Liz Truss considered stopping all cancer treatment on the NHS after she crashed the UK economy, a new book has claimed.
Sir Anthony Seldon is set to release his latest political biography, ‘Truss at 10: How Not to be a Prime Minister’ on 29th August, covering the turbulent 49 days that Truss was in the top seat.
The book is expected to contain some bombshell revelations about her time in charge, including insight into how she proposed to deal with the fallout from her disastrous mini-budget, which sent financial markets into a death spiral.
The author claims that, in the immediate aftermath of the mini-Budget, Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, launched a desperate attempt to find spending cuts in an effort to restore stock-market confidence in their strategy.
Sir Anthony says a group of Truss’s Tory aides met to discuss the issue. One of her senior advisers, Alex Boyd, “was told that Truss and Kwarteng were thinking they could still sort out the black hole with severe cuts”: “We’ve been told that they’re looking at stopping cancer treatment on the NHS.”
Boyd’s response was to ask “Is she being serious?” writes Sir Anthony, while other aides said she had “lost the plot”.
“She’s shouting at everyone that ‘We’ve got to find the money.’ When we tell her it can’t be done, she shouts back: ‘It’s not true. The money is there. You go and find it,’” they told the author.
Speaking to The Independent, Kwarteng said: “I wasn’t involved in any conversations about restricting healthcare, but that doesn’t mean the prime minister and her team didn’t discuss this.”
Sir Anthony also claimed that Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to persuade Truss to make him chancellor instead of Mr Kwarteng.
The Brexiteer MP reportedly urged Truss to abolish inheritance tax, replace all tax rates with a 20p flat rate, and organise a stunt to promote nuclear power.
He writes that the then cabinet minister told Truss: “We should get a nuclear submarine to dock at Liverpool and plug it into the grid. That would show it is safe.”
Sir Anthony says cabinet secretary Simon Case dismissed the idea as a “non-starter”, adding that “the subs are needed in operations”.
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