Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng possess a level of intellectual self-confidence usually found among undergraduates. They always have. Since 2010, when all three of us were first elected as Conservative MPs, they have known what they believe – and have viewed those who didn’t agree with them, or didn’t share their unshakeable certainty, with amiable contempt.
The UK is beginning to discover what it is like to be led by people who despise compromise and lack all humility. Every decision they have made in the past few weeks has its roots in the book they published as newly elected MPs, Britannia Unchained. At the time it was viewed by most MPs and commentators as a harmless, if needlessly provocative, attempt by some young thrusters from the Conservative party’s right wing to get noticed. But ideas that survive the editorial process of a political publication can cause serious harm when crudely applied without regard to evidence or context. Having imbibed a simplistic version of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s economic doctrines in their late teens, they have never asked themselves how likely it is that the same recipes will work 30 years later.
