Ordinary people are paying the price for this government’s economic incompetence

Editorial: The task of any government is to minimise the adverse impact of global forces, and to encourage its people and companies to be in the best possible shape to withstand them

The new government has almost perversely set out to be neither calm nor orderly (EPA)

The UK needs a rational, orderly government rather than an ideological one. To judge by the catastrophic first four weeks of Liz Truss’s premiership, it is almost impossible to see any set of circumstances in which she and her ministers can provide that.

The mini-Budget of her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, was a disaster, provoking a run on the pound and on government stock. The result is that her government will have to pay even higher rates on the national debt than would otherwise be the case, and all borrowers in sterling – homebuyers and businesses alike – will have to pay more on their borrowings, too.

The party conference last week was another disaster, with the prime minister unable to recognise that her ideological approach, while supported by some Tory stalwarts, is electoral poison. Usually, a new prime minister and their team get a honeymoon period when they take up office. In Truss’s case, if that happened at all, it barely lasted a week.