PM will not moderate language on Truss despite cease and desist letter – No 10
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Sir Keir Starmer will not soften his language about Liz Truss’s premiership despite her lawyers sending him a letter insisting his assertion that she crashed the economy is defamatory, Downing Street has indicated. Number 10 questioned whether the former premier would also be writing to “millions of people up and down” the country who shared the Prime Minister’s view.
Ms Truss’s legal team sent Sir Keir a cease and desist letter saying his claim that his predecessor-but-one “crashed the economy” or was “crashing the economy” was defamatory and “false and misleading”. It also suggests that the assertion had been “likely to materially impact public opinion” at the last general election when she lost her Norfolk seat.
Asked on Thursday whether the Prime Minister stands by his assertion, his official spokesman said: “There’s only so much I can talk about previous administrations, but you’ve got the Prime Minister’s language which he absolutely stands by in relation to the previous government’s record, and you don’t have to take it from the Prime Minister.
“I think you can ask people up and down the country what the impact of previous economic management was on their mortgages, on inflation, and I think you’ll get similar answers. “But what we’re focused on now is the decisions this Government needs to take to ensure that we tackle the long-standing underlying weaknesses in the UK economy that you know have obviously been around for many years – low productivity, low growth – because ultimately they are the fundamental reasons why wages have been low over recent years and … the Government’s number one mission (is) to deliver growth and deliver higher living standards for working people.”.
