First, though, Ms. Truss tried to put the chaos of the past week behind her. She offered a brief show of contrition for the reversal on the top tax rate, saying, “I get it, and I have listened.” And she insisted that she and Mr. Kwarteng, the chancellor, were now “in complete lock step,” trying to dampen reports that the two had split over the measure.
“We will keep an iron grip on the nation’s finances,” Ms. Truss insisted, seeking to counter the market’s fears that her tax cuts will necessitate huge new borrowing by the government. But immediately after promising to show fiscal discipline, she pivoted to the need to lower taxes. The pound fell against the dollar as she began speaking, recovering slightly to trade at $1.135 by the time she left the stage.
Ms. Truss, who was a cabinet minister for eight years before becoming prime minister through an internal Conservative Party contest last month, won applause with reliable crowd-pleasers like a vow to erase European Union laws still on British books. She told familiar stories about her childhood, like her education in a state school in the industrial city of Leeds, where the City Council, she said, was more concerned about being politically correct than raising standards.
That allowed her to expound on her libertarian beliefs, attacking opponents whose agenda, she said, was “always more taxes, more regulation and more meddling,” an approach she dismissed as “wrong, wrong, wrong.”
These conferences are normally a chance for a new leader to bask in the approval of loyal rank-and-file members and to lay out a legislative agenda in a carefully stage-managed display of party unity.
But Ms. Truss’s agenda, and even her political survival, were far from secure. Some of her ministers voiced opposition to parts of her package while others complained darkly of a “coup” against her. At times, internal discipline appeared to have broken down completely as feuding broke out between party factions.
