Sir Anthony Seldon is set to release his latest political biography, ‘Truss at 10: How Not to be a Prime Minister’ on 29th August, covering the turbulent 49 days that Truss was in the top seat.
The book is expected to contain some bombshell revelations about her time in charge, including insight into how she proposed to deal with the fallout from her disastrous mini-budget, which sent financial markets into a death spiral.
It also claims that Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to persuade Truss to make him chancellor instead of Kwasi Kwarteng, and that he urged her to abolish inheritance tax, replace all tax rates with a 20p flat rate, and organise a stunt to promote nuclear power.
Seldon writes that the then cabinet minister told Truss: “We should get a nuclear submarine to dock at Liverpool and plug it into the grid. That would show it is safe.”
Sir Anthony says cabinet secretary Simon Case dismissed the idea as a “non-starter”, adding that “the subs are needed in operations”.
That would be kinda cool if it were possible. Next time Tonga gets wiped out by a volcano, send the nearby nuclear ships to get them back online.
I don’t think power will help with that
Tonga is a poor example, I didn’t realise it was just the underwater cables, a portable emergency generator could still be useful for other disasters if power is knocked out
The Cook Strait ferries in NZ used to be able to do this, a long time ago. I don’t think the capability was ever used though.
Most of the current ships are 60Hz which doesn’t work with the NZ grid.
The new ferries were explicitly going to be 11kV 50Hz to provide disaster response capabilities including power. Then they got canned.