Liz Truss - No, Don’t Laugh

Had you been Prime Minister for just 44 days, were still regarded as a joke, and had come worryingly close to crashing the economy with an uncosted and reckless budget, what would be the most sensible course of action when it came to media interventions? What would a statesmanlike former PM do? What would a sensible person do? What would Nietzsche have done?

Wibble. Hatstand

Sadly for the credibility of both herself and that part of our free and fearless press foolish enough to have recycled her thoughts, Liz Truss does not operate on that lofty intellectual plain. So, rather than maintain a dignified silence and keep her powder dry, she has decided that now is the time to sound off in the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph.

Perhaps that was her favoured media outlet all along. More likely is that others were offered her 4,000 word essay in self-justification (memories of Neil Innes’ “protest singer” telling his audience “I’ve suffered for my music, and now it’s your turn”) and moved rapidly in the direction of away. One look at the Tel’s headline tells you why they might have decided thus.

“Truss: I was brought down by the left-wing economic establishment”, readers are told, though whether the “left-wing economic establishment” was in the room with her when she wrote that weapons grade dross is not mentioned. This is not merely a brave take on events, it is totally, utterly and irretrievably wacko. Beyond Barking and through the buffer stops at Upminster.

So let’s see some of the excuse note. “I still believe that seeking to deliver the original policy prescription on which I had fought the leadership election was the right thing to do. But the forces against it were too great … I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support”.

There is a word missing there, and indeed missing from the whole of the 4,000 word bore-a-thon. And that word is SORRY. Because, surprise, surprise, Someone Else Done It. They were all agin her! “There was a concerted effort by international actors to challenge our Plan for Growth”.

She should have kept quiet ...

The forrins! “The IMF commented on distributional aspects rather than market stability, which is hard to conclude was anything but politically motivated. Then there was the intervention from President Biden, who publicly voiced his disagreement with our economic policy, stating: ‘I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake’”. Typical Tory. It’s always someone else’s fault.

What Ms Truss does not tell is that the so-called Mini-Budget was intended to hand a cool billion in tax cuts to just 2,500 very rich people, thus demonstrating an ignorance of basic economics. You want growth, you don’t give the money to those whose propensity is to save. You give it to those whose propensity is to spend. Then you get more economic activity.

And then you have growth, as I set out at the time Ms Truss became PM and her short-lived Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng delivered his disastrous budget. The Tories could still get that elusive economic growth by doing no more than settling all those public sector pay claims currently outstanding. That’s how competent they are on the economy.

Small wonder Ms Truss’ “I was right really” schtick did not go down so well, with former Tory MP Gavin Barwell reminding her “You were brought down because in a matter of weeks you lost the confidence of the financial markets, the electorate and your own MPs. During a profound cost of living crisis, you thought it was a priority to cut tax for the richest people in the country”.

ITV’s Robert Peston mused “Liz Truss was told by her officials that her stewardship of the economy - her £45bn of unfunded tax cuts - had taken the UK dangerously close to being unable to service its debts, as investors sold UK government debt (see attached). When Truss then blames the left … for bringing her down, I feel have finally stepped through the looking glass”.

... and so should his paper

And LBC host James O’Brien, looking at the Telegraph’s front page, concluded “Hand on heart, my first thought was that the headline was a mocked-up piss take. And it could so easily have been”. Which places one very large question mark against the judgment of Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath, who was initially in raptures over that Kwarteng budget.

Heath, it should never be forgotten, said at the time “This was the best Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by a massive margin. The tax cuts were so huge and bold, the language so extraordinary, that at times, listening to Kwasi Kwarteng, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming”. He was wrong then. He is wrong to run her essay now.

The inconvenient reality is that Rishi Sunak will not be inconvenienced even slightly by Ms Truss’s wacko exercise in self-justification. All that will happen will be that all those Astroturf lobby groups in and around Tufton Street will find their reputations hit by the reminder of their association with the fiasco. And Liz Truss will continue to be a footnote in the history of political failure.

The Truss comeback … wasn’t. Just rejoice at that news.

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