This week we will see Truss unchained. Labour must be rubbing its hands with glee
A cornucopia of gifts to Labour tumbled out of Downing Street during the official mourning period. The royal order was “no politics”, and yet there was constant news of policies from the prime minister’s desk, leaks deliberate or malign. As one eccentric and unspeakable new plan followed another, Labour’s frontbench steadfastly obeyed the mourning rules with every lip zipped.
But that’s over. A rush of announcements this week will probably reveal these perverse policies, mostly unpopular, even among Tory voters. Strung together, Liz Truss’s remarkable list of free market, state-shrinking, deregulation, anti-nanny state ideological totems show her to be a conviction politician of striking recklessness. Where is her predicted “pivot”? Many assumed after winning the leadership she would ditch the wilder red meat she threw to Tory party members. But no. She seems bent on drawing lines with Labour; there’s no sign of pragmatism.
Abolishing the cap on bankers’ bonuses as a first gesture will brand her for life. Disgust at out-of-control top salaries runs deep, and FTSE 100 CEO pay rose by 39% last year, according to the High Pay Centre. A Big Bang 2.0 is designed to release the animal spirits of the City and boost their already colossal earnings. But these dark times are no moment to reprise the 1980s, with boys in red braces popping champagne corks. Even the City grandee banker Sir Win Bischoff tells the FT that “it doesn’t make us more competitive … It’s more of a symbolic gesture.” But it is not a symbol to please the public. Championed as ripping up “EU red tape”, a bankers’ bonanza was probably not the dividend that Brexiters in Barnsley or Bolsover, nor even Buckinghamshire, thought they were voting for.
Nor do most back a
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