Tories were flogging old conference mugs and T-shirts online this week, until reality gave the lie to the slogan
If it weren’t for the fact he had trashed the economy and increased many mortgages by £500 a month, it would be hard not to to feel a wee bit sorry for Kwasi Kwarteng. After all, he was only doing exactly what Liz Truss wanted. Indeed, if you believe the briefings – AKA spin – it was Truss who had been keen to cut the top rate of tax. But the unexpected downtime does give the former chancellor months, possibly years, to catch up with his reading. And I would recommend that he starts with How to Teach Economics to Your Dog. A few years ago, Anthony McGowan wrote How to Teach Philosophy to Your Dog – an account of the conversations he had with his dog, Monty, while out on their walks. I don’t know about Monty but it certainly taught me a lot. Now McGowan and his wife, Rebecca Campbell, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, have written an equally engaging and at times touching book to try to explain to Monty the basics of why the country is falling apart. As you would expect of a philosopher hound, Monty is a natural sceptic and mistrusts the way economics masquerades as hard science with unquantifiable equations that can mean anything you want them to mean. But he has also had to accept he is sometimes the beneficiary of trickle-down economics. On his walks he is very partial to leftover kebabs that may have ended up on the pavement. Monty has also reluctantly come to accept the power of the free markets. Though his solution to the current crisis would be to increase public spending, the financial markets and Jeremy Hunt’s answer seems to be austerity 2.0. I guess we’ll find out soon enough who was right.
