This is (possibly) an extract from Liz Truss’s new book Bank Job: A short book on how the Bank of England broke the bond market and brought down the government
Introduction
“As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a gangster,” is what I imagine Andrew Bailey was thinking when he woke up on the morning of September 23, 2022.
George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven, Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, that chicken in The Wrong Trousers – we’ll probably never know who first inspired reckless lawbreaking by the governor of the Bank of England. What we do know is that on that fateful September day he performed a heist on British citizens so audacious it would have made Ronnie Biggs blush.
His genius is that it wasn’t a heist in the traditional sense. Instead of stealing a lot of money via an ingenious high-stakes ruse followed by a thrilling getaway, this caper involved an emergency £65 billion intervention to rescue pension funds following the sharp sell-off in gilts in the wake of my mini-budget.
But as I told 13 people at the last CPAC, premising a book on a lazy metaphor that doesn’t work isn’t a crime. Yet.
So, while it is true we didn’t see Andrew Bailey’s cronies speeding around the streets of London in Fiat 500s loaded with gold bullion like in The Italian Job, it doesn’t mean they aren’t guilty. Or should we say, “gilty”? (No – Ed.)
In hindsight, I wish I’d let the drama play out. In the denouement of The Italian Job, the bullion-laden getaway coach ends up precariously balanced on the edge of Ilkley Moor.
What people don’t seem to realise is that the sharp drop in the value of the pound that my unfunded tax package caused prompted investors to seek refuge in precious metals like gold. This would have increased the weight of Caine’s haul, thus pulling the coach over the precipice and condemning the criminals to their extremely well-deserved deaths.
People often ask me why I didn’t stick to my guns. Three words: bad communication.
At the height of the panic, everyone in No 10 was itching because we hadn’t had a chance to get the fumigators in after the previous occupants’ chaotic tenancy. So, when Simon Clarke heard me say, “I must scratch it” while serving me my morning Nesquik, he assumed I was talking about the 45p tax rate, rather than the flea bite under my left shoulder pad.
Before you knew it, the left wing establishment were accusing me of being indecisive. And that’s how this game works.
But ask yourself: what would the civil service Mandela apologists want me to do? Throw 40,000 arbitrary words beneath a natty title to an absurdly short deadline and then watch the Marxists at the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street burn? Or live out the rest of my days begging for Claire Balding’s approval as she commentates on my wreath-laying skills at state occasions? I think we all know the answer. (It’s the second one.)
Chapter One
The poisoned chalice.
I’d just returned from a six-hour Mrs Thatcher-themed photoshoot in Orgreave when Kwasi banged on our partition wall and shouted that the pound had collapsed to a 37-year low against the dollar. I smiled to myself.
Here was another similarity between me and the Iron Lady: whether it was the General Belgrano, or the pound, we were both good at sinking things.
At the time I didn’t realise I was running out of road. I genuinely thought, indeed, I still do, that my ideas were the shock to the system that the apparatus of the deep state needed.
Then Stilts walked in.
“The IMF trots have made an incredibly rare intervention and said that our unfunded tax cuts are at odds with the Bank of England’s efforts to curb inflation.”
It was my darkest hour. And I filled it with powerful verse:
“My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in fridge.
Oh Simon, what a wounding shame is this
The anti-growth coalition have caused.
Now daring our honour, the communist
Stockbrokers, bankers and traders in gilt,
Do reject the trickling down of our most
Wonderful non-dom capitalist jus.
The tofu-stained Linekerist horde
Who think that paying seven hundred pounds
More on their mortgages too great a price
To ease the load on our poor billionaires!”
Like my predecessor Boris Johnson, my economic policy had touched a lot of people, often in ways they didn’t like. But now it was dead, and I was facing the media frenzy alone. It felt like officiating at my own funeral.
The establishment, of course, had me exactly where they wanted me: A wake. Which is the present tense of woke.
Continues for 39,213 more words….
The Bank Job: A short book on how the Bank of England broke the bond market and brought down the government by Liz Truss is published by Fisher King Publishing.
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