A press conference that could have been an email. Dressed in funereal black, Liz Truss stood at the podium for roughly 494 seconds, each more excruciating than the last. She made a brief statement before taking all of four questions. What did we learn?
The prime minister who wanted to be a disruptor, to move fast and break things, was now promising stability. That the tax-cutting, deregulating warrior would in fact be raising taxes. And perhaps most chillingly, that lower public spending – in other words, a return to austerity – was inevitable.
