Liz Truss’s attorneys demand Keir Starmer stops saying she crashed the financial system

Wrecking ball former Prime Minister Liz Truss has sent a legal letter to Keir Starmer demanding he stops saying she “crashed the economy”.

The 49-day leader, whose mini-budget unleashed chaos in 2022, claims statements made by Mr Starmer in the build-up to the General Election were “false and defamatory”. Her reputation suffered as a result, her lawyers wrote.

Ms Truss dramatically lost her South West Norfolk seat to Labour in July as the Tories plummeted to a historic defeat. The ex-Tory leader has steadfastly maintained that others were to blame for her downfall.

The letter, seen by The Telegraph, says that Mr Starmer’s comments about Ms Truss “are causing continuing damage to our client’s reputation”. It demands: “Accordingly, our client requests that you immediately cease and desist from repeating the defamatory statements at any point, from causing them to be repeated or from otherwise re-publishing the defamatory statements or any part of them.”

And it concluded: “We sincerely hope that this matter can now be resolved and that you will refrain from causing any further damage to our client.”

The lawyers claim Mr Starmer “ought to have known” that Ms Truss didn’t crash the economy. It does on to say that his remarks were “likely to materially impact public opinion of our client” during the campaign.

It cites economist Andrew Lilico, fellow of the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank, who told The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast: ““There wasn’t any crash in the economy. The economy actually grew faster in the period immediately following the mini-Budget.”

Her lawyers argue that panic in the gilt and currency markets did not lead to economic output falling. Ms Truss has maintained her innocence, saying that the Deep State was to blame.

In February last year she claimed left wingers had infiltrated schools, university campuses and corporate boardrooms, and left them “infected with the dogma of wokeism”. And she claimed it was this infiltration that was to blame for her being the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history.

“In too much of the free world, the left has been in charge for too long and the results are all too plain to see,” she wrote. “Their agents are only too active in public and private institutions and what we have come to know as the administrative state and the deep state. I saw this for myself first hand as they sabotaged my efforts in Britain to cut taxes, reduce the size of government and restore democratic accountability.”

The Mirror has contacted No10 for comment.