I Was a Conservative Peer – Tory Voters Will Not Tolerate Liz Truss’s Bungs to the Rich

THE GUARDIAN: You don’t have to be a socialist to find UK levels of poverty intolerable – but Liz Truss lacks the empathy to see it

Liz Truss. ‘The public reaction to Trussonomics is at a level that the woman herself probably cannot grasp.’ Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters
Subtlety does not feature large on the short list that is the Liz Truss skill set. She had been campaigning for the Tory leadership long before Boris Johnson was forced to vacate it. In May 2019, as Theresa May sat uncomfortably in No 10, a newspaper profile declared of Truss: “She’s not so much a dark horse as one that has painted itself blue and wrapped itself in flashing neon lights.”

Last weekend she used that same newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, to laud the tax cuts launched on Friday and assure the country she would be “unapologetic” in pursuing a strategy that was already frightening the markets on which its success depends.

Truss’s single-mindedness won her the Tory leadership. Even though a majority of Tory MPs did not favour her, she directed her sledgehammer campaign at that self-selecting small band, Conservative party members, and they rejoiced in her promise of drastic cuts to tax and regulations. » | Patience Wheatcroft | Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Patience Wheatcroft is a journalist and crossbench peer (formerly Conservative)