Kwarteng and Truss are scrambling, but on everything from the 45p tax rate to immigration, they’re living in a different world to voters
The chancellor ploughed on at the Conservative conference, oblivious to the incredibility of everything he said, though his party was imploding all around him, brought down by incompetence and moral inadequacy. “A little turbulence,” Kwasi Kwarteng wryly called the reception to his “growth plan”, which crashed the economy and sent sterling spiralling down and gilts soaring, costing the Bank of England £65bn to prop up pension funds.
Here ends the era of rightwing free marketeers and deregulators with their punishing austerity and inequality. Expect the prime minister, Liz Truss, to be gone by Christmas, with this chancellor ejected before her as she tries but fails to save herself.
