Liz Truss’s ghost lives on. But she is haunting the Labour Party. In the ruin of the mini-Budget, Labour saw an opportunity to usurp the Conservatives as the party of fiscal responsibility. But at what cost?
The party ceded a lot. It lambasted her attempt to achieve growth through unfunded borrowing. This was the kamikaze Budget, the one that bankrupted the country. So eager was Labour to forget Liam Byrne’s 2010 letter to his Treasury chief secretary successor, which said there was “no money left”, it wielded Truss’s ideological pursuit of growth as a shield against accusations that it was profligate.
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