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Liz Truss, who has positioned herself as a champion of free speech since her short time in Downing Street, has said the country will fail unless British media outlets such as the Guardian, the Times and the BBC are “fixed”.
The former prime minister, who described herself as a “big supporter” of Elon Musk, said the media in the UK focused on the wrong issues and the situation needed to be corrected for the country to succeed.
Speaking to Voice of America, Truss did not elaborate any further on the mechanism she would use to reform the media landscape. She made her comments after being asked about reports last year that she had lobbied on behalf of a constituent who wished to export landmine disposal equipment to China at a time when she was publicly calling for Beijing to be formally categorised as a “threat” to national security.
She said: “We have got a massive problem with the British media, which is they don’t focus on the important issues, whether it’s the grooming gangs that they have failed to hold bureaucrats and police officers to account on, whether it’s the debt crisis that we now have in our country with the highest levels of gild borrowing (sic), or the highest rates of borrowing since the 1990s; they’re not focused on that.
“They’re focused on ludicrous stories about MPs, when MPs are simply doing their job. That is a massive problem, and the country will not be fixed until they get fixed.
“There’s a deliberate misinterpretation of what people do if they don’t like that person and their policies. And the leftwing media of Britain, including the BBC, including organisations like the Times and the Guardian and the Financial Times do not like free speech, free market policies, and they don’t like the status quo in this country being challenged, and I will continue to take them on.”
Truss, who lost her seat in parliament at the general election, is promoting her book, Ten Years to Save the West.
In the interview with VOA’s London correspondent, Lyndon Lee, she claimed the Labour party was “beholden” to China and Islamism and argued that Musk, who has been using his X social media platform to highlight historical cases of child abuse in recent weeks, had been “telling the truth about what’s happening in Britain that is being covered up by the likes of the BBC”.
Truss said: “I think the media in Britain has been an utter failure. The BBC, a lot of the papers, like the Times, the Financial Times, they have not reported on what’s really happening in our country. And I think it’s very welcome Elon Musk shining a light on that and calling these people out.
“What he is doing is he’s bringing attention to the grooming gang scandal, where majority Pakistanis (sic) have been targeting and raping young girls across Britain, which is an outrage. He’s been drawing attention to the failings of Keir Starmer. He’s been talking about free speech, which is very important, and as we know from China, if you don’t have free speech, you can’t have a free society.”
Truss, who has previously argued that the Conservative party of which she was briefly leader should do a deal with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, suggested British politics needed something “new and fresh”.
She said: “I want to see Reform work with the Conservative party or elements of the Conservative party that want real change in this country.”
The Labour party and the BBC have been approached for comment.
