Cam historian warned Truss of market crash

‘NOT TRUE’: Charles Read, a Corpus Fellow, refuted claims made by Truss in a recent Telegraph article

Charles Read is a Fellow at Corpus Christi Faculty of History

by Finley Brighton

This article is 3 years old

Friday February 17 2023, 11:18am

Charles Read, an economic historian at Corpus Christi, has refuted claims made by the former Prime Minister Liz Truss about the fallout from last year’s mini-budget. In a recent Telegraph article, Truss claimed that “at no point” had concerns been raised to the Treasury about the risks the mini-Budget posed to bond markets. Read was quick to inform his Twitter followers these claims were “NOT TRUE”.

Read went on to claim that, in a lecture given to civil servants in September, he explicitly warned against fiscal action that would make inflation rise any faster. He also wrote personally to chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng with the same warnings.

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Read told Varsity that he warned the government about the severe “political consequences” that a budget that forced market rates to rise rapidly would have. He went on to state that Truss’s claims were “highly misleading and should be called out. To have former politicians seeking to blame their own policy errors on conspiracy theories is deeply worrying as it is both corrosive of public discourse in this country and another step towards Trumpism”.

The long-term impact of this economic policy is, he claimed, ongoing.

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