from the free-speech-going-great dept

In a twist that highlights the absurdity of UK libel laws, former Prime Minister Liz Truss is threatening to sue current PM Keir Starmer for saying she “crashed the economy” during her chaotic 49 days in office… conveniently forgetting that she made the exact same accusation against an earlier PM herself.

That’s right, Truss, whose brief tenure as PM was a spectacular economic disaster (in such a short period of time!), is now threatening legal action over rhetoric she herself has used.

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss has sent a legal “cease and desist” letter to Sir Keir Starmer demanding he stop saying she “crashed the economy”.

Her lawyers argue the claim made repeatedly by Sir Keir is “false and defamatory”, and harmed her politically in the run-up to losing her South West Norfolk seat in the general election.

Truss was the UK’s shortest-serving PM, forced to resign after just 49 days in office when borrowing costs soared in the aftermath of her government’s mini-budget.

But, as UK journalist Adam Bienkov points out, Truss herself made literally the exact same claim about even former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

The hypocrisy is glaring. Political rhetoric accusing opponents of economic mismanagement is commonplace and should clearly be protected speech, even under the UK’s notoriously plaintiff-friendly libel laws. Political leaders often criticize each other and their policies. That’s part of how democracy works.

Truss’s legal threats have backfired spectacularly, shining an even brighter spotlight on the disastrous consequences of her brief tenure. Her economic plan, centered around unfunded tax cuts, spooked markets, crashed the pound, and forced the Bank of England to make an emergency intervention. The political and economic fallout was so severe that Truss was forced to resign after just 49 days, making her the shortest-serving Prime Minister in UK history.

She was already a bit of a leafy green joke, but it felt like people had mostly let her disastrous economic plan slip into history.

That is until she returned it to the headlines with this threat to Starmer.

The Streisand Effect was coined to serve as a word of warning to people so out of touch and so thin-skinned that they feel the need to resort to legal threats over legitimate criticism. Apparently, Truss hasn’t gotten the memo yet.

Filed Under: defamation, keir starmer, libel, liz truss, streisand effect, uk