A video of a young Liz Truss calling for the monarchy to be abolished has resurfaced on the day she is due to be appointed Prime Minister by the Queen.
A 19-year-old Truss was filmed speaking at the Liberal Democrat conference in 1994 where she supported a motion calling for the UK to become a republic.
she said: “I was being interviewed by Newsnight earlier this afternoon and we were filmed asking members of the public what they thought about the monarchy.
We came across a group of three people, I would say they were around 50 or 60 looked fairly middle class, rather smart, in fact rather reactionary to be frank.”We asked them their opinion of the monarchy.
Do you know what they said? They said ‘abolish them, we’ve had enough’. We couldn’t find a single monarchist outside the Royal Pavilion. How ironic.””We believe in fairness and common sense. We believe in referenda on major constitutional issues.
We do not believe that people should be born to rule or that they should put up and shut up about decisions that affect their everyday lives.”Truss also flipped a statement by then Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown who said everyone should “have the chance to be somebody”.
She said: “But only one family can provide the head of the state. We Liberal Democrats believe in opportunity for all. We do not believe people are born to rule.”
The footage comes as Truss is set to travel to Balmoral in Aberdeenshire for an audience with the Queen after she was declared the winner of the Conservative leadership race on Monday.She takes over from Boris Johnson who was forced to resign following a number of scandals which eventually saw his own ministers and MPs turn on him.
Truss, who has since said her political ideas developed as she got older, said the Queen was “far too polite” to bring up her previous stance when they met previously.”I’ve already met the Queen and she’s been far too polite to raise that issue with me,” she said during a Sky News debate in August.
Asked whether she would apologise if the Queen did mention it, Truss said: “Well, I was wrong to say what I did at the time.”Asked by the BBC’s Nick Robinson about her previous comments, she said she was a “professional controversialist” in her youth and “liked exploring ideas and stirring things up”.
But she added: “I began to understand more about why Britain is successful, and part of our success is the constitutional monarchy that supports a free democracy.”The Queen and Truss have met on a number of occasions, including at Windsor Castle last October.