'It will end in tears': Truss memoir reveals husband's warning over her bid to be PM

Liz Truss ran to become the leader of the Conservative party and prime minister despite her husband's prediction that "it would all end in tears", according to her book, Ten Years to Save the West, which will be published next week.

- Martin Pengelly

She also agreed with an ally that the mini-budget introduced by her chancellor, Kwasi Kwartang, would prompt "brutal turbulence", then resigned after just 49 days in power, considering herself "the Brian Clough of prime ministers". The Guardian has obtained a copy of the book.

Truss became prime minister on 6 September 2022, after Boris Johnson was forced to resign. In the book, she describes learning of Johnson's exit while in Bali as foreign secretary.

"As I walked along the beach in Indonesia I started crying." Truss writes, in one of a number of frank admissions of human frailties under pressure, including descriptions of her struggle to cope after the death of Queen Elizabeth II just two days after their meeting had confirmed Truss as prime minister.

The possibility of tears was first raised, she writes, when she asked her husband, Hugh O'Leary, if he thought she should run for Tory leader. "Even Hugh, who predicted it would all end in tears, accepted that this was the moment I was expected to run and that if I didn't, people would say I had bottled it," Truss writes.

Her political agent in her Norfolk constituency, she claims, said "I should run, but he thought it would be best if I came second".

In the event, Truss did finish second in voting by Conservative MPS, behind Rishi Sunak, then the chancellor of the exchequer. But Truss's popularity with Tory party members was enough to win a run-off with Sunak and make her prime minister.