Labour sources have been left “baffled” by Liz Truss’s comeback bid which they say is only highlighting the “huge damage” inflicted on the economy during her disastrous stint as prime minister.
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer has reiterated his call for a general election, insisting Ms Truss’s intervention showed the country needs a “fresh start”.
It came after Tories criticised the former prime minister’s 4,000-word essay in The Sunday Telegraph, branding it “arrogant”, a “mistake”, and suggesting Ms Truss could cost the party the next election.
A Labour source told i Ms Truss and Boris Johnson are “ghosts” that are “haunting” Rishi Sunak’s Government, as an opposition MP said they were “baffled as to how or why she thinks this will help people or her party”.
“I would have thought that with people worrying about their heating bills and paying the mortgage the Tories might be better putting the interests of the country before their own narrow factional interests,” the MP said.
A Labour source added: “No matter how much the Prime Minister tries to hide from them, Rishi Sunak can’t outrun the ghosts of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.
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“These twin Tory Jacob Marleys, clanking around in the manacles of economic failure and chaos they forged in office, will haunt this Government to its dying day.”
Speaking to broadcasters in Bristol, Sir Keir said of Ms Truss’s article: “I have to say, my heart sunk at the idea of former prime ministers taking the stage to tell us about what they did. They did huge damage to our country and to our economy.
“And there are millions of people across the country still paying the price for the failures, well, 13 years failure of this Conservative Government, so what the country needs is for us to move forward.
“We’re not going be able to do that until we have a general election now and a fresh start under Labour.
“But the former prime ministers’ contest of who was the biggest failure is just about the last thing that this country needs right now.”