You’re remembering the mini-Budget wrong

Yes, unfunded tax cuts — but it was the energy support package wot done it

Liz Truss leaving Downing Street (Rory Arnold / No 10 Downing Street Flickr)

Good morning, no cheating:

1. Does Mr Monopoly, the mascot of the board game Monopoly, wear a monocle?

2. In the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is there a scene in which Mr Darcy, as portrayed by Colin Firth, emerges from a lake wet-shirted?

3. In the Star Wars film 'The Empire Strikes Back', which of the following is a famous line that Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker?

• "Luke, I am your father" | "No, I am your father"

4. Which of the following comes closest to your understanding of how Kit-Kat/KitKat is styled on its wrapper?

• Kit-Kat is hyphenated | KitKat was once hyphenated, but is not any more | KitKat has never been hyphenated

The answers are:

1. He does not

2. There is not

3. “No, I am your father”

4. KitKat has never been hyphenated

If you got any of these right, you are in fact in the minority. The results of the survey below, carried out by YouGov last year, are fairly spectacular:

(YouGov)

These are examples of the Mandela effect, a phenomenon in which people generate false memories about historical and cultural events. The name itself came about after actual human beings claimed to 'remember’ that Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s, rather than becoming president of South Africa from 1994-1999.

Hear me out, but something similar has happened with the September 2022 UK fiscal statement, better known as the “mini-Budget¹”. We all know that Liz Truss stood up at the despatch box, announced a raft of tax cuts, sparked a gilts crisis and was swiftly dumped by her party. Of course, only some of this happened.

Remember, remember the 23rd of September

First and foremost it was themed puddings fan and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng who delivered the statement, not Truss. No, really.

Second, while Kwarteng certainly did announce a raft of unfunded tax cuts of approximately £45bn, it was in many ways his appearance on the following Sunday with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, in which he defended tax cuts and vowed there would be “more to come”, that re-traumatised the markets and made a head of lettuce a social media star.

But what is often forgotten about the Truss premiership — in part because people liked it — was the frankly enormous, poorly targeted and equally financed by borrowing commitment on energy made just days earlier.

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