West News Wire: In spite of requests from other Conservative MPs, British Prime Minister Liz Truss stated on Monday that she had no intention of leaving office. She made this statement as she battles for her political life due to her contentious economic policies, which have caused market upheaval.
The troubled PM said she is sticking around because she was elected to “deliver for this country and that is what I am determined to do” in an interview with the BBC.
The Conservative Party would be led by her into the subsequent election, she continued, adding that she was “not interested on internal debates” within the party. “These are incredibly difficult days for us. We simply cannot afford to divert our attention from the tasks at hand to Conservative Party rhetoric. That is my message to my colleagues.”
Truss apologized, however, for the mistakes she has made during her first month as prime minister, taking responsibility for her ill-fated economic plan, which triggered market chaos. She explained that she “wanted to act to help people with their energy bills, to deal with the issue of high taxes,” while admitting that her government “went too far and too fast” with its policies.
The prime minister said that in order to remedy the situation, she appointed a new chancellor with a new strategy “to restore economic stability.”
The comments come after several Conservative MPs urged Truss to step down, citing her inability to handle the economic crisis. While Truss inherited double-digit inflation and an economy on the brink of recession, she initially supported the controversial ‘mini budget’ which aimed to ramp up borrowing and keep the corporation tax at 19% instead of increasing it to 25%.
The plan backfired, with markets plunging into turmoil and the British pound crashing to Liz Truss record low against the US dollar. Subsequently, Truss scrapped the budget and fired the chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, replacing him with the former head of the Foreign Office, Jeremy Hunt.
A recent poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies shows that if a general election were held today, the Tories would lose more than 300 seats in the House of Commons, and the Labour Party would gain a majority in Parliament.
