Amid the fury of the Conservative Conference and its constituents, Prime Minister Liz Truss and her Chancellor of Finance Kuasi Kwarteng have decided Go back this Monday and cancel the tax reduction of 45 percent for those earning more than 150,000 euros.
The “mini budget”, pompously announced by the Chancellor, he had not even been consulted by the cabinetin the midst of mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth.
Conservatives, from former minister Michael Gove to former chancellor Ken Clarke, have denounced it as “not a conservative move”.
A controversial decision as the kingdom faces the cost of living crisis, lack of energy, unreachable mortgage loans and energy to £ 6,000 per yearthat will leave thousands of families in misery.
Inversion
On Monday morning the Prime Minister was still defending his provision built in the utmost secrecy. But according to government sources, the decision was made on Sunday evening under pressure from the Birmingham Tory conference and the injunction that the Chancellor must resign on Monday.
The minister was due to speak this Monday before the party conference.
The Chancellor of Finance explained that the tax cut has become “a huge distraction” and therefore “must be removed”. “95 percent of the package we are focusing on and the growth plan will take place,” he said to justify his public humiliation.
Asked if he intended to resign, this son of Ghanaian immigrants, who studied economic history at Eton, Harvard and Cambridge and speaks 6 languages, arrogantly said: “There is no way”.
Bookmakers like Paddy Power now hold 7/1 that Kwarteng won’t be Chancellor by the end of the week and 11/2 that Liz Truss won’t be Prime Minister at Downing St by the end of the year.
An investigation into Kuarteg’s meeting with a group of pension funds ahead of the mini-budget, presented on Friday 23 September, was requested by 31 Labor MPs. One of the bankers came out saying. “This is a useful idiot,” with a champagne in hand.
Liz, your luck is at stake.
The fate of Prime Minister Liz Truss hangs in the balance when he has not completed three weeks in his position. A rebellion is underway. They accuse her of not having passed the package in Parliament. Leading the public criticism are two former Boris Johnson ministers, Grant Shapps and Michael Gove.
Liz Truss publicly pledged to cut taxes, just hours before the decision was made to remove them. But in pre-recorded interviews on Sunday afternoon, ITV asked the prime minister if the tax cut would be reversed.
He said: “The important thing is that in addition to addressing a major energy crisis that we have decisively addressed, what we also need to do is put the UK economy on the path of long-term growth because it is vital to avoid economic slowdown. .
But also to ensure that in the future we have a high-wage economy that works “, said the premier, who wants to evoke Margaret Thatcher.
Pressed that she would change her mind about the tax cut, she said, “No. And the vast majority of the package that was presented was about the energy package and the rollback of national insurance and also keeping corporate taxes low.
“Libertarian and without electoral mandate”
Conservatives accused Kwarteng of being “a libertarian” and Liz Truss of “having no mandate” for these budget cuts, to the benefit of the richest.
At least 20 Conservative MPs have refused to go to the conference and others are hiding from seeing that they have participated in this chaos. Another 14 Conservative MPs made it public his rejection of the plan at the conference of conservatives most scandalous and divided in its history.
Kuarteg had prepared his speech to carry out the mini-budget plan, but the opposition was such that he had to change it and accept the change.
General elections?
The calling of general elections it is not excluded. It can be for a vote of confidence, for resignation or for Truss, somehow, it can ratify its mandate when I labor they have a 33% advantage.if the elections were now.
Boris Johnson’s former culture secretary Nadine Dorries said there was “widespread dismay” in the party at Liz Truss’s policies. You invited the prime minister to now hold general elections, which the party could lose with you as a candidate.
He told Truss he should ask the country if he wants to get “a new broad mandate”. She was elected by only 0.1% of the Conservatives when she replaced Boris Johnson as party leader. If there are early elections, the Conservatives only have Boris Johnson as a candidate and he knows it.
The statement by Nadine, a public supporter of Boris, comes as there is tremendous angst in the party over the decisions Truss made in his first few weeks in Downing St. Among other things ban King Charles III and the Prince of Wales, two ecologists convinced, to participate in the climate summit in Egypt.
To reduce taxes on the richest, Liz Truss should reduce benefits for the poorest families, which are weighed down by 11% inflation and rising interest rates.
“Nobody asked for these things,” said Nadine Dorries, who supported Liz Truss in her conservative campaign against Rashi Sunak.
The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies said Chancellor Kuasi Kwarteng “has a lot of work to do” to demonstrate “his commitment to financial management” and called the tax cut for the rich “a big mistake.”
He warned him that if he didn’t change his mind, “he would have no choice but to cut social security, investment projects or public services.”
United Kingdom “Argentinized”
The UK is starting to look “bewitched” by some foreign observers as they sift through the rubble of last week’s mini-budget.
The Irish Times compared Britain to the chaos in Argentina and Liz Truss, with her isolated situation.
“Argentinization” was not a destination the kingdom expected after Brexit.
A headline in El Español de España reads: “21 days with Liz Truss: the pound falls, the queen dies and the UK has become weaker than ever since Brexit”.
The newspaper believes Boris Johnson’s farewell coup was “See you later Baby” now sounds like “damn”. He says Truss’s first three weeks in office “couldn’t have been more catastrophic.”
German tabloid Bild is also shocked by the string of disasters in Britain. “First Boris Johnson falls, then the queen dies and now, the UK financial system is also shaking“, he described.
“The turbulence in the forex markets is causing even the most diehard of traders to lose sleep,” he adds. “Brexit Brits currently have a bad money problem,” says Bild.
It’s not just the German press that is enjoying the post-Brexit chaos. The Spanish says it “The UK appears to have imploded.”
“It is worth mentioning that the British voted for ‘Brexit’ believing they would take control and become a stronger country if they could free themselves from the yoke of Europe. Well, it seems that exactly the opposite is happening. And now that they are no longer under the protection of Brussels, they have no right or access to the aid of the 27. If they want to get out of the crisis they are immersed in, they will have to do it on their own, “they said.
European politicians interested
European politicians have taken advantage of what appears to be a Failed experiment which takes place on the other side of the Channel.
“I am concerned about the British situation,” French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told Europe 1 Radio on Friday. “It shows that there are costs to financial and economic policies. When you take on big expenses like that, with billboards, as some opposition parties in France want to do, it upsets the markets. It upsets the financial balance ”, he clarified.
Also on Friday, Oscar Arce, director general of the European Central Bank, was asked if he was concerned about the “financial contagion” from the UK. He said there was still no sign. But he added: “Whatever happens in the UK, it will have some impact on our economy.”
This was stated by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman “Trussonomics is deeply stupid”. But it warns against “hyperventilation”. In a tweet, he states: “It will not cause a global crisis. For God’s sake Great Britain it represents only 3.2% of world GDP. And even if the British markets are a disaster, we are a long way from 1976 ”.
Paris, correspondent
ap
Source: Clarin
