After folly and chaos, delusion. Liz Truss is clinging to office after being forced by financial market ructions to dismantle virtually all of her tax-cutting programme. The British prime minister insists she will still lead the Tories into the next election but lacks credibility to steer them through. Open dissent among her MPs is a certain sign of the grave peril that threatens to shunt her from Downing Street in record time. It is a dismal spectacle.
Only six weeks after winning the Conservative leadership, Truss cuts a humbled, ghostly figure. In the catastrophic “mini-budget” of September, her handpicked chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled the biggest tax cuts for five decades. The uncosted package precipitated a meltdown on markets so severe that the Bank of England had to intervene repeatedly. The prime minister then sacked Kwarteng even though he did exactly as she wished.
Now replacement chancellor Jeremy Hunt has handed down another “mini-budget”, this time with the biggest tax increases for three decades. Far from the beguiling sunlit uplands of imagined economic growth, Hunt speaks of “decisions of eye-watering difficulty”. The aim is to restore the stability so recklessly shattered by the prime minister. Yet the British people will pay and pay dearly. The House of Commons was told Truss was not “hiding under a desk”, a telling reflection of the calamitous state of affairs she has brought upon herself.
The prime minister has apologised for her mistakes, saying it would be irresponsible not to change course after going “too far, too fast” in pursuit of the highly questionable economic vision to which she remains committed. As far as it goes, the apology is welcome. But the damage to her authority is severe and appears irreparable. The lack of consensus on a successor may prevent an immediate putsch. Yet the surrender of intellectual clout to Hunt was total, and marks an outright repudiation of the very policies that won her the leadership.
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The Westminster turmoil will hardly make it easier for Taoiseach Micheál Martin as the Government presses to restore the Stormont institutions before the October 28th deadline for new Northern elections. Despite some recent positive signals from London on prickly protocol issues, Truss’s ability to strike any deal is in serious doubt. Still, the abrupt U-turn on her budget lessens risks to the UK economy that would have inevitable fallout for Ireland.
Not for the first time in this Tory administration, blinkered grandeur gives way to party despair and a mood of rebellion. In the face of dire opinion polls, some Truss allies whisper of a narrow path to survival. But louder talk by far centres on the mode and timing of her removal. Gone is her swagger, but swagger was never enough.