One year on, Truss’s case for growth is stronger than ever

There won’t be any fireworks. No one is blowing up the balloons, and there isn’t going to be a cake. The first anniversary of Liz Truss’s unfortunate and quickly terminated premiership today won’t be marked by anything other than a few snarky comments on the site formerly known as Twitter. And yet, as the tumultuous 44 days of her leadership start to fade into history, one thing is surely clear. Her argument that the UK badly needs to do something about lifting its miserable growth rate is becoming stronger all the time.

When Truss complained about the ‘anti-growth’ coalition, when she argued that we had to rip up rules and regulations, streamline the government machine and embrace the freedoms our departure from the European Union offered, instead of quietly preparing to rejoin, she was widely mocked. The political establishment hated it; the City was suspicious that it might involve too much borrowing.

In the year since then, however, the argument has started to gather force. The argument that all we need to do is raise more and more taxes and the country will be back on the right track is looking weaker all the time. Indeed, the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves are sounding more and more like a couple of Trussite mini-mes all the time. They are emphasising that we can’t tax our way back to prosperity, and that we have to remain globally competitive.

Right across the spectrum, it is starting to be recognised that the UK is an increasingly poor country. The interesting point is this: once you start to think seriously about how to get the UK growing again you end up with something very like Trussonomics.

Planning rules have to be reformed. The Bank of England does not work very well. Investment zones would be a great way of working out what kind of deregulation works. Heck, who knows, given its complete failure to bring down bond yields, very soon the consensus might be that we have to reduce corporation tax again.

Truss may have lost her Premiership very soon after taking office. She will, almost certainly, go down as one of the worst prime ministers the UK has ever had, and there is some stiff competition for that title. And yet, she may well end up winning the argument – one year on perhaps that won’t be such a bad legacy after all.