By Jill Lawless | Associated Press
LONDON — British Prime Minister Liz Truss described herself as “a fighter and not a quitter” Wednesday as she faced down a hostile opposition and fury from her own Conservative Party over her botched economic plan.
Yet the grim faces of Conservative lawmakers behind her in the House of Commons suggested that Truss faces an uphill struggle to save her job. Within hours of Truss’ appearance in Parliament for a regular session titled Prime Minister’s Questions, a senior member of her government left her post with a fusillade of criticism.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she resigned after breaching rules by sending an official document from her personal email account. In her resignation letter, Braverman said she had “concerns about the direction of this government” and — in a thinly veiled attack on Truss — said “the business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes.”
“Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics,” she said.
Braverman is a popular figure on the Conservative Party’s right wing and a champion of more restrictive immigration policies.
Her departure comes days after Truss fired her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday after the economic package the pair drew up spooked financial markets when it was announced on Sept. 23.
The plan’s 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts sparked turmoil on financial markets, hammering the value of the pound and increasing the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
Truss attended her first session of Prime Minister’s Questions since Kwarteng’s replacement, Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt, ripped up the tax-cutting package unveiled by her new government less than a month ago.
She apologized to Parliament and admitted she had made mistakes during her short tenure as the U.K.’s head of government, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
Opposition lawmakers shouted “Resign!” as she spoke.
Asked by opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, “Why is she still here?” Truss retorted: “I am a fighter and not a quitter. I have acted in the national interest to make sure that we have economic stability.”
On Monday Hunt scrapped almost all of Truss’ tax cuts, along with her flagship energy policy and her promise of no public spending cuts. He said the government will need to save billions of pounds and there are “many difficult decisions” to be made before he sets out a medium-term fiscal plan on Oct. 31.