Labour vows not to ‘cease and desist from truth’ despite Truss lawyers’ demand
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Labour will not “cease and desist from telling the truth” about Liz Truss’s “kamikaze budget”, the House of Commons Leader has vowed. Lucy Powell defended her party’s first six months in Government and pledged “sound public finances” after Conservative shadow leader Jesse Norman suggested Labour could look at adopting “new year’s resolutions”.
Lawyers at Asserson, on behalf of former prime minister Ms Truss, have sent a letter to Sir Keir Starmer about “false and defamatory public statements you made about our client in the lead-up to the UK general election from late May 2024”. They asked the Prime Minister to “immediately cease and desist” from repeating a claim he made last June, in which he talks about Ms Truss “crashing” or having “crashed” the economy.
At the despatch box on Thursday, Ms Powell told MPs: “She might want us to cease and desist, but we won’t cease and desist from telling the truth that they (the Conservatives) crashed the economy.”. She earlier said Mr Norman had “admitted himself that we inherited – and I quote – ‘a struggling economy with anaemic growth’ and our commitment to economic stability, sound public finances, and meeting the fiscal rules is non-negotiable”.
The Cabinet minister continued: “We are only borrowing for investment and we will see net debt fall, and as he knows well, the cost of debt fluctuates often because of global markets. “But I have to say this is in stark contrast to the chaos we saw under his government when Liz Truss’s kamikaze budget directly and immediately led to the gilt market crashing, leaving the Bank of England to intervene to buy up Government bonds.”.
