Pitiful ex-PM Liz Truss blames ‘woke culture’ for high taxes. No, seriously

Pitiful ex-prime minister Liz Truss is expected to blame high taxes on “woke culture” in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that opposes same-sex marriage.

The former prime minister is set to make her case for a low-tax economy while delivering the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Freedom lecture in Washington DC on Wednesday (12 April). 

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think-tank that has opposed same-sex marriage, abortion and transgender rights in the United States.

Truss – who lasted just 49 days as prime minister before resigning over her disastrous mini-budget – is expected to tell the Heritage Foundation that the 1980s model of low taxes and increased privatisation is being eradicated.

“It was Anglo-American individualism that made the world prosperous,” Truss will say, according to ITV News.

“Low taxes, limited government and private enterprise were what won the Cold War. I worry that we are now seeing this model strangled into stagnation.” 

Truss is expected to use her lecture to hit out at “low growth, rising living costs and declining value of wages”, blaming “ever larger government” for society’s ills. 

“The sad truth is that we have seen stagnation, redistribution and woke culture taking hold in businesses and the economy in the UK and the US… it results in more tax, more subsidies, more regulation,” Truss will say. 

“We’ve allowed our opponents to own our institutions, crowd our campuses and fill our airwaves.

“Not long ago the United States and the United Kingdom were absolute bastions of free enterprise, free markets and free speech… But what we’ve seen now is self-flagellation – lashing out at the very things that made us great.” 

Truss is also set to criticise the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in her speech.

“Not content with high taxes in their own countries, we now see governments seeking to agree high taxes around the free world – I’m talking about the OECD minimum tax agreement, which will stop countries lowering things like corporation tax and becoming more competitive,” Truss will say.

Truss’ lecture comes as she mounts plans for a political comeback following her embarassing time as prime minister.

Truss became the shortest-serving prime minister in history after her mini-budget caused economic turmoil. She was eventually forced to quit in a last-ditch effort to calm the markets.

Her Heritage Foundation speech is just the latest step in Truss’ efforts to get back into the political limelight.

Truss has long been associated with the Heritage Foundation – as far back as 2019, she praised the anti-LGBTQ+ organisation as being at the “forefront of Republican thinking as we move into the next decade”.

She also spoke at a panel organised by the Heritage Foundation in 2020.