Liz Truss raised eyebrows final evening when quizzed about her opposition to Brexit forward of the 2016 referendum.
She instructed a Tory management hustings in Cardiff: “With regards to the Stay vote … sure, I used to be not sure on the time. I used to be just about on the fence.”
This got here as one thing of a shock to those that can bear in mind the important thing function Truss performed within the marketing campaign to maintain the UK within the European Union.
Certainly, a fast Google search throws up loads of proof that Truss’s help for the Stay trigger was real and heartfelt.
In a tweet on February 20, 2016, simply 4 months earlier than the nation went to the polls, she mentioned: “I’m backing stay as I imagine it’s in Britain’s financial curiosity and means we will concentrate on very important financial and social reform.”
Three months later, Truss, who was surroundings secretary on the time, instructed The Guardian that Brexit could be a “massively retrograde step”.
“It is a debate about our nation,” she mentioned. “Individuals who care about these points, who care about us being an outward-facing, internationally-focused nation, exit and vote.”
The identical month, in a speech to the Meals and Drink Federation, Truss insisted the UK could be “higher off” contained in the EU.
She mentioned: “Even in case you’re in an organization that doesn’t export, the corporate that does export can be shopping for much less of your companies and I believe that’s a message we actually have to get throughout within the closing weeks of this marketing campaign.
“However I’ve nice religion within the British individuals; I believe the British individuals are wise individuals [and] they perceive essentially that, economically, Britain can be higher off staying in a reformed EU.”
Footage of Truss on the marketing campaign path throughout the referendum will also be discovered on social media.
And she or he was additionally a key voice at Stay press conferences, showing alongside different pro-EU Tories like George Osborne, Amber Rudd and Stephen Crabb.
Matt Cardy through Getty Photos
There’s no denying that Truss has properly and really recanted on her earlier views and has managed to reinvent herself as one of many authorities’s loudest pro-Brexit voices.
Certainly, she has claimed that she would now vote Depart if she had the possibility.
This has helped her win the help of ardent Brexiteers like Nadine Dorries, Steve Baker and Jacob Rees-Mogg, even though her rival, Rishi Sunak, truly voted Depart in 2016.
Nonetheless, her declare to have been “on the fence” six years in the past is a only a determined – and unsuccessful – try to rewrite historical past.
