Liz Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, said the country’s economy had been stagnant for decades and that many of the problems were due to a lack of sound money and the deterioration of the currency, an erosion of the pound’s value caused by inflation and the printing of new banknotes.
Truss, who led a Conservative government for 45 days in 2022, said the economic situation strengthened her interest in bitcoin which some observers see as a tool against degradation. She said she is “very interested” in the cryptocurrency, which she first came across while working at the Treasury Department, mentioning it there “to shake things up.” Truss was Chief Secretary to the Treasury for around two years until July 2019.
“A lot of the problems we have are due to the deterioration of our currency and the lack of sound money,” Truss said in an interview with CoinDesk. The absence of serious debate about money in academia and in government had become “quite eerie”, and discussions of monetary policy had become “a taboo” in government, despite its central role in driving economic performance.
For Truss, bitcoin sits alongside a broader concern about centralization and control. She warned that the current system is aimed at increasing “centralized control” and limiting financial independence, particularly through regulation and taxation, and positioned bitcoin as part of a pushback against this trend.
The economy is on a “very negative trajectory,” she said, warning that the country faces long-term decline driven by weak growth, increasing government control and what she sees as a failure of monetary policy.
“We’re getting relatively poorer, very quickly,” she said, pointing to high taxes, regulation and energy costs that make “the risk often not worth the reward” for entrepreneurs. “There is a massive barrier to working in this country.”
Reflecting on the fallout from Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s 2022 mini-budget that characterized her premiership, she maintained that the resulting market turmoil exposed hidden vulnerabilities rather than causing them. “There was a tinderbox in the system that people didn’t know about,” she said, pointing to leveraged retirement strategies.
CPAC UK
Now out of government, Truss is focused on building a political movement, including CPAC UK, a three-day conference that aims to bring together activists, entrepreneurs and voices from across the “sovereignty and freedom movement”. “We need a movement of people who understand what the problem is,” she said.
She framed the effort directly, adding: “There are two choices, we’re either done or we change it.”
