Kwarteng and Truss hit the pound running | opinion
A tenet of democracy is the alternation of power: new ideas, new policies, the chance for another set of think-tanks to have their day. In Britain, we are expert at this. So expert in fact that we now achieve it without changing the party in power or even the faces.
Kwarteng got to his feet in the packed House of Commons shortly after 9.30am and slashed or froze corporation tax, stamp duty, national insurance, business rates, alcohol duty, VAT for foreigners, and income tax, especially for the 1 per cent. You wait years for a tax cut, and £45bn of them come along at once. As a share of the economy, the tax cuts were the biggest since 1972, the Institute for Fiscal Studies quickly calculated. Bankers would be free to earn bigger bonuses, pay less income tax on those bonuses, and then spend them on cheaper champagne. Contractors could once again pretend to be self-employed, and pay less tax as a result.
Kwarteng is an imposing figure: in height, he is 1.96 metres or, as Jacob Rees-Mogg probably prefers to say, 231 barleycorns. He has a deep, gravelly voice and a formidable intellect. He seemed to enjoy proceedings, without quite dominating them. He mopped his brow, he took off his glasses, his voice went hoarse.