When I wrote last week’s column about the disastrous mini budget I wondered if I had been too harsh in my condemnation.

Looking back with the hindsight of a week it’s clear that my comments were far too restrained about the chaos that the Conservatives have unleashed upon our country.

The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since decimalisation.

Nearly half of all mortgage products were withdrawn from the market.

The Bank of England had to step in with £65 billion to stop pension funds going bust.

The cost of Government borrowing rose even higher than Italy and Greece.

A credit ratings agency indicated it would downgrade the UK’s credit worthiness leading to even higher borrowing costs.

And all of this in less than a week.

The Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have completely lost the confidence of the financial markets. The run on the pound was sparked when Kwasi Kwarteng not only failed to say how he was going to pay for the £45bn tax cuts he had just announced but suggested there would be even more unfunded cuts – targeted at the wealthy of course – next year.

There were days of silence when the pound was falling and markets needed reassuring.

And then, when Liz Truss finally broke her silence, we could see why she’d not been allowed out before. Eight local radio interviews were spent reading robotically from a script, laughing at questions, and leaving embarrassingly long pauses when it was clear she had no idea how to answer.

The pound now seems to fall whenever Truss or Kwarteng open their mouths. Goodness knows what level it will be at by the end of the Conservative Party conference this week.

The response of ministers has been laughable. They first denied that there was any problem. Then they tried to blame it all on Vladimir Putin.  They blamed “left-wing currency speculators”. They tried to pretend that the markets were objecting to the energy bill cap, that had been announced days before the Kwarteng’s tax cuts with barely a murmur of protest.

The prize for taking the biscuit though must go to the Conservative MP who claimed that the markets were reacting badly to the prospect of a Labour Government – which the Conservatives had just made much more likely.

Either these people are idiots, or they think we are all idiots or, as seems increasingly likely, they are idiots who also think that we are all idiots.

Britain has never seen such a display of witless incompetence from its government – certainly not in my lifetime.

So, what does this all mean in the real world?

Firstly, millions of people with a mortgage are going to be much worse off. Those on tracker or Standard Variable Rate mortgages will experience this immediately. 100,000 people a month will see it when their fixed rate deal comes to an end. People buying a new home will see any savings in Stamp Duty wiped out by higher interest payments.

[CONTINUES]

Secondly, the fall in the value of the pound and the £65 billion the Bank of England pumped into the economy to prop up pension funds will mean that prices continue to rise higher, and for longer, than they would otherwise have done. The Cost of Living Crisis has just been extended.

Thirdly, to regain credibility with the markets the Government will now look to slash funding of public services to pay for their tax cuts. Schools, hospitals, courts, the police, councils – all of them hit by a decade of austerity and already needing extra cash to cope with rising prices are instead going to see their funding cut.

Whatever you think of the state of public services now, I can guarantee they are going to be much worse in a year’s time.

Conservative ministers have indicated that they may not even uprate benefits in line with prices, making people on the very lowest incomes even worse off.

And all of this, remember, to pay for tax cuts for millionaires.

The only people who can put a stop to this now are Conservative MPs. They are clearly embarrassed by what’s been going on: not one of our local MPs was prepared to write a column in support of their government last week.

But cowardly silence is not enough. They need to vote with Labour and other opposition MPs to strike these cruel and incompetent policies down.

Those that don’t will be swept aside in a tidal wave of public anger at the next General Election.