Liz Truss to the British Rescue

More important than the specific policies, however, has been Ms. Truss’s emphasis that economic growth rather than income redistribution can solve Britain’s problems, and that private enterprise can do it better than government direction. She also pushed back against the woke pieties that have swept United Kingdom media and academic elites almost as thoroughly as they have America’s.

That marks a major break from the last 12 years of Tory governance. Starting with Prime Minister

David Cameron,

the party began a leftward tilt that culminated in the fiasco of Mr. Johnson’s tenure. He won a historic parliamentary majority in 2019’s election on a pledge to finalize Britain’s departure from the European Union. But the rest of his agenda consisted of ruinous climate pledges and tax increases.

The mistake was for the Tories to turn themselves into another party of redistribution instead of standing as Britain’s party of prosperity. The prosperity is evaporating as Britain becomes the worst-performing major economy. Opinion polls suggest voters trust the opposition Labour Party more on redistribution.

The danger is that time may be too short for Ms. Truss to execute a turnaround before a national election due by 2024. Her immediate challenge will be soaring energy prices that promise a winter of hardship.

Ms. Truss seems to be leaning toward caps on energy prices, which would be a mistake. Once imposed they are hard to lift and they distort supply and demand. The least awful among bad short-term policy options is a support program for households and small businesses, amounting to handouts of tens of billions of pounds. As for a longer-term solution, Ms. Truss supports more domestic energy production via shale fracking and drilling in the North Sea, but she has yet to disavow Mr. Johnson’s net-zero carbon emissions goal that deters energy investment.

Ms. Truss’s tax-rate cuts are a good economic start. But Britain needs a deeper reform of the tax system to weed out myriad awful incentives that deter investment and job creation, such as steep taxes on business premises. It also hasn’t tapped its Brexit dividend by overhauling economic regulations. Ms. Truss will have to persuade recalcitrant Tory lawmakers who have grown comfortable with the redistributionist and woke state.

The main charge against Ms. Truss is that her agenda is fiscally reckless. But the Tory status quo has failed miserably and it would be reckless for the country and political malpractice to keep doing the same thing. Wish the new Prime Minister luck, because she is going to need it.