Liz Truss’s defiant farewell speech

Liz Truss's final words as Prime Minister were not just an attempt to set out what she sees as being the 'legacy' from her 49 days in power. They were also the outgoing Conservative leader's last chance to argue that what she had done was in the national interest, rather than the chaotic experiment that her opponents have characterised her economic policies as. And it was also her chance to warn Rishi Sunak that she and other Tory MPs would be on his case. She said: 

'From my time as Prime Minister, I am more convinced than ever we need to be bold and confront the challenges that we face. As the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: 'It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.' We simply cannot afford to be a low growth country where the government takes up an increasing share of our national wealth and where there are huge divides between different parts of our country.'

This was the attack line that Truss used in the summer leadership campaign against Sunak. It is the complaint that many of her supporters were still using in the past few days. Don't forget that a good number of Tory MPs didn't see Sunak as being a sufficiently Conservative chancellor, and felt he had given in to the 'Treasury orthodoxy'. Truss will be the third former prime minister looming on the backbenches – and like all the others, she'll want to remind people that she had the right idea, even if things went wrong rather more quickly for her than for Theresa May and Boris Johnson.