Truss twists

Liz Truss is making good progress towards her avowed ambition of emulating Tory deity Margaret Thatcher, but unfortunately for her she seems to have skipped over the Iron Lady’s glory years, and gone straight to running into trouble with an ill-advised fiscal policy.

Opinion in the press is divided on whether this development represents a fatal blow to the Truss premiership, with liberal commentators predicting she will be gone by Christmas, while their conservative counterparts try to play the episode down as a mere bump on the road to the libertarian utopia.

My take, for what it’s worth, is that Truss will survive this rocky start, and hold on until the next election, which I think may be sooner than expected, though probably not before next summer. That’s plenty of time to do more damage, like starting a renewed round of austerity just as the country dips into recession, or carrying on a cold war with the EU over Northern Ireland. Or she could abruptly change course on either issue, who knows? We should move beyond reacting to the confused floundering of the bourgeoisie, and just get on with organising to look after our own class interests instead.