LONDON — Liz Truss thinks Britain should have played hardball with the EU on Brexit because the “only thing” the bloc understands “is pain.”
The U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister offered her retrospective thoughts on Britain’s tortuous exit from the bloc in a new book published Tuesday.
In it, Truss laments the fact her predecessor-but-one Theresa May wasn’t more “hardheaded” in negotiating Brexit — and says the U.K.’s vote to leave in 2016 “was always going to be seen by the EU as an act of war.”
“That being the case, you have to proceed on that basis,” she argued. “The only thing they understand is pain. We should have told them we were prepared to go for no deal, put tariffs on their agricultural imports, and pursue a trade agreement with the U.S.”
Britain, she argued, “potentially had a lot of leverage” in its talks on quitting the bloc, but “never used it.”
“When you have a prime minister and a chancellor both keen to listen to cautious civil servants, that sort of bold, bellicose approach was never going to fly,” she added.
Truss served in May’s Cabinet during Brexit talks, first as justice secretary and then in a senior role in the finance ministry. May’s government disintegrated as it tried repeatedly to get a Brexit deal through the British parliament.
Truss later took on the trade and foreign briefs in Boris Johnson’s own ill-fated government, before succeeding him as prime minister — for just 49 chaotic days.
Truss campaigned for Remain in the run-up to 2016’s Brexit vote, but has since restyled herself as a born-again Brexiteer.
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