise to help the most vulnerable with their energy bills for the next two years, though she didn't commit to increasing welfare payments in line with inflation. She also didn't commit to protecting the overseas aid budget, as Hunt looks for spending cuts to stabilize the public finances.

The premier also apologized to the Commons for her errors, repeating a mea culpa issued earlier this week in a BBC interview.

“I am sorry and I have made mistakes,” Truss said. “I took the decision I had to in the interest of economic stability.”

(Updates with further comment from Starmer, Truss, starting in sixth paragraph)

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