Who is to blame for the 45p tax cut fiasco? Nobody has owned up

As the heat on Kwarteng intensifies, someone will have to own the idea

Kwasi Kwarteng after his speech at the annual Conservative Party conference in Birmingham yesterday (Getty)

There is a quote, often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, that success has many fathers, but failure is always an orphan. This cannot help but spring to mind in the great additional tax rate imbroglio, and as top Tories grind through the blame game during their conference the policy of giving the biggest tax cuts to the richest people seems curiously friendless.

One person who does still think it was a good idea, at least on economic grounds, is new chief secretary to the Treasury, Chris Philp. In yet another Tory car crash media appearance, Philp was confronted by Kay Burley on Sky News. Like a particularly zealous agent of the Child Support Agency, Burley showed no mercy as she tried to get Philp to own up to his paternity of the idea. Under sustained questioning, Philp squirmed his way through the interview, logic chopping and evading responsibility like a father desperate to avoid responsibility for his bastardised fiscal idea, but there was no letting up. Sometime during the leadership election, Philp it seems did indeed suggest to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng a series of bright ideas they might like to take up in Downing Street. Without actually admitting it, Philp gave every impression that tax cuts for the rich were a spiffing idea that would mark a radical departure from the quasi-socialism of the Cameron-May-Johnson era. He looked embarrassed, as well he might.

Then again, perhaps it was Andrew Griffith, former head of the No 10 policy unit under Boris Johnson, and now financial secretary to the Treasury. Was it he who spawned the most unpopular fiscal policy since the poll tax? Griffith was reportedly a strong advocate for the policy, if not the actual progenitor, and so he and/or Philp may have to take his share of the blame for the fiasco if the heat on Kwarteng intensifies. In the spirit of the old joke about the BBC, “deputy heads will roll”.

Or was it the chancellor himself? Liz Truss, perhaps carelessly, perhaps artfully, told Laura Kuenssberg that the cabinet hadn’t been consulted about the 45p cut (relief all round that particular table), but that “it was the chancellor’s idea”.

Still proud of their brainchild are the right-wing think tanks that also incubated Truss and Kwarteng in their early parliamentary careers – especially the Institute for Economic Affairs, which argued for it and whose director, Mark Littlewood, still publicly defends it.

As if to settle the case out of court, Kwarteng now says that there is “humility and contrition” in the U-turn and that he “owns” the unfortunate offspring. The decision to scrap the move was taken “collaboratively”, says Kwarteng, which makes it sound a happier process than it probably was.

We may never know for sure who did what during this “collaborative” process in Birmingham, but sometime between Truss reiterating how vital it was at around 9am, and the first leaks about a U-turn in the evening, the unwanted child of the free market right was sent back to the orphanage of bad ideas.