Truss and Quarteng will face fears from many Conservatives at party’s annual meeting
Dylan Martinez
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The beleaguered UK finance minister pledges on Monday not to backtrack on the Conservative government’s plan to borrow billions to pay for the controversial tax cuts.
Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarten addresses the ruling Tory party’s annual conference a day after Prime Minister Liz Truss admitted to miscommunication about how the plan was presented on Sept. 23, but the need for changes I will not admit it.
“We have to go down this path. I am convinced that our plans are right,” Kwarteng said in a speech to party members in Birmingham, according to the Conservative Party.
He will promise “a new economic deal for the UK, backed by an ironclad commitment to fiscal discipline.”
Truss and Quarteng have refused to rule out spending cuts, including for benefit claimers, during Britain’s worst cost-of-living crisis in generations.
At the same time, their plans include tax cuts for the richest and higher bonus caps for bankers.
With the Truss administration less than a month into office, a blitzkrieg of right-wing policies is bombarding voters, according to polls showing the opposition Labor Party extending a commanding lead.
Many senior Conservatives in Birmingham are nervous.
Taking on more debt to finance the £45bn ($50bn) tax cut is “not conservative”, former Minister Michael Gove told the BBC.
Gove, who was the right-hand man of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the 2016 Brexit campaign, said he was “extremely” concerned and refused to rule out the possibility of voting against the plan in parliament. .
Like Gove, those who backed Mr. Truss’ rival Rishi Sunak in the recent Tory leadership race have also threatened to lose the vote, raising the prospect of a major battle in the House. rising.
Markets crashed in response to the plan, and the Bank of England made an emergency intervention last week to bail out the beleaguered pension funds.
Mr Truss told the BBC he had never discussed removing the 45% tax rate for high-income earners with the cabinet and appeared to have distanced himself from the move, claiming it was “a decision taken by the prime minister”. It looked like
Johnson’s loyalist, Nadine Dries, accused new Prime Minister Johnson of “throwing (a quarteng) under the bus on the first day of the meeting” on Sunday.
The stakes are high for Truss as he prepares to wrap up the party convention with Wednesday’s keynote address.
A YouGov poll found that 51% of Brits think she should step down and 54% want Kwarten to resign.
Several recent polls have shown Labor to be up to 33 points ahead of the Tories. This is the largest since former Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair’s heyday in the late 1990s.
