Hunt has spoken on tax cuts - but his party isn't listening

The chancellor keeps trying to explain that unfunded tax cuts blew up Liz Truss's government (AP)

- JOHN RENTOUL

"The best tax cut right now is a cut in inflation, Jeremy Hunt said. He was speaking to tech business people in the City of London, but his words were addressed squarely to Conservative MPs.

Some of them have proved oblivious to the biggest real-world demonstration of practical economics recently staged by the government of a rich democratic nation. They want tax cuts at any cost. When Liz Truss tried to deliver them, it turned out that the cost was that the markets went into meltdown, taxes had to go up and the government needed a new chancellor and then a new prime minister.

What was the lesson of that, do you think? For Truss herself, according to a colleague” of hers, apparently, it was: Liz believes that the policy was right but that she didn’t get the political backing she needed.”

This is Tory Corbynism. Not just that the right policy is something that is considered to be outside the mainstream, opposed by elite, establishment opinion, but also that this bold and heroic mission has been sabotaged by a fifth column in the leader’s own party. Coincidentally, in the cases of both Jeremy Corbyn and Truss, the saboteurs were Blairite” MPs in their respective parties.