Trussonomics: a beginner’s guide

When polls started to show Liz Truss miles ahead of Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership contest, her team adopted a cautious campaign strategy. Why gamble on another interview with Nick Robinson when last time she had struggled to name a single economist who backed her economic plans? Eventually she landed on Professor Patrick Minford, an academic at Cardiff Business School and a bullish Brexiteer. Minford went on the record calling for interest rates to rise to 7 per cent, which Truss then had to defend and deflect.

But that moment in the Robinson interview, widely reported as a humiliation, turned out to be one of the most helpful points in her campaign. Within days, like-minded economists were grouping together to praise her tax-cutting agenda. She went from seemingly having no support for her economic vision to having the endorsement of established and respected economists. The phrase ‘Trussonomics’ was first used as a dig at the Foreign Secretary’s eternal optimism and radical economic ideology.