Attempting to reassure her party and the general public, British Prime Minister Liz Truss said on Sunday that she should have done more to ‘laid the ground’ for an economic strategy that caused the pound to drop to record lows and government borrowing costs to surge.
Truss, who had been in office for less than a month, adopted a softer tone on the opening day of her ruling Conservative Party’s annual conference. She promised to support the populace throughout a challenging winter and beyond.
She stood by her ‘growth plan,’ a combination of tax-cutting measures, despite criticism from investors and many economists for outlining billions of pounds of spending with few information on how it would be paid for in the near future.
Truss claimed it was the best course of action, arguing that her detractors did not understand the severity of Britain’s problems and that she should have done more to explain them. Market traders and investors have rejected this claim as the cause of the pound’s decline and the rise in borrowing costs last week.
In the central English city of Birmingham, she told the BBC, ‘I understand their anxieties about what has transpired this week.’
I do accept that we should have set the groundwork more effectively, but I do stand by the package we released and the fact that we did it swiftly because we had to act.
Truss did not, however, dispute that the plan will call for changes to funding for public services, which some Conservative lawmakers worry may alienate voters before the next general election, which is scheduled for 2024.
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