Truss condemns British workers for lack of 'graft'

Exclusive Leak reveals speech also condemned 'attitude' outside London

- Pippa Crerar

Workers need 'more graft' and lack skill and application, says Truss

Liz Truss launched an astonishing broadside against British workers, saying they needed "more graft" and suggesting they lacked the "skill and application" of foreign rivals, the Guardian can reveal.

In a leaked recording of Truss speaking when she was chief secretary to the Treasury, she also risked pitting Londoners against the rest of the country by attempting to explain the difference between the capital and other regions in the UK.

Truss, who has put patriotism at the heart of her leadership campaign, suggested the disparity was "partly a mindset or attitude thing".

In the recording, Truss - who held the Treasury post until 2019 intimated that there seemed little desire to change the working culture so that the UK could become more prosperous.

The highly disparaging remarks echo a controversial passage about British workers being among the "worst idlers in the world", from the book Britannia Unchained, which she co-authored in 2012 when she was a new backbench MP seeking to make her mark as a neo-Thatcherite.

In the first televised head-to-head Tory leadership debate last month, Truss claimed she had not written the offending chapter and blamed her fellow author, Dominic Raab.