Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax-slashing mini-budget is the latest masterstroke in Liz Truss’s quest ‘to be unpopular’
There are various ways you could sum up the new government to an outsider. It is vocally opposed to the nanny state, but its business secretary still has a nanny. He is 53. Prime minister Liz Truss is “prepared to be unpopular”. That feels fortunate. I’m prepared not to be cast as the new Batman. Among Conservative MPs, Truss is about as popular as anthrax, or a midweek visit from their wives. The PM keeps explaining she’s going to do everything differently, and her economic policy possibly makes best sense as a defence policy. She is casting the UK as a country too mad to nuke. It’s not classical game theory, is it? But maybe we’re just playing Buckaroo.
High-handed funeral gurner Kwasi Kwarteng this morning unveiled his massive mini-budget, described in advance as containing “more rabbits than Watership Down”. Which is a cheery image, though perhaps also apt for something many experts fear could inflict generational trauma. As part of its war on spoilers, the government has declined to have these radically expensive plans costed by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which conforms to the it-can-always-get-worse rule of contemporary British politics. We could soon be begging to go back to the days when prime ministers only bought gold wallpaper they couldn’t afford.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Marina Hyde will join Guardian Live for events in Manchester (4 October) and London (11 October) to discuss her new book, What Just Happened?! For details visit theguardian.com/guardianlive, and order the book from Guardian Bookshop
