In his speech yesterday, Kwarteng said he had abandoned his cut in income tax for the richest because it was distracting from his broader plans. But it's precisely his broader plans that are the problem.
As well as slashing tax for the rich, he wants to get rid of regulations for the rich, promising to "review, replace or repeal retained EU law holding our country back".
Much of the rhetoric was the vague nonsense of wilting neoliberal ideologues, but he did give some specifics.
"On childcare, agriculture, immigration, planning, energy, broadband, business, financial services," he said, "Sensible, economic reforms to produce more of the products and services we need to drive down costs."
What this means in reality is a massive attack on safety and standards. Proposals to abolish Ofsted accreditation for childminders don't do anything to solve the problems faced by parents who desperately need better-funded childcare, but will make it harder for parents to know their child is being well cared for, and easier for profiteering agencies.
The reference to agriculture seems to be a nod to the chaos around England's attempts to replace the EU's Common Agriculture Policy. Under Boris Johnson, with Michael Gove as environment secretary, there were some genuine attempts to ensure that farmers' subsidies were given in exchange for environmental goods, via a policy known as the Environmental Land Management Scheme. This could have gone some of the way towards slowing the biodiversity crisis in the UK - one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth.
But it looks like Liz Truss and her environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, are scrapping all of this namby-pamby 'not killing the planet' nonsense, and restoring lump sum payments to agribusinesses based on how much land they have - the richer they are, the more they get.
Or perhaps Kwarteng was talking about Britain's new-found power to decide which pesticides agribusinesses should be allowed to spray on our land and leach into our water - various poisons banned across the EU are already allowed in Britain.
As my colleague and housing economics expert Laurie Macfarlane has argued, Tory attempts to reform planning laws in recent years have represented "a ferocious attack on democracy", stripping power from elected representatives and handing it to developers. Without proper planning, cities become suburban sprawl, with lengthy commutes, traffic jams and deep economic inefficiencies. Thriving cities require thoughtful consideration from authorities with a broad view of different needs, resulting in communities joined up with public transport, schools and doctors' surgeries, not endless mazes of cul de sacs and traffic jams.
When Kwarteng talks about energy, what he means is not that he'll lift England's absurd ban on onshore wind farms - in fact, Truss seems to want to extend it to include solar farms, too - but rather, to bend to the will of the fossil fuel lobby, and bring back fracking.
And when he talks about financial service deregulation, we don't need to be very old to remember where that led in 2008.
To push all of this through, the chancellor made another important pledge - this time to increase regulation, specifically the regulation of workers.
"Pernicious strike action disrupts the lives of the British people and it slows down our economy," he said. "So, we will introduce important reforms to stop strike action from derailing our daily lives."
We shouldn't be surprised by this agenda. It's the deregulated corporate playground that was promised when Britain voted for Brexit. But the problem for the government is that it's entirely out of step with much of the rest of the world.
If Britain allows its fields to be soaked in chemical poisons and its chickens to be chlorinated, its exports to undercut safety standards and its financial services to side-step regulations, then the EU isn't going to allow itself to be undercut. The bloc will simply ban inferior British produce. And the much-mooted US trade deal looks unlikely - Biden hasn't exactly shown himself to be a fan of the Brexit agenda.
The British government is already scrambling around the other side of the world looking for partners - as the prime minister announced in her recent UN speech, the UK is in the process of acceding to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But you can't just wish away ten thousand miles.
In the past, I would have described Truss's government's agenda as shock doctrine, or disaster capitalism - an audacious attempt to use the various crises of the day to strip away vestiges of democracy and workers' power, and to advance corporate power. And in one sense, it is. But, in the past, with neoliberalism on the march, it would have felt like part of a global project. Now, they just look like fools, standing on the prow of a boat that's abandoned its fleet, and pissing into the winds of history, only to find they are getting themselves wet.
