It was politically inept of Tory MPS to abandon Liz Truss so readily
SIR – Liz Truss made mistakes in the scope and timing of her mini-budget (“Truss: I was brought down by the Left-wing economic establishment”, report, February 5). However, she promulgated policies that had appealed to the Conservative members.
The backlash against her, unforgivably led by senior politicians who had wanted Rishi Sunak as prime minister, was designed to bring about her downfall and land us with policies that they all now seem to disavow.
If Tory MPS had got behind her and effected some revision behind closed doors, they would have had a chance of coming back from the negative polls. Their lack of political nous has cost them the next general election.
At least we have Reform UK to support instead.
David Wilson
Cottingham, East Yorkshire
SIR – Liz Truss’s government was not defeated by a “Left-wing economic establishment” and “the blob”. Rather it was Liz Truss’s economic policies that defeated the Truss government.
People like me who lead pension funds – and lend money to the British Government – take a dim view of generous tax cuts without material spending reductions. Such policies exacerbate inflation and raise the risk of lending to the Government. Pension funds demanded higher interest rates from the Truss government to compensate for such risks.
“Treasury orthodoxy”, which Liz Truss and her allies dislike so much, is merely belief in sound public finances, low inflation and free markets as essential foundations for economic growth. In Britain, faster growth also requires higher investment, more liberal planning rules, minimum trade friction and a higher-skilled workforce.
With their focus on unfunded tax cuts, rather than the essential drivers of growth, Ms Truss’s policies were the enemy of her own government.
Nick Dixon
Bath, Somerset
SIR – Liz Truss has claimed that no one from the Treasury briefed her or members of her team on the risks to bond markets posed by liability-driven investments.
If that is true, those civil servants massively failed to do their jobs. Why are they still in their posts? ND Hepworth
Lancing, West Sussex
SIR – If the Government is serious about growing the economy then it needs to listen less to the bean counters in the Treasury and more to the entrepreneurs who make things happen and create wealth and employment in the process. Christopher Gill
Aberdyfi, Merionethshire
SIR – For someone who consciously aped Margaret Thatcher to be so unaware of the consequences of spooking the markets illustrates precisely why Liz Truss had to go. John Meachen Cringleford, Norfolk