By Graham Vanbergen: The Brexiteer’s wet dream has finally arrived. Truss and Kwarteng have ‘delivered, delivered, delivered.’ Sovereignty, immigration and Singapore-on-Thames were the three themes of the EU referendum back in 2016. It’s what Brexit was all about.

After six years, in a post-Brexit world, it appeared that those elusive Brexit dividends just refused to be found. But Somehow, Truss has done what seemed impossible.

Economic liberalism, motivated by desperation after three failed Tory governments to trigger the route to the sunlit uplands of Brexit arrived via Chancellor Kwarteng’s so-called ‘fiscal event.’

Whilst the Brexit-supporting public swallowed the sovereignty and immigration narrative – hook, line and sinker – the architects behind this ideological free-market project were after something else. A mean, lean, low-tax state that deregulates as it rampages through a regulated world that protects us all from an Americanised model of winner-takes-all that is now the utopian reality of those that funded it.

‘Let’s get fracking’ shouts The Spectator. ‘Bet Big On Britain’ cheers the Express, “Freedom Begins With Tax Cuts’ roars the Daily Mail.

This is what the economic liberals of Brexit wanted. Or should we point out, it was what the millions in dark money of vested interests that refused to show their faces in public wanted. They wanted freedom – not freedom for you – freedom for them.

Having put up barriers with the UK’s largest and most local trading market – we are about to see how far down the rabbit hole this gamble takes us. So far, it has failed at every corner.

There are some very obvious hurdles for Trussonomics. First up, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the economy of Britain is hardly in great shape to take such big gambles. It feels more like the last desperate throw of a dice than an economic policy agreed upon by our best and brightest.

Then there’s inflation. It’s not driven domestically but mostly by global events – ones like the pandemic and Ukraine that have rocked international markets. We don’t have the tools available to stop those events from affecting us.

The initial reaction of Britain’s currency and gilt markets to ‘Trussonomics’ and Kwarteng’s announcement were hardly encouraging. The former crashed to a near all-time low and the latter rocketed. These are the very obvious signals given by investors – they are running for the hills. And both are inflationary. The pound diving as it did now costs £5 extra to fill up the average car.

The biggest tax-cutting budget since the last one in 1972, which itself was a total disaster, is designed to trigger growth at a moment when the economy is slowly spiralling into recession just before the really big bills arrive on our doormats.

The reality is that something has to give because this cunning plan has the hallmarks of failure written all over it – and we all know deep down what that means. Call it what you like – austerity is what it will be. But that won’t arrive until after the next general election is called. In two years’ time, this ‘fiscal event’ will have delivered something exceeding £175 billion to the national debt.

In the end, the losers will be public health, education, transport and local services because someone has to pay for jumping across that magic 100 per cent of debt to GDP threshold.

An extra £72bn in debt is pencilled for this financial year alone.

Trussonomics does say something though. It says the Tory orthodoxy of fiscal prudence was all wrong. It says that the last five Tory governments, including that of Major and Thatcher were all wrong too. Keynesian economic theory says  – if government spending increases and all other spending components remain constant, then output will increase. But those components are not constant – they are volatile, to say the least.

Don’t forget – this is a Tory party that voted in Cameron to fix a ‘Broken Britain.’ Then they voted in Theresa May to fix their broken Brexit and Johnson to fix it again. Now they’ve voted in someone to fix the economy that they broke – that wasn’t broken before they came to power in the first place.

This is a government that is governing on the tick. Joyce Brothers, the American psychologist once said – “Credit buying is much like being a drunk. The buzz happens immediately and it gives you a lift. The hangover comes the day after.” If Truss’s gamble goes wrong, the hangover won’t last a day, it will last for years and years.

In our case, the saying – “There are three kinds of people: the haves, the have-nots, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-haves” is not true. Soon, we could be the have-not-paid-for-what-we-have-nots. In a debt-straddled nation, praying for inflation to stave off bankruptcy is not a great plan.

Whilst you might think that is an overreaction, what happens if Britain enters a full-on recession and stays there for a couple of years and Truss was wrong? This prospect is very real. So is a period of stagflation – the very worst of all economic worlds.

When your government chooses to alleviate the tax burdens of tobacco conglomerates, alcohol producers and bankers over public health, you know who they are thinking of. When they choose to give tax big breaks to the wealthiest over the poorest, you know who they are thinking of. This is an absolute dismissal of concern for the public good, replaced with greed. It puts the bottom half of society firmly into the precariat.

After everything this country has been through; the financial crisis, a decade of austerity, the pandemic and now an inflationary battle – our government has chosen to pull the support from those existing without the predictability or security of a functioning system to catch them if they trip up. The physical and psychological welfare of large swathes of society have just become cannon fodder in an economic war.

The weakest will suffer. The elderly, the frail and those suffering from the most frightening diseases such as cancer have just been told what their place is. Social care and the NHS are already on their knees but they chose to cut their much-needed additional support off at the click of a finger by cancelling the national insurance rise. This tax was actually well supported by the public given the collective struggle of what lies ahead.

Make no mistake, all taxpayers will gain from these plans but the true real winners are the wealthiest and best able to weather the coming storms.

By January, no household, even those doing well, will feel better off irrespective of the actions of this government which are soon to be softening the blows of the energy crisis. Many will decry the fact that windfall taxes could have applied – or even that energy could have been nationalised with tens of billions of spare cash to invest elsewhere. It was a massive opportunity missed.

However, this is the economic Brexit that leading right-wing Tories and their political commentators demanded. This is what the right-wing press, such as the Daily Mail, Express and The Sun shouted loudest about. This is what the grey vote was about – a rebuke to the future and our younger generations. It’s here and it’s real.

When this gamble fails – and it will, what next? What excuse will they roll out then? How bad do things really have to get before they admit they were wrong?

Worse still, what will be required to fix it all and who will pay for it?