The announcement of former UK prime minister Liz Truss’s “mini” Budget after almost three weeks in office marked the end of her political honeymoon.
The collapse of Truss’s economic project, dubbed “Trussonomics”, would seal her fate and deal a lasting blow to the Conservative party’s reputation for fiscal responsibility. Her ideological “mini” Budget contained £45bn of unfunded tax cuts — the biggest tax cuts for 50 years.
The response from the markets was swift. The value of sterling plunged while government borrowing costs spiked, which threatened the solvency of parts of the pension industry. The Bank of England launched an emergency government bond-buying programme in an attempt to stabilise markets.