Liz Truss is playing fast and loose with the truth as Brexit pushes Britain into bargain bin territory

The chief secretary to the Treasury is one of the bewildering number of Tories who might yet prove it is possible to have a worse prime minister than Theresa May

(PA)

“Another demonstration the rest of the world has huge confidence in Britain. As do I.”

So tweeted Liz Truss in response to a report from consulting firm EY that highlights Britain as a hot tip for international companies on the hunt for deals.

The current chief secretary to the Treasury is one of the bewildering number of Tories who might yet prove that it is indeed possible to have a worse prime minister than Theresa May in Downing Street.

The tweet is a case in point.

If you take some time to read the report Truss was commenting on you’ll see that the authors highlight a problem: the gap between what predators want to pay for the businesses they’re trying to gobble up, and what targets think they should pay, is at its widest since the financial crisis.

This creates a problem if you’re an acquisition-hungry CEO because shareholders tend to start asking uncomfortable questions of executives who use their money to overpay for dud companies. “Tell me again, how is it that we handed you a gazillion dollar bonus last year to piss our money up the wall?”

The best way to minimise the risk of that sort of thing is to go hunting in places where you can buy funky businesses for the price of a packet of Chewits and a Sports Direct branded mug. That can only make you look good.

You need a market where, given a choice between its currency and a pack of Lego trading cards, traders ask whether the latter would include some from the Ninjago set and a market where the phrase “worst government in history” is regularly used without anyone seriously debating the point.

In others words, you need the sort of country where someone like Liz Truss has somehow managed to get herself appointed as chief secretary to the Treasury.

Britain surging to the top of EY’s list isn’t emblematic of the world’s “huge confidence” in Britain. Most of the world thinks the country has lost its marbles, and has repeatedly said as much.

But the flip side to that is that it has made the country’s best companies cheap from the perspective of international bidders at a time when others are demanding they pay up. So no wonder they’re minded to swoop in like vultures. It makes all sorts of sense to pick at the best bits of the corpse before it starts to get really putrid.

It helps that the FTSE 100 index is an unusually international one, especially at the top end. So if you’re buying “British” companies you‘re not always buying much that is actually British beyond the company’s boilerplate head office, which you can easily and cheaply close when the deal is done.

You’re certainly not investing in Britain unless by that you mean pocketing the best bits of the family silver and scooting off as soon as it seems polite to do so.

The Truss tweet demonstrates that, a), she didn’t read and/or understand what the report was actually saying or, b), she understood it perfectly well but wilfully misinterpreted it or, c), a combination of both.

If your answer was a), and then you shuddered, I can understand why. If Truss really is that thick it is genuinely disturbing. Her job has an important bearing on the financial well being of all of us. Mind you, it’s not as if she doesn't have competition in terms of the stupid stakes. It wasn’t so long ago that she was serving alongside Dominic Raab.

The former Brexit Secretary, and one of her rivals in the race for No 10, infamously once admitted he hadn’t previously understand how important Dover is when it comes to getting stuff into the shops. He almost succeeds in making her look good.

If your answer was b), you’re basically saying she was lying and, well, plus ca change. They’ve all been at it of late but what a hole we are in when politicians feel they can get away with it so easily.

My answer was c), which is the worst of both worlds. Given the way that what passes for the current administration’s leading lights have been behaving can you blame me?