I tried to understand their historic error - but I failed

On Tuesday I literally sat at the feet of the chancellor in an attempt to understand this government's economic policy. Journalists were allowed to sit in the front row for a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference, and so I found myself a few feet away from Kwasi Kwarteng, looking up at him, as he sat in an armchair on a low stage.

- JOHN RENTOUL

I was in a good position to learn how it is that this growth plan is going to work. Or, at least, why the small but highly motivated group of clever people who have captured the party of government think it might work. I have to report, however, that my mission was a failure. Perhaps I am just an irredeemable member of the "anti-growth coalition" identified in the prime minister's speech yesterday, but it doesn't make sense to me on its own terms.

Kwarteng began the session, as an economic historian should, with a recap of the previous episode of the Rolling Fiscal Disaster box set. He said that the government was right to spend vast sums of money to support people during coronavirus lockdowns, but that it was wrong to raise taxes to pay for it.

This sounded like an echo of Liz Truss's claim during the Conservative leadership campaign that Covid debt should be treated like war debt - that is, and I hope I am not paraphrasing unfairly, it should be put into a box marked "not to be repaid for many decades" and forgotten about.