“You’ve set the cat among the pigeons,” messaged a Tory MP after my interview with Liz Truss dropped on Monday night. The former prime minister’s first spoken intervention since leaving office saw Truss offer little in the way of a mea culpa, and instead set out her plans to carve out a place for herself on the backbenches as a committed tax-cutter. “Obviously I’ve got more time available now to think about these things and make the argument and that’s what I want to do,” she said of her post-prime ministerial plans.
Given Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are trying to lower expectations ahead of the spring budget (and the budget after that), it’s exactly the type of intervention the government would rather avoid. The chancellor has repeatedly suggested now is not the time for tax cuts – instead they will only come “when the time is right”. Sunak has frequently said bringing down inflation must come first. He said the public were “not idiots” and understood this. The implication? Some in his party are.
