After Criticism of Budget, Truss Says General Election Is the ‘Last Thing we Need’

Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng during a visit to a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham, on Oct. 4, 2022. Stefan Rousseau/PA Media

Prime Minister Liz Truss responded to a jibe from a Labour MP during Prime Minister’s Question Time by saying: “The last thing we need is a general election.”

She appeared to be referring to Britain, rather than the Conservative Party, but her comment was met with laughter by opposition Labour MPs.

The Labour MP for Warwick and Leamington, Matt Western, had asked her: “In two recent polls 60 percent of this country wants an immediate general election. The Prime Minister claims she’s in listening mode. We should give way to the public.”

Western said Truss’s “honeymoon” period had turned into a “disaster” and had left the country seeking a divorce.

The Conservatives have a working majority of 69 and do not have to go to the country until January 2025 at the latest, but Truss is coming under pressure to follow her predecessor, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who called an election shortly after being elected as the party’s new leader in the summer of 2019.

‘Kamikaze Budget’

Earlier the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, described the financial plan laid out on Sept. 23 by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as a “kamikaze budget.”

Starmer asked Truss: “Who voted for this? Not home-owners paying extra on their mortgages, not working people paying for tax cuts for the largest companies, not even most of the MPs behind the PM who know you can’t pay for tax cuts on the never-never.”

Truss replied: “What our budget has delivered is security for families for the next two winters. It’s made sure we’re going to see higher economic growth, lower inflation, and more opportunities.”

‘Not Facing Gargantuan Energy Bills’

She added, in a reference to the ongoing rail strikes: “The way we'll get our country growing is through more growth, more jobs, and more opportunities, not through higher taxes, higher spending, and his friends in the unions stopping hard working people get to work.”

The SNP’s leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, accused Truss of “scapegoating” the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, in a bid to rescue Kwarteng’s career.

Blackford said: “When the Prime Minister last stood at the despatch box, the average two-year fixed rate mortgage stood at 4.5 percent, they are now at 6.5 percent and rising, hitting average families with an extra £450 a month on mortgage payments every single month over and above what they were paying. Thirty-seven days into the job, this is literally the cost of the Prime Minister’s incompetence. It is the price households are paying and all because of a Chancellor that she chose.”

He added, “Will she now give up her desperate plan to save her Chancellor’s skin by scapegoating the Governor of the Bank of England?”

Truss said in response, “The action we have taken has meant that families in Scotland and across the United Kingdom are not facing gargantuan energy bills.”

PA Media contributed to this report.