Fox Business personalities have not ceased their support for British Prime Minister Liz Truss following her announced resignation, with some repeatedly calling her decision to step down a “coup” and others blaming conservatives in the United Kingdom for her unpopularity.
Truss succeeded fellow Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a former Fox News darling, just six weeks ago, after Johnson’s government finally succumbed to his own record of policy failures, leadership failures, and personal scandals. Her new premiership was almost immediately overshadowed by the death of Queen Elizabeth II before her government announced a sweeping series of drastic tax cuts, particularly for the wealthy and corporations, the likes of which hadn’t been seen for 50 years.
This right-wing economic agenda was so destructive to the British economy that her own Conservative Party members criticized it, as did President Joe Biden. Moody’s ratings agency warned that the “large unfunded tax cuts” Truss had proposed would harm the British economy after the International Monetary Fund warned the plan would worsen inflation and deepen economic inequality. After a furious backlash, Truss’ government scrapped the plan and she fired her hand-picked finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng.
The fallout from her disastrous policy agenda and hasty public reversal ultimately led to her own resignation, with Truss achieving the distinction of the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. As Truss' government began imploding last week, British tabloid the Daily Star launched a live video feed to see if she could remain in office longer than it took a head of lettuce to wilt – the lettuce won. Prior to Truss’ resignation, her personal popularity ratings dropped even below that of the scandal-plagued Johnson, with just 18% of Brits approving of her job as prime minister versus staggering 55% disapproval.
Many right-wing media figures on Fox News and Fox Business lauded Truss when she first came to power promising an unpopular libertarian economic policy vision. Perpetually wrong right-wing economist Stephen Moore said on September 26, “I love what Liz Truss is doing in England, I think it’s exactly the right agenda. … It’s exactly what the United States should be doing.”
Days earlier, former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow favorably compared Truss’ “terrific supply-side economic growth plan” to the Republican Party’s midterm policy agenda. Fox Business host Stuart Varney gushed, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she were pointing the way for America?” He later said, “Liz Truss is doing economic policy right,” and “it’s just a shame we can’t copy” her tax cuts in the U.S.
On the eve of and following Truss’ resignation, these and other Fox Business personalities stuck by the disgraced Conservative prime minister and her failed policies:
- Fox News contributor and Brexit Party co-founder Nigel Farage repeatedly called the reversal of Truss’ disastrous tax cuts a “coup,” saying: “We have just been through the nearest thing to a political coup my country has ever seen.” He also said: “It literally is a coup,” and, “This is a globalist coup that has happened in the United Kingdom.”