As Truss fights to keep her PM job, new finance minister says she made mistakes – Times of India
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LONDON: Britain’s new finance minister Jeremy Hunt said on Saturday some taxes would go up and tough spending decisions were needed, saying Prime Minister Liz Truss had made mistakes as she battles to keep her job just over a month into her term.
In an attempt to appease financial markets that have been in turmoil for three weeks, Truss fired Kwasi Kwarteng as her chancellor of the exchequer on Friday and scrapped parts of their controversial economic package.
With opinion poll ratings dire for both the ruling Conservative Party and the prime minister personally, and many of her own lawmakers asking, not if, but how Truss should be removed, she has turned to Hunt to help salvage her premiership less than 40 days after taking office.
“We will have some very difficult decisions ahead,” Hunt said as he toured TV and radio studios to give a blunt assessment of the situation the country faced, saying Truss and Kwarteng had made mistakes.
“The thing that people want, the markets want, the country needs now, is stability,” Hunt said. “No chancellor can control the markets. But what I can do is show that we can pay for our tax and spending plans and that is going to need some very difficult decisions on both spending and tax.”
Truss won the leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson on a platform of big tax cuts to stimulate growth, which Kwarteng announced last month. But the absence of any details of how the cuts would be funded sent the markets into meltdown.
In an attempt to appease financial markets that have been in turmoil for three weeks, Truss fired Kwasi Kwarteng as her chancellor of the exchequer on Friday and scrapped parts of their controversial economic package.
With opinion poll ratings dire for both the ruling Conservative Party and the prime minister personally, and many of her own lawmakers asking, not if, but how Truss should be removed, she has turned to Hunt to help salvage her premiership less than 40 days after taking office.
“We will have some very difficult decisions ahead,” Hunt said as he toured TV and radio studios to give a blunt assessment of the situation the country faced, saying Truss and Kwarteng had made mistakes.
“The thing that people want, the markets want, the country needs now, is stability,” Hunt said. “No chancellor can control the markets. But what I can do is show that we can pay for our tax and spending plans and that is going to need some very difficult decisions on both spending and tax.”
Truss won the leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson on a platform of big tax cuts to stimulate growth, which Kwarteng announced last month. But the absence of any details of how the cuts would be funded sent the markets into meltdown.
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