Defending bold tax plans is Tories’ duty

NATURE abhors a vacuum, Aristotle once postulated. If the Ancient Greek philosopher was alive today, he might have added: ‘And so does politics.’

So it was reckless, to say the least, for Liz Truss to apparently bury her head in the metaphorical sand after last week’s miniBudget was blamed for exacerbating the market meltdown.

With the pound in tailspin, the Bank of England forced to pull the emergency cord to stop pension funds imploding and homeowners panicking over soaring mortgage costs, the public expected reassurance from the Prime Minister.

Instead, for days they heard only a baffling silence. Not until yesterday did she emerge – and then only to do a bruising round of five-minute interviews for local TV and radio stations.

She highlighted the Government’s £150billion energy bills freeze to help struggling families and businesses, while explaining how lower taxes would put more money in people’s pockets, create jobs and attract investment – making the whole country more prosperous.

But being inexplicably absent from the fray for so long not only made the Government seem to be running scared and out of its depth, it also left the stage clear for Labour to peddle, virtually unchallenged, the dishonest narratives that the Tories alone were responsible for the market crisis and were only trying to help the rich.

The fact is that there has been a rabid overreaction to Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s blueprint to turbo-charge growth.

What was unveiled, in fact, was a highly ambitious attempt to ease the cost of living burden, slash sky-high taxes, rip up red tape and axe EU legislation.