Why Liz Truss’s UK workers comments are bad policy followed by even worse politics

It’s a bit of a cheek to say the problem lies with the worker, writes Salma Shah

Truss during a hustings event in Darlington, County Durham (PA)

British workers might take umbrage with Liz Truss’s view that we need “more graft”. After years of stagnant wages, and the promise of being levelled up never materialising, it’s a bit of a cheek to say the problem lies with the worker.

A recording of Truss, while chief secretary to the Treasury, has emerged. In it she compares the UK worker unfavourably against foreign rivals, suggesting that we lacked the “skill and application of others”. In an unfortunate echo of her previous faux pas where a book she co-authored described Brits as idlers, this is becoming a bit of a comms problem.

Despite being a British Asian, I don’t have the worth ethic of my counterparts on the subcontinent. And nor do I want to. Our motivations and attitudes are not the same, our relative positions in the world economy do not compare. My family left India a generation ago to escape the grinding poverty and the entrenched privilege that meant they were never getting a leg up on the social mobility ladder, so the comparison is an irrelevant stereotype.