LONDON — British Prime Minister Liz Truss told MPs she’s a “fighter, not a quitter,” as she attempted to see off a fresh party row over whether her cost-cutting new chancellor will significantly hike state pensions.
Truss — facing her first round of prime minister’s questions since sacking her chancellor and junking totemic campaign commitments in a bid to calm spooked markets — struck a defiant tone Wednesday in the House of Commons, as the opposition Labour Party seized on a week of major policy U-turns that have left her premiership hanging in the balance.
And, under pressure from her own MPs, she told the house she was “completely committed” to raising pensions in line with inflation — a Conservative pledge that has been thrown into doubt by her new chancellor’s push to balance the books.
The U.K. prime minister last week drafted in former leadership rival Jeremy Hunt as chancellor in the face of market turmoil and collapsing poll ratings. Hunt swiftly jettisoned a raft of unfunded tax cuts, asked government departments to find savings and suggested a multibillion-pound plan to cut energy costs for consumers and businesses will be significantly pared back.
The Conservatives have long promised a “triple lock” on the value of state pensions, which means they must rise each year in line with either inflation, average earnings, or by 2.5 percent — whichever is highest.
That pledge has been called into question since Hunt took over, and just hours earlier on Wednesday Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told broadcasters he could not commit to the hike.
But, asked about increasing pensions in line with inflation, Truss told MPs: “I am completely committed to the triple lock and so is the chancellor.”
The pledge came after a series of jibes from Labour leader Keir Starmer, who opened with a joke about a forthcoming book on Liz Truss’ premiership, which is going “to be out by Christmas.”
“Is that the release date or the title?” he quipped.
And Starmer asked of Truss: “How can she be held to account when she’s not in charge?”
Truss shot back, saying she had “more of a record of action than the honorable gentleman in his two and a half years in the job” of the opposition leader.
And, pressed further on the series of policy shifts over the past week, Truss said: “I had to take the decision, because of the economic situation, to adjust our policies. I am somebody who is prepared to front up. I’m prepared to take the tough decisions, unlike the honorable gentleman.”
The embattled U.K. leader again sought to pin the blame for her shifts on the global “economic reality,” pointing to interest rate hikes around the world and the inflationary toll of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
And, in an echo of a former Labour Cabinet minister, she twice insisted: “I am a fighter and not a quitter.”
“We have delivered on the energy price guarantee, we’ve delivered on [reducing]national insurance. We are going to deliver to stop the militant trade unions disrupting our railways,” Truss said. “The honorable gentleman has no idea, he has no plan and he has no alternative.”
But Ian Blackford, the Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party, pointed to Truss’ tanking poll ratings and charged that the PM is now “in office but not in power.”
