It wasn’t Liz Truss’s failure to make big changes we should worry about. It was her inability to deliver even the most modest pro-market reforms after a decade in high office that ought to alarm us.
As Prime Minister for six weeks, Truss tried and failed reduce Britain’s tax burden to about the level it was under Gordon Brown.
As a cabinet minister for ten years, Truss – a mother as well as a free marketeer – tried to reduce the costs of childcare by reducing red tape. Her efforts to change legally mandated child/carer ratios, despite mountains of evidence it could be done safely, were persistently thwarted.
If even someone who served as Minister for Child Care, Minister for Women, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, cannot manage minor regulatory changes regarding childcare, what hope is there for free marketeers?
The reality is that free markets are in headlong retreat around the world, not just in Britain.
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