Liz Truss claims Bank of England and OBR deliberately wrecked her time as PM

Liz Truss has accused the Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) of deliberately wrecking her premiership as she warned the West could be “doomed”.

Speaking at a gathering of American conservatives near Washington DC on Thursday, the former prime minister backed the return of Donald Trump, saying: “We need it desperately right across the free world.”

She claimed that the left has remained in control of most western countries even when right-wing governments are elected.

Referring to her own brief time in No 10, Ms Truss told the Conservative Political Action Conference: “I believed our country needed to be turned around.

“I saw our growth wasn’t high enough, that we hadn’t sorted out immigration, I wanted to deal with those issues. And I put forward a range of policies and those policies got support – they got support from our party members, from our base.”

She added: “I faced the most almighty backlash for those conservative policies that I tried to put in place. From the usual suspects in the media, from the usual suspects in the corporate world, but also from people that were meant to work for the government: the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Bank of England, these organisations sought to undermine the policies.”

Ms Truss has previously accused the Bank of England of failing to stop a meltdown in financial markets partially caused by the malfunctioning of a market in poorly understood instruments called liability-driven insurance.

Her September 2022 mini-Budget slashed taxes without cutting Government spending, and was not run past the OBR as is normal. The watchdog calculated that it left a black hole of tens of billions of pounds in the public finances – although it did not say so publicly at the time.

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Ms Truss concluded: “This is the lesson that I have learned. I’ve learned that it’s not enough just to have the right policies. It’s not even enough to get the position of power that you need to deliver those policies.

“Because conservatives are now operating in what is a hostile environment. And we essentially need a bigger bazooka in order to be able to deliver and I think we have got to challenge the institutions themselves. We’ve got to challenge the system itself. And we’ve got to be prepared to take that on as conservatives.”

She accused the left of creating “woke-onomics”, with a focus on diversity ahead of economic growth, and told her audience: “Of course, we need a Republican back in the White House. We need it desperately. And by the way, it’s not just America that needs it desperately. We need it desperately right across the free world.”