Fixated on the tax cuts beloved of Tory members, Truss and Sunak have no plan at all to deal with the UK’s looming crises, says Guardian associate editor Martin Kettle
to deal with energy bills, she continues to vacillate about whether to intervene. Her core faith-based message, which she repeated on Wednesday in Manchester, remains that tax cuts will solve everything.
Both of these can be seen in the importance that Truss the candidate attaches to the mix of tax cuts, changes to the Bank of England’s mandate, and supply-side reforms that some have started to call Trussonomics. Economically and politically, it is high-risk, dangerous stuff, designed to win the leadership election by appealing to the party electorate and the Daily Mail, but unsuited to solving the country’s economic problems, or the financial problems faced by voters.
Truss’s comment that she dislikes financial handouts because they involve taking money from taxpayers through their taxes and then returning it to them is revealing both about her ideologically rigid approach and also about her lack of practical interest in the real options. One-off handouts have an immediate impact, which is precisely what the situation calls for. They can also be much more targeted. They are easier to reverse than tax or benefits changes.