Liz Truss is facing an impossible task ahead of the Tory conference, according to Michael Portillo.
The former Cabinet Minister also said the Prime Minister was approaching a key speech next week to the Party “in the worst circumstances” he can remember.
Speaking on his new GB News show, Portillo, he said: “The party threw itself into a change of Prime Minister and a change of economic policy. Boris Johnson was a bit of a rogue, but with a roguish charm that won two Mayoral elections in London, a Referendum and a parliamentary majority of 80.
“Liz Truss has no meaningful record of winning elections and in the few days since she entered Number 10, Labour has surged ahead in the opinion polls.
“The new economic policy might succeed in creating economic growth, but the tax cuts for the better paid are unpopular, and the government’s lack of care to explain how its policies will be funded, sent the market into turmoil.
“The prospect of a dramatic increase in interest rates is scary for those who have mortgages and their extra monthly payments could easily exceed any benefit from cutting the basic rate of tax. That’s on top of surging prices. The pension funds teetered last week, forcing the Bank of England to intervene massively to avoid disaster. Most people, and I include myself in this, find markets difficult to understand, but we know enough to be frightened.
“Thirty years ago when I was a minister in the Treasury on a day that went down in history as Black Wednesday, interest rates soared, and, in my view, people were so alarmed and angry that they decided not to trust the Conservatives with economic policy again.
“The Government’s doom was sealed and it was massacred at the next election. I was one of the victims.
Some Tory MPs think that their party has reached that point again. That’s why Liz faces an impossible task at the Conference. She has to rouse and reassure her party, and convince them of her competence, promise them things that they want to hear, but avoid sending the pound crashing.”
