‘Liz Truss is talking about tax cuts,” Beth Rigby said to an exquisitely uncomfortable-looking Rishi Sunak, in an interview on Sky at the Conservative party conference on Tuesday. “The party still loves her, it seems more than they love you. Does that sting?” “Oh, gosh,” Sunak replied, having skipped those rudimentary baby steps that Thatcher managed so long ago: get a voice coach; stop saying “gosh”.
“You have a totally different version of events,” he told Rigby. Well, maybe, but probably not. The day before, it emerged that 60 Conservative MPs had joined Truss’s Growth Group, which argues for lower taxes and, well, you can guess the rest: a smaller state, more fracking and some fairytale castles, sorry, new houses (which that smaller but mysteriously richer state will somehow build). As a rebel army within the Conservative party, the Growth Group, should it mobilise in the autumn, represents the end of Sunak’s parliamentary majority, which – I guess, give or take a bit of handshaking with King Charles – makes Truss prime minister again.
