The so-called mini-budget announced last month led to weeks of market turmoil, sterling dropping, both the Chancellor and his deputy being fired, and the Prime Minister forced into a number of embarrassing U turns. How did we get into this situation?
The first issue was that things were rushed. As someone who has worked for Liz Truss I know that she likes to get things done quickly. This can often be a good thing, but there was clearly very little analysis going on. As such, the government announced an expensive and poorly targeted package of support to deal with fuel bills and a number of very expensive tax cuts. Rather than rushing to make announcements the government should have spent more time reflecting on their policies to ensure they were credible and released alongside analysis from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
