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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Jonathan Freedland

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have made a declaration of class war

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng visit Berkeley Modular in Kent
‘Taking from those who have least, lavishing gifts on those who have most.’ Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng on a visit to Berkeley Modular in Kent. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/AP

She makes Margaret Thatcher look like a moderate and Ronald Reagan seem positively wet. Liz Truss has embarked on an ideological project so extreme that the de facto budget announced by her chancellor today amounts to a declaration of class war. It was a reverse Robin Hood: taking from those who have least, lavishing gifts on those who have most. It is morally indefensible, economically reckless and so politically risky as to suggest a death wish.

Trussonomics rests on a simple article of faith: that by rewarding the already wealthy, life will improve for everyone else. Trickle-down economics, they called it back in the 1980s, and it didn’t work then. Now it’s back in a form more stark, more extravagant, than even its most ardent apostles ever dared contemplate.

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