Tory ideology under Truss

Which direction is the party heading

Say what you like about the new PM, but it looks like the party is about to ditch any pretence of being One Nation party.

Notwithstanding the massive, covid-esque energy plans and the consequent impact on national borrowing, all other signs point to a much more Neo-liberal path.

Watch out for this announcement, as previewed in the Guardian:

"The chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, is expected to announce the creation of a network of low-tax, low-regulation investment zones.

The announcement, which is expected to take deregulation further than the post-Brexit freeports set up by Boris Johnson’s government, will be part of a package that will also see the rise in national insurance contributions abandoned, a planned increase in corporation tax scrapped and green levies temporarily removed from fuel bills."

Full story here.

And then what of the so-called levelling up agenda (remember that)?

As John Harris writes in the Guardian:

"Under Johnson, levelling up’s failure could be put down to a lack of coherence and competence. But in Truss’s case, the sense of the idea hitting the wall is the result of ideological convictions highlighted in her first big TV interview. Four days before the Queen died, she appeared on the BBC’s new programme Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, where she was asked by the host why she was prioritising tax cuts that would hugely benefit people at the top. Truss blithely conceded the point. “But to look at everything through the lens of redistribution, I believe, is wrong,” she continued. “Because what I am about is growing the economy, and growing the economy benefits everybody.”

Truss knew the significance of what she was trying to explain, even if Kuenssberg didn’t seem to. “This is a really important point,” she insisted. “The economic debate for the past 20 years has been dominated by discussions about redistribution. And what has happened is, we have had relatively low growth … and that has been holding our country back.”"