Liz Truss hopes to fight the Tory leadership campaign as a re-run of Brexit

Rishi Sunak needs Michael Gove’s endorsement to prove he is a true Leaver, writes John Rentoul

She voted Remain, whereas Sunak has been a consistent Leaver (EPA)

I had assumed that Liz Truss would do enough homework to give her two-word pitch for the Conservative leadership, “tax cuts”, at least a semblance of credibility. There is, after all, a reasonable case to be made for borrowing a bit more than planned while the economy faces the threat of recession.

But in her interview on the BBC Today programme this morning, she simply failed to make it, burbling on about “the supply side” instead. You didn’t have to know anything about economics to know that she was busking it.

How naive of me, though, to imagine that she thinks that this is a problem. Her strategy became clear when she echoed Michael Gove’s assault on “experts” during the EU referendum campaign: “We have had a consensus of the Treasury, of economists, of the Financial Times and other outlets peddling a particular type of economic policy for the last 20 years but it hasn’t delivered growth.”