Britain’s new finance minister will announce fresh tax and spending measures on Monday morning — two weeks earlier than scheduled — in a bid to …
Britain’s new finance minister will announce fresh tax and spending measures on Monday morning — two weeks earlier than scheduled — in a bid to quell turbulent markets, the government says.
It comes amid reports of a growing revolt among ruling Conservative MPs against Liz Truss’ premiership, following the fiasco surrounding her budget plans.
The prime minister’s position is increasingly in doubt as the central planks of her economic programme are ditched and her authority over her government and backbenchers is shot to pieces.
Jeremy Hunt, who was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on Friday, is due to make a statement at 11 am local time (12.00 CEST), before appearing in the House of Commons in the afternoon.
The former health and foreign secretary has been racing to overhaul the government’s financial plans since he replaced Kwasi Kwarteng who was sacked on Friday. Kwarteng’s unfunded tax cuts announced in his “mini-budget” on September 23 sent the pound tumbling, borrowing costs soaring, and sparked a collapse in support for the ruling party.
On Sunday, Hunt and Truss held a crisis meeting at her country residence to prepare a new budget plan. Defending the government’s new direction, he acknowledged his predecessor’s mistakes and warned of “difficult decisions” to come.
Later, he met with the Governor of the Bank of England” and the head of the Debt Management Office on Sunday evening to “update them on these plans”, the government statement said.
‘Ideological jihadists’
A handful of Tory MPs have publicly called on Liz Truss to step down. “Enough is enough,” one of them, Jamie Wallace, wrote on Twitter. “I have written to the Prime Minister to ask her to stand down as she no longer holds the confidence of this country.”
Crispin Blunt, an MP for 25 years, backed his statement and told Channel 4 that “the game’s up” for Truss.
Another MP, Robert Halfon, told Sky News that Liz Truss’ government had behaved like “libertarian Jihadists” in recent weeks and had treated the country like “laboratory mice” to carry out free-market experiments.
Alicia Kearns, the new chair of the influential House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said the question of whether or not Truss should remain in Downing Street was “very difficult”.
She said the government’s problems are linked to policy and not just communication, warning that “dogmatism scares people”.
Many Conservative MPs were appalled by the prime minister’s news conference on Friday following Kwarteng’s sacking. Truss said she was “incredibly sorry” to lose her close colleague but took no responsibility for recent events and only briefly answered questions.
Truss plan ‘was a mistake’ — Biden
Liz Truss launched her plan last month having consistently said she would immediately cut taxes once in office — despite repeated warnings from economists and even former Conservative ministers that doing so in the current climate would be extremely risky.
The dramatic consequences have badly tarnished Britain’s reputation around the world and prompted criticism from global political and financial leaders. US Joe Biden said at the weekend that he “wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake”.
While avoiding criticising the British government directly, the European Commission’s economic affairs chief Paolo Gentiloni said on Friday that there were “lessons to learn”, and the volatile situation showed “how prudent we should be also with our fiscal and monetary mix”.
Hunt will deliver a fuller medium-term fiscal plan as scheduled on October 31 alongside forecasts from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury said.
