Liz Truss – who lasted just 49 days as PM after she tanked the economy – has nominated at least four new lifelong members of the House of Lords.
Liz Truss – who lasted just 49 days as PM after she tanked the economy – has been slammed for nominating at least four new lifelong members of the House of Lords.
Critics called on Rishi Sunak to block the gongs “immediately” as they fumed that “those selected for honours are the very people who helped plunge the country into chaos and crisis”.
Allies reportedly insist Ms Truss has submitted a modest resignation honours list yet the leaked names confirm close personal allies to Ms Truss are those who have made the cut.
Included on the list are Brexit campaigner Matthew Elliott, Tory donor Jon Moynihan and long-term aide Ruth Porter, who currently works as a lobbyist, it is claimed.
Mark Littlewood, the chief of the Institute of Economic Affairs who backed large sections of Ms Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-budget, will also be made a Lord, according to The Sun.
He has been friends with Ms Truss since they were at Oxford University together in the late 1990s.
Multi-millionaire hedge funder Mr Moynihan donated thousands to Ms Truss’s leadership campaign – as well as having donated £100,000 to Boris Johnson’s.
He also chaired the Vote Leave campaign in 2016.
Veteran political campaigner Mr Elliott, who founded the low-tax campaign group TaxPayers’ Alliance, and chief of the Brexit campaign also made the list.
Miss Porter, who was co-campaign director of Ms Truss’s Tory leadership bid, served as Truss’s Deputy Chief of Staff during her disastrous 49 day tenure last year.
The ex-PM was warned by Buckingham Palace last autumn not to nominate a long list of resignation honours.
Sources close to the discussions said that rewarding lots of allies and friends would be seen as inappropriate
Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner MP 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’ 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.”
Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain 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 Ms Truss declined to comment on the story.
It emerged yesterday that Ms Truss is hoping to cash in on being the UK’s shortest serving Prime Minister by giving after-dinner speeches.
A watchdog has given the ex-Premier the green light to take up a role with the Chartwell Speakers agency.
Her whirlwind spell in No10 included the death of the Queen just two days after the monarch received Ms Truss at Balmoral and appointed her PM.
The South West Norfolk MP, 47, led a grief-stricken nation in mourning and read a lesson at the Westminster Abbey funeral.
Later that day, she jetted to New York for a United Nations General Assembly meeting, then later that week Mr Kwarteng delivered his Budget which included £47billion of unfunded tax cuts – a bombshell which stunned international money markets and ultimately hiked interest rates for homeowners.
She was forced into a humiliating reversal of some of the tax cuts and, later in October, accepted her premiership was over – departing Downing Street just 49 days after her arrival.
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