In a leaked recording, the then Treasury No 2 also risked pitting Londoners against the rest of the country by trying to explain the difference between the capital and other regions in the UK. Truss, who has put patriotism at the heart of the leadership campaign, suggested the difference was “partly a matter of mindset or attitude”. The comments were made when Truss was chief secretary to the Treasury, a post she held until 2019. In the recording she argued that there seemed little desire to change the working culture to make the UK more prosperous. The highly disparaging comments echo a controversial passage about British workers being among the “world’s worst idlers”, from the book Britannia Unchained which she wrote in 2012 when she was a new MP trying to make her mark as a neo-Thatcherite. In the first televised Tory leadership debate last month, Truss claimed she had not written the offending chapter and blamed fellow writer Dominic Raab. He told the BBC presenter: “Each writer wrote a different chapter. Dominic Raab wrote this chapter – supporting Rishi Sunak. Raab later claimed the authors – who also included Priti Patel and Kwasi Kwarteng – had taken “collective responsibility” for the book, adding: “It’s up to Liz to explain why she changed her mind.” In the leaked recording, Truss claimed the book had been “misrepresented” at the time of its release a decade ago, but did not elaborate on how she felt the passage had been misrepresented. Truss’ comments on worker productivity outside London could be particularly damaging as earlier this month he was forced to reverse plans to cut civil servant pay outside the capital after an angry outcry from Tory MPs. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. She claimed there had been a “deliberate misrepresentation” of her policy – despite her campaign releasing specific details – but confirmed she was abandoning plans for regional pay boards for public servants or public sector workers. London had the highest level of productivity of any UK region in 2020, with output per hour more than 50% higher than the median, according to the Office for National Statistics. However, this is widely believed to be the result of large multinationals based in the capital, higher involvement in research and development, business size and level of exports, and transport infrastructure. In the leaked recording, Truss began: “I once wrote a book about this that was misunderstood – British workers produce less per hour than … and that’s a combination of kind of skill and application.” He continued: “If you look at productivity, it’s very, very different in London to the rest of the country. But basically… this has been a historical fact for decades. It’s actually partly a matter of mindset and attitude, I think. It is basically work culture. If you go to China it’s very different, I can assure you.” The minister, who had a close watch on public spending, added: “There is a fundamental issue with British work culture. Essentially, if we are going to be a richer country and a more prosperous country, that has to change. But I don’t think people want to change that. “There’s a little thing in Britain about wanting easy answers. That’s my reflection on the election and what came before it, and the referendum – we’re saying that it’s all of Europe that’s causing these huge problems… it’s all these immigrants that are causing these problems. But actually what needs to happen is more … more grafting. It’s not a popular message.” Contact the team securely: create a Protonmail account and email us at [email protected] or use Signal Messenger or WhatsApp to send a message to +44 7824 537227. A Truss campaign source said: “These half-decade-old comments have no context, but one thing that is as clear today as ever is the need to boost productivity, which leads to higher wages and a better quality of life for workers in the whole of the United Kingdom. As prime minister, Liz will deliver a high-wage, high-growth, low-tax economy.” Shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “With wages shrinking thanks to the Tories’ failure to get inflation under control and years of lackluster growth, it is very insulting for Liz Truss to effectively label British workers as lazy . “I would hope she had moved on from the days of the Britannia Unchained fiasco, but it seems that is the plan for her future government. Workers across the country work around the clock to keep a roof over their heads, put food on the table and provide for their families. Liz Truss should be helping workers deal with these cost-of-living crises, as Labor underlined this week we would, not peddling this offensive nonsense.”
