When neoliberalism meets technocracy: intra-elite conflict and the realignment of Britain’s macroeconomic regime under Liz Truss

This article offers a new account of Liz Truss’s premiership by analysing the political economy of the 2022 mini-Budget crisis. Engaging with literature on depoliticisation, statecraft, and the City-Bank-Treasury nexus, it reconceptualises the rise and fall of the Truss government as a moment of intra-elite conflict over the governance of macroeconomic policy. It argues that Truss’s radical neoliberal experiment constituted a novel form of elite-led backlash against the depoliticisation of economic management. By challenging the independence of key institutions in the British state and breaching long-established practices of depoliticised governance, her disorderly approach to statecraft catalysed an institutional response. Developing a theory of institutional realignment through crisis, the article shows how a ‘Bank-Treasury-OBR nexus’ coalesced during the crisis around a consensus of monetary dominance, fiscal discipline, and technocratic expertise. Leveraging their institutional authority to signal impending market turmoil, the nexus ultimately played a key role in Truss’s downfall. The article concludes by arguing that Truss’s premiership provides important insight into changing dynamics of contestation surrounding depoliticised governance.