Kwarteng throws UK on sacrificial altar of Trussonomics where only bankers win
Kwasi Kwarteng. What a guy! On Monday he put the fun into funeral with a few gags at Westminster Abbey. On Friday he puts the fizz into fiscal with an event – we would call it a budget were it not for the chancellor having gone out of his way to make sure the Office for Budget Responsibility couldn’t supply any figures to fact-check his economics – that was so high and wild we may never see another. To infinity and beyond! A mini-budget that was anything but mini.
Casino faith-based economics on which he’d bet the bank. The biggest tax giveaway – primarily to the rich – in 50 years while increasing government borrowing to record levels. Time was when Labour used to get it in the neck for uncosted public borrowing. That’s now so last month.
All you have to do now is believe and everything will be OK. It’s the new economics for Brexit Britain. You want growth, you get growth. And if you don’t, then it will be everyone else’s fault for talking Britain down. The country has just been turned into a laboratory experiment for a plan dreamed up by the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs. Kwarteng does believe. Primarily in himself. His self-confidence is remarkable for a man of relatively ordinary talents. Someone who had always got by with a few glib words. Who could talk the talk but had never been asked to walk the walk. Now was his time to put up. To throw the country on the sacrificial altar and keep his fingers crossed he hadn’t blown it. To boldly go where no man had gone before. Primarily because it was so obviously disastrous.
But this is the brave new world of Trussonomics.It’s like turning on all the taps at once and being surprised when you flood the house.
The Commons was still packed but this was no normal budget
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