The U.K. prime minister’s residence in Downing Street was infested with fleas, former PM Liz Truss charges in her new memoir.
Truss, who had the shortest tenure as leader in British history at just 49 days, made the revelation in her new book, excerpted on Saturday by the Daily Mail. The book, “Ten Years to Save the West”, comes out in the U.K. and the U.S. next week.
“The place was infested with fleas,” Truss wrote. “The entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching.”
Previous PM Boris Johnson’s dog Dilyn may have been the cause of the bugs, but there was “no conclusive evidence,” Truss said.
Truss also revealed that although she ordered furniture for the residence, her and her family were “evicted before it could be delivered.”
Truss lashes out at Britain’s financial establishment in the book, calling the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility a “three-headed hydra” that “wanted to stick as closely to EU law as possible.” She also charged the three institutions with being “pro-China.”
Truss saw her premiership cut short after a disastrous mini-budget in September 2022 sparked a crisis in the U.K. gilt market.
Truss also took a swipe at former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, with whom she shared a country residence on a time-share basis after replacing him in the post. “It was like an exalted student flat-share. I’d arrive for the weekend and find protein shakes labeled ‘Raab’ in the fridge,” she wrote.
The former premier also revealed that she had mistaken French First Lady Brigitte Macron for U.S. First Lady Jill Biden at the U.N. General Assembly in 2022.
In a leaked copy of the book obtained by the Guardian, Truss says her husband predicted that her run at the U.K. top job “would all end in tears.”
