Former British premier blames ‘deep state’ for her brief tenure

By Behlul Cetinkaya

LONDON (AA) – Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss blamed the “deep state” on Sunday for her brief 49-day tenure in office, saying she was a victim of "bureaucratic powers.”

“I wanted to cut taxes, reduce the administrative state, take back control as people talked about in the Brexit referendum. What I did face was a huge establishment backlash, and a lot of it actually came from the state itself,” she added.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US state of Maryland, Truss stressed that she tried to "take back control," which was the slogan of the Brexit period.

“What has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers, so what you find is a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies,” she said.

A quango is defined as an organization to which a government has devolved power but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies.

“In America, you call it the ‘administrative state’ or the ‘deep state.’ But we have more than 500 of these quangos in Britain and they run everything,” she added.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar