Yahoo Movies Liz Truss 'To Send Close Allies To The Lords' In 49-Day Premiership Honours List
Liz Truss making a speech outside 10 Downing Street as she resigned in September.
Liz Truss wants to hand out peerages to some of her closest allies as part of the resignation honours list given to departing prime ministers, it has been reported.
Truss, whose premiership lasted 49 days, left Downing Street after her September mini-budget measures helped tank the pound.
Several reports now suggest the MP relegated to the back benches has nominated former aides and supporters for lifelong seats in the House of Lords.
According to The Sun and the i newspapers, former Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott, Conservative Party donor Jon Moynihan, long-term aide Ruth Porter and think tank boss Mark Littlewood have all been recommended for peerages by the former Tory leader.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called on her successor Rishi Sunak to block the nominations.
Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner hit out at “obscene rewards for failure”, coming after she said Truss “and her Conservative co-conspirators” had taken a “wrecking ball to the economy”.
Littlewood is director of the free market-supporting think tank Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
The group backed the disastrous mini-budget unveiled by Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, with Littlewood, according to The Guardian, calling it a “boost-up budget”.
Upon her resignation, Littlewood said: “I’m very sorry the PM’s efforts to move the UK in a pro-growth, low-tax, pro-enterprise direction has failed.
“She had a difficult hand to play, but she also played the hand badly.”
He also served as chief press spokesman for the Lib Dems and reportedly was at Oxford University with Truss.
Porter currently works for a lobbying firm but helped spearhead Truss’s successful Tory leadership bid in the summer before briefly serving as her deputy chief of staff in No 10.
The register of MPs’ financial interests shows that Moynihan donated, in two separate transactions, more than £50,000 to Ms Truss’s leadership campaign.
Elliott, as well as campaigning for Brexit, was also involved in founding the Taxpayers’ Alliance group which lobbies for lower taxes.
Rayner said: “Liz Truss and her Conservative co-conspirators took a wrecking ball to the economy in a disastrous six-week premiership that has left millions facing mortgage misery, but Rishi Sunak now looks set to allow her to hand out these obscene rewards for failure.
“If this prime minister was serious about the integrity he promised, he would be point blank refusing to rubber stamp Liz Truss’s list of shame.
“Instead of approving undeserved honours and lifetime golden goodbyes for her cheerleaders, he should be demanding the public apology she has refused to provide.”
Wendy Chamberlain MP, the Lib Dems’ chief whip, said: “Handing out more expensive gongs to Conservative allies is a truly remarkable way to reward the shortest tenure as prime minister in British political history.
“Truss and her Conservative colleagues trashed our economy and left millions in misery.
“Those selected for honours are the very people who helped plunge the country into chaos and crisis.
“Rishi Sunak must block these honours immediately as allowing Truss to dish out positions of influence shows a stunning lack of humility.”
A spokesman for Truss said he could not comment on who any individuals on the nomination list were.
