In 50 years in politics, I have never seen anything as ugly as this vicious war in the Tory party – only Labour will win
GIVEN half a chance, the economy will bounce back from this mini Budget crisis – and much sooner than the gloomsters predict.
The £45billion cut in energy bills will reduce inflation and bring down mortgage rates.
Less regulation — “clearing the barnacles off the boat” — will see UK plc growing again within months.
But even those, like me, who support the thrust of these measures fear they may have been killed off at birth by a botched delivery.
The question is whether Liz Truss will survive as Prime Minister to enjoy any fruits from her tax-cutting revolution.
As polls showed a 33 per cent Labour lead, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday asked former Cabinet minister Michael Gove if the month-old PM can survive a year.
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“Oh, I am sure she will be Prime Minister this time next year,” he responded in the tones of a cancer surgeon discussing a terminal patient.
All it required, he suggested, were a few “corrections”. In other words, an entirely different non-tax-cutting budget
Ms Truss, a Margaret Thatcher tribute act, insists there can be no U-turn.
In a finger-wagging interview on Kuenssberg’s show, the PM confessed: “I do admit we could have prepared the ground better.”
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But the measures were now set in stone, she insisted. In which case, opined Mr Gove: “Reality bumps [against illusion]”. The Government will be compelled by market forces and renegade Tories to change course and restore tax rises.
Suicidal MPs are even clamouring for a fresh leadership bloodbath, three months after chucking Boris Johnson under the bus.
They want Liz out, and a single candidate — meaning Rishi Sunak — effectively imposed on the party from above.
Split party asunder
The ex-Levelling Up minister even hinted he would join dozens of rebels and vote the mini Budget down when it reaches the Commons.
Mr Gove, the authentic voice of disappointed Rishi fans, is trawling this week’s Tory rally in Birmingham, spitting venom over what MPs are calling the “clusterf**k budget”.
“The Gover” is seen by many as the cleverest man in politics.
But his judgment can go dangerously askew.
The mutiny has split the party asunder, not just between Remainers and Brexiteers, but between Sunak supporters and Boris fans who will never forgive Rishi for “stabbing” their hero — and hiking taxes in the first place.
Split party asunder
The feud is also between some who want Boris back centre stage and others who would rather slit their own throats.
An implicit rift has also opened between neighbours, with Liz Truss openly laying the blame for the controversial 45p top rate tax cut on her Chancellor.
If anything is now reversed, it will be this measure which has allegedly infuriated Red Wall Tory voters.
In half a century covering often-ugly politics, I have never witnessed anything like this.
But then nor has anyone else. This is vicious civil war in which Labour can be the only winners.
Many of the rebels hate each other more than they fear a victorious socialist government led by Keir Starmer, the man who fought for five years to put leftie zealot Jeremy Corbyn in No10.
It is hard to see the Tories closing ranks in time for a united stand against Labour.
The nearest comparison is the painful, slow death of the Major government after crashing out of Euro preparations in 1992. The economy immediately blossomed but the Tories were never forgiven, crashing to defeat and driven into exile.
Nightmare risk
Indeed this is worse. Major lost to Tony Blair, who never really believed in socialism.
Starmer is the ultimate chameleon, a lifelong republican posing as a monarchist, a devout leftie masquerading as a centre ground politician, a feminist who insists a woman can have a willy.
Labour is just as corrosively split as the Tories.
Militant union barons still hold the purse strings.
But Starmer would change voting rules to keep the hated Tories out forever.
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The UK economy would sink into permanent big tax, big spending, big borrowing decline.
This is the nightmare risk Tory rebels must put ahead of their bitter differences.
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If their chance of winning the next election has vanished, they might still live to fight another day.
But only if they stop knifing each other and start fighting the real enemy . . . Keir Starmer’s loony lefties.
Threadbare pledge
SHADOW Chancellor Rachel Reeves yesterday vowed to match the Tories’ huge two-year bailout for gas and electricity bills – by far the largest item in the mini Budget.
But yet again she failed to say how Labour would pay for it.
She tried trotting out the now threadbare pledge to hit energy giants with an £8billion windfall tax.
But that would leave Labour tens of billions short.
The only possible solution would be for Labour to raid taxpayers’ pockets – or borrow the money, just like the Tories.
Pathetic. And former economist Rachel is about the best they’ve got.