Britain's ex-premier Truss blames downfall on left-wing economic establishment

By Burak Bir

LONDON (AA) - Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss said Sunday she was "never given realistic chance" to enact tax policies and was brought down by left-wing economic establishment.

With only spending 44 days in the top job, the UK's shortest-serving prime minister broke her silence and said she is not "blameless."

"I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support," she wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.

Truss said she "was wrong" for assuming her mandate would be accepted after taking the job: "While I anticipated resistance to my programme from the system, I underestimated the extent of it."

"Similarly, I underestimated the resistance inside the Conservative parliamentary party to move to a lower-tax, less-regulated economy."

Truss said the government has become "a useful scapegoat" for problems that had been growing over the months.

In the article, she also expressed how she remained disturbed after sacking finance chief Kwasi Kwarteng, but said she believed she had been left with no choice.

"While I regret that I wasn’t able to implement my full programme, I am still optimistic for the future, with the United Kingdom now able to steer its own course as a free nation," she said.

The exit of Truss on Oct. 20, only the third woman to hold the top office, etched her name in history following her mini-budget disaster.

Truss' tumultuous 44-day tenure ranks as the shortest-lived leadership in British history -- undesirable for a politician touting her tenacity as "a fighter, not a quitter!"

Her 45% tax cut for high earners and 1% for people with lower incomes gave the wrong signals to a shaky economy, while her so-called mini-budget sent the British pound crashing to its lowest levels.