When Rishi Sunak made his first public speech as prime minister on Tuesday, he admitted what his predecessor Liz Truss had failed to just hours earlier. “Mistakes were made,” he said of his former rival’s brief spell in office, adding that he was here to fix them.
Truss might be out of Number 10 but her think tank allies – like the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), who inspired her disastrous economic programme – are not. Sunak has installed several of the pressure group’s biggest supporters in his cabinet and made one of its former staff members his chief spin doctor.
As the economic fallout from Truss’s premiership becomes more clear, Conservative voices are now calling for the IEA to own its mistakes, while leading economists have warned Sunak to jettison its alumni and “stop listening to those mad, mad people”.
