For me, it just highlights the absolute arrogance and, frankly, naivety of politicians like Truss and why they shouldn’t be anywhere near any position of authority. As you say, the intention to immediately cut taxes is cornerstone of her candidacy, and to go into a debate with such little understanding of what this would entail just smacks of amateurishness.
She talks of not repaying the COVID debt for three years. But the deficits caused by COVID have already been funded by debt, and unless she’s advocating defaulting on gilt repayments, we’ll continue to repay the COVID debt regardless of anything she would do in power. So the first part of her plan is incorrectly defined and her rhetoric reflects a poor understanding of the situation.
What she actually appears to be advocating is letting the public sector net debt ratio rise for a further three years, rather than fall as implied by the current forecast. But she appears unable to communicate this. Ironically, this rise in debt could be financed by issuing short term gilts, with lower interest rates, and so the question from Faisal Islam last night, although technically correct, was slightly misplaced. But rather than explain any of the financing options, she just looked at him blankly, unable to respond.
The other obvious clanger she dropped was in relation to how the Bank of England might react to her tax cuts. The fact that one economist had spoken in the lead up to the debate of the tax cuts possibly pushing rates up to 7% suggested that this issue was highly likely (inevitably) to be addressed last night. This should have allowed her formulate a strong response to the question, but again she failed to do this. So not only is she ignorant of the details of her plan, and unable to discuss how it would be funded, but she also fails to identify the obvious questions coming her way and respond accordingly.
Our next prime minister? A frightening thought.
