Liz Truss’s comments that British workers need “more graft” have been branded a “total disgrace” by Labour.
Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, said comments from Tory leadership frontrunner showed how out of touch Liz Truss was.
The Tory Foreign Secretary was plunged into controversy after the Guardian unearthed a leaked recording in which she hinted that workers outside London lacked the “mindset and attitude” of those in the capital.
In the comments, made before 2019 while she was a Treasury Minister, Truss said: “There’s a fundamental issue of British working culture. Essentially, if we’re going to be a richer country and a more prosperous country, that needs to change. But I don’t think people are that keen to change that.”
Yvette Copper said the comments gave a true picture of who the potential Prime Minister was.
Cooper said: “I think it reveals what she really thinks. This comes after the proposal she put forward to cut public sector pay in the north and other parts of the country.
“So teaching assistants or nurses in Yorkshire would get paid less than people in London or the south-east.”
Cooper also accused Truss of being out of touch.
She told Sky News: “She has absolutely no idea that people are working incredibly hard – people who are getting up to go to their shifts right now, watching your programme just before they go to work, working incredibly hard to try and make ends meet, who are facing these nightmare inflation figures, the soaring energy bills and doing their best to keep everything together.
“This insult just shows, I think, that Truss does not understand working people right across the country. It’s deeply wrong of her to say this.”
Truss supporter, Sajid Javid mounted a defence of the leaked comments, saying British workers are “the most hardworking in the world” The former UK Health Secretary said he did not know the “context” in which Truss’s comments were made but that the problem lay with poor “productivity” rather than with the workforce.
Pressed on whether Truss still stood by her views, Javid replied: “What Liz does believe, as I believe, is that the government can do a lot more to improve our productivity.
“What they (workers) do need, whether it’s in the health service, whether it’s in the private sector, is more support around things like capital investment, more support into skills, and these are exactly the kinds of investments that can improve productivity.”
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