The experiment is over. Truss’s ‘plan for growth’ is dead

Editorial: No one outside the Tufton Street set and the hard right of the Tory party believed in it anyway, and it has not survived its first exposure to political and economic reality

There is not going to be a ‘new economic era’ of the kind alluded to by Kwasi Kwarteng (EPA)

The very least the public requires from any government is competence. People don’t actually need inspiring rhetoric, visions, ambitions or aspirations from their leaders, although these are nice to have. Rather, they just need a sense that an administration knows what it’s doing.

Like businesses, people prefer to have some stability so that they can make plans. It isn’t much to ask. Instead, Britain is facing power cuts in the months ahead.

The British people have been denied competent, stable government for some considerable time. More or less since the 2016 Brexit referendum, in fact, there has been nothing but political turmoil – and the timing is no coincidence. Four prime ministers in just over six years, along with six chancellors, two general elections, and countless fresh starts and new initiatives, have yielded little in the way of progress on living standards. Of course, the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine have caused disruption, but no other advanced economy, not even Trumpite America, has suffered such turbulent times.