Liz Truss’s safety-first conference speech at least has not made things worse

theguardian.com:

That was a safety first speech. It was much shorter than a usual party conference speech, it did not contain any policy announcements, and in fact it did not really contain much news at all. Given the hostile reaction to much of what the government has been saying in the last four weeks – on the financial markets, in the polls (the opinion markets), and amongst MPs – the fact that Truss managed to get through this without antagonising her party any further is probably a bonus. She hasn’t made things worse.

Quite a lot of the speech sounded like the stump speech she was making during the Tory leadership, or what she was saying during the hustings. These arguments were successful with her audience – Conservative party members – and so it probably made sense to provide them with an encore today. But hardcore free market libertarianism is a niche enthusiasm, even in the Conservative party, and there was nothing in the speech that will make her economic agenda sound more appealing to the public at large than it is already (which is not very). The speech was not even particularly well written.

It is not as if the government has no plans. Within the next few weeks the government intends to introduce supply-side reforms (deregulation, mostly) in eight areas, but Truss did not want to talk about these in detail at all. Perhaps she realises the plans will not be universally welcomed, even by her party. You can imagine the conversation in the speech-drafting session. “Shall we include the bit about ripping up the working time directive, or issuing more visas for seasonal workers, or Jacob Rees-Mogg’s plan to allow people on high salaries to be sacked for no reason? Probably best we don’t.”

Welfare was another black hole in the speech.