I was a Conservative peer – Tory voters will not tolerate Liz Truss’s bungs to the rich

theguardian.com:

Subtlety does not feature large on the short list that is the Liz Truss skill set. She had been campaigning for the Tory leadership long before Boris Johnson was forced to vacate it. In May 2019, as Theresa May sat uncomfortably in No 10, a newspaper profile declared of Truss: “She’s not so much a dark horse as one that has painted itself blue and wrapped itself in flashing neon lights.”

Last weekend she used that same newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, to laud the tax cuts launched on Friday and assure the country she would be “unapologetic” in pursuing a strategy that was already frightening the markets on which its success depends.

Truss’s single-mindedness won her the Tory leadership. Even though a majority of Tory MPs did not favour her, she directed her sledgehammer campaign at that self-selecting small band, Conservative party members, and they rejoiced in her promise of drastic cuts to tax and regulations.

A cleverer politician might then have relished her victory and vowed to moderate the policies that won her that parochial battle and take on the serious business of governing a country with deep-seated problems that have been exacerbated by the twin horrors of the pandemic and war in Europe. Truss, however, was still relentlessly focused on electioneering. Facing a general election before the end of 2024, she opted to pursue a course that she believed would stand the best chance of appealing to enough rightwing voters to deliver her a second term as prime minister, albeit with a hugely reduced majority. Tax cuts delivered, she might have thought she could go to the country early, before it became clear that the economic nirvana she had promised was a mirage.

But she has misread the public mood as well as the markets.