Liz Truss says she had to urge British diplomats to be more pro-Israel at UN

Former prime minister Liz Truss has told ITV News she had to "intervene" to get British diplomats to adopt a more pro-Israel stance at the UN.

Speaking to ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston she said had advocated a more pro-Israel policy while foreign secretary and prime minister.

She said: "While I was Foreign Secretary, on some occasions, I had to actively intervene with officials to get them to vote in a more pro-Israel way, at the United Nations.

"So there definitely is a tendency to not support Israel as much as I would like in the Foreign Office. And I think that always needs to be challenged."

Ms Truss has been speaking to the media ahead of the publication of her book: Ten Years to Save the West where she outlines her time in government as well as her wider political view on the future issues the UK and other countries face.

She recently made headlines by endorsing Donald Trump to win the US 2024 General Election saying the world was a safer place during Mr Trump's previous term.

While doing her media tour Ms Truss went as far as telling the BBC she did not "see a purpose for the UN as it stands."

She said: "At present, it has been very ineffective at dealing with international situations, in fact positively damaging, for example, on Israel."

While speaking to ITV's Peston the former PM also said she did not believe the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey should not stay in his job for his handling of the Autumn 2022 crisis.

She went on to say: "So everybody makes mistakes. And I think senior holders of public office senior officials have to be allowed to make mistakes. Otherwise, they really wouldn’t be in a job for very long."

But added: "What they [the BoE] actually did is make it pretty clear through various public statements, briefings, that they did not support the government's fiscal policy. And I think that's a problem for democracy."

Ms Truss’s tenure in Downing Street lasted just 49 days after her mini-budget triggered mass market turmoil.

Throughout the course of the interview, the ex-PM outlined how she believed she was not given enough warning of the crisis in the pension funds that troubled the UK's bond market so much.

She conceded that if she was aware of the "tinderbox" she would not have gone ahead with the mini-budget that sparked panic in the markets.

But she also said she was under the impression at the time that there was no sense the mini-budget "would be massively provocative to the markets."

Ms Truss went on to say there should be an investigation into the BoE's handling of the autumn 2022 crisis "because what it felt like to me, and certainly looking at in retrospect, is they tried to shift the blame for the market reaction entirely onto the government, whereas they've been responsible for the critical policy lever of monetary policy."

Mr Peston also noted a quote in the book where Ms Truss says her husband said: "The party is completely split, the chances are, you know, it'll be an impossible job to do and then it'll end in tears."

To which Ms Truss says: "He was right. He was right."

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