I find in the book on Truss a wrong assertion about myself
p 77 “John Redwood was a figure early on at Chevening until he made it clear he didn’t want to become minister for personal financial reasons, so he was replaced by Chris Philp, who was to succeed Clarke as Chief Secretary to the Treasury”
I was not offered any job by Liz Truss at any point. I made no statement on my finances. When I went to Chevening Chris Philp was already part of the team they had assembled there. I went to offer her advice on what a first budget could look like. I included a number of tax cuts designed to speed growth though no income tax rate reduction. I proposed some offsetting spending cuts and a much more modest energy support package than they adopted based on helping those on low and no incomes. I wanted to keep the deficit under control.
Anthony has agreed to correct this .
November 29, 2024
I am not a fan of Seldon he get so much totally wrong in general in my view a BBC “think” person so often.
November 29, 2024
One thing for sure the Truss Budget was far better than Reeves let us destroy growth one. The Truss error was not to announce large government cuts at the same time – net zero, hs2, most degrees…
November 29, 2024
Also energy help only the the v. poor and elderly.
November 29, 2024
Seldon was posh school boy Tonbridge, then Oxford PPE and then a perpetual student it seems (which usually means plenty of family money) and later a posh school teacher. I rarely agree with Seldon on much.
Alas Reform have lost Ben Habib with whom I agree on almost everything (though clearly Shamima Begum a British-born national should never have been stripped of her nationality). This perhaps my only difference with this sensible Camb. Nat-Sci chap and businessman.
November 29, 2024
Reform has only two members. Farage and Tice. You can’t run a country on that basis.
November 29, 2024
My impression of this book was that it was promulgating a thesis formed in the author’s rather biased mind, rather than based on researched facts.
Off topic, but while on the subject of books, I would like to thank you for your recommendation of Professor Clark’s ‘The Enlightenment’, which I read with huge interest and enjoyment. I am now following it with ‘Thomas Paine’.
November 29, 2024
But it is sad that someone somewhere thought that this was a possibility and you yourself may have unwittingly not picked up on it and taken it along.
November 29, 2024
Like many of the other claims made in this opportunistic and prejudiced book, it is an extraordinary assertion to publish about an individual without firm evidence.
Truss seems to have met with the same patronisingly sexist insults and demolition attempts as Thatcher, intended (as in Thatcher’s case) to prevent anything but the same old tax-and-spend economics that has brought us to this ruin we now face.
November 29, 2024
I would be interested in your assessment of the broader assertions in the book. Did you find it was worth reading?
November 29, 2024
Well that was the fatal decision made by Truss. She had the chance to appoint JR as Chancellor and did not. Stupid woman!
November 29, 2024
Obviously a biography of Liz Truss’ administration would require a degree of padding even if that would involve a an elaboration of the facts in order to bring it up to book length. Maybe reporting the administration along the lines of the TV program 24 with Jacqueline Bauer taking on the Blob.