Truss should not be spooked by a sudden and temporary squall in financial markets. The Bank of England has the powers to restore order. The Government must stick to its announced tax plans. Thatcher would have approved. 

The Bank of England has dismally failed to control inflation - it should have started raising interest rates last year. Now the Bank has screwed things up yet again. It spooked the markets by announcing £40 billion of bond sales into a market already weakened by recent interest rate hikes across the world. If bond-holders see big price falls ahead, they will sell now. Hence the weekend's bond rout.

This turmoil has nothing to do with Kwasi's proposed tax cuts. Abolishing the 45p income tax 'costs' a mere £2,1bn - clearly irrelevant to the budget deficit.

We are now tipping into a sharp recession, after necessary tightening of the money supply in the last 12 months. It would be idiotic to make the recession deeper by raising taxes on jobs (NICs) and taxes on investment (Corporation Tax), as Sunak wanted. Doing that would cut tax revenue and raise benefit costs. Starmer's policy is economically illiterate and would be totally counter-productive.

UK tax rates are increasingly uncompetitive internationally. That's why we need to slash tax rates. As in the 1980s, this will boost growth, cut the deficit and boost the pound.

Image: Simon Dawson / No10 Downing Street, OGL 3 <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3>, via Wikimedia Commons