Divided they fall: can the Tories save themselves?

Seldom has support for a government fallen so far, so fast. Polls show that 24 per cent of the public would vote for the Conservatives if there was an election now, vs 52 per cent for Labour: figures that make 1997 look like a good result for the Tories. This is not just a one-off rogue poll, but the sustained average of six. It reflects what Tory MPs hear from voters appalled at the disgraceful shambles of the past few weeks. It won’t be forgotten in a hurry.

This magazine gave its verdict on the Liz Truss agenda in August: ‘To attempt reform without a proper plan is to guarantee failure,’ we argued. She lost no time in proving this point. But others are drawing wider and deeper – and rather dangerous – conclusions. Tory factionalism is rife, with various sides of the party claiming vindication, but they should be careful. The bell tolls not for just Truss, but for all of them.

One narrative is that a failed ‘libertarian’ experiment in trickle-down economics has trashed the UK economy and that its practitioners should never be allowed near power again. Some even see in the disaster a vindication of their opposition to Brexit, saying that the fault lies with the ‘disruptors’, who are being punished for ‘punk’ values. No British politician identifies as a ‘libertarian’, a term imported from America now used as a term of political abuse. But that aside, the narrative that tax cuts trashed the economy misrepresents what has just happened.

In the Tory leadership campaign, Truss proposed a modest tax cut – reversing the National Insurance rise. This would deduct £14 billion from an annual government tax take of about £900 billion. Her theory was that any unfunded tax cut, no matter how small, would elicit a strong reaction from Rishi Sunak’s camp.