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LONDON — If Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is part of Britain’s shadowy “deep state,” he isn’t letting on.
The U.K. prime minister on Tuesday laughed off claims that powerful behind-the-scenes establishment types brought down his ill-fated Conservative predecessor, Liz Truss. Truss has argued that her record short term in office was sabotaged by “agents” of the “left” active in public and private institutions.
“I think that’s probably a question for her, rather than me,” a grinning Sunak, who was facing a grilling at the House of Commons’ liaison committee, said when asked for his view on Truss’ comments.
“Is there a deep state: are you part of it, am I part of it?” the Conservative MP William Wragg asked Sunak in a follow-up.
“Probably a question for her,” Sunak added, before deadpanning: “But I probably wouldn’t tell you if I was Will, would I? And we wouldn’t tell anyone else either, would we?”
Truss — who comfortably defeated Sunak in 2022’s Conservative leadership contest before her administration collapsed and he succeeded her — has grown close to the populist U.S. right since her swift exit from Downing Street.
In February, Truss joined big names on the U.S. right at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, including the former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon — with whom she shared a stage.
While at the conference, she wrote an opinion article for Fox News which claimed that forces on the left don’t “just fight at the ballot box and seek a mandate for their agenda when it is election time; their agents are only too active in public and private institutions and what we have come to know as the administrative state and the deep state.”
“I saw this for myself first hand as they sabotaged my efforts in Britain to cut taxes, reduce the size of government and restore democratic accountability,” Truss added.
