It was announced yesterday that the new Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, was cutting short a visit to the IMF in Washington DC to return for urgent talks with the Prime Minister. In the past few hours, the subject of those talks has been revealed.
Liz Truss today sacked Kwarteng from the Treasury after only four weeks in the job, and only three weeks after the announcement of his destructive “mini-budget”.
Kwarteng is the second shortest-lived Chancellor in British history, after Iain Macleod who served under Edward Heath in 1970 who had a heart attack 30 days into the job. Unlike Kwarteng however, Macleod did not tank the economy and ruin the UK’s fiscal reputation in less than a month.
The Tories are burning through Chancellors at an alarming pace, and our economic situation has not improved. In fact it has significantly worsened. Whilst global factors such as the war in Ukraine and widespread interest rate increases are of course the root of our current economic woes, Truss and Kwarteng have not helped the situation in the slightest. They have poured petrol on the flames engulfing our economy with ideologically-driven trickle-down nonsense, and they will not be forgiven by the British people.
Kwarteng’s replacement at the treasury is the former Culture, Health, and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Installing the never-say-die one-nation Conservative Hunt as Chancellor is a pretty smart move from Truss, on the surface at least. She is facing rebellion from the centre and left (and even some elements of the right) in her own parliamentary party. Hunt’s appointment will assuage the anxiety of both the rebellious aspects of Tory MPs and the markets, as someone who does not share Truss’s Thatcherite, neo-Libertarian economic ideology, and who will tack the economy back into calmer waters.
Whether that will actually happen or not remains to be seen. Hunt’s aspiration for the office of Prime Minister is no secret. He is a regular appearance in the first few rounds of recent Tory leadership elections, and has openly criticised Truss’s plans. A Chancellor and Prime Minister must be united on fiscal policy, else they will serve as focal points for party disunity. However, Truss sacked her last Chancellor for simply following orders, so perhaps Hunt needs to go against the grain to survive.
In any case, Truss and her new Chancellor have a hell of a job ahead of them. The Conservative Party is in a laughable state. After organising a coup to oust the last destructive leader, they are now attempting to do the same thing to the new one only a month into the job. At the same time as appointing the fourth Chancellor in as many months, Truss also announced the second gut-wrenching tax U-turn in as many weeks. The planned cut to corporation tax will now no longer go ahead, and it will remain at 25%. Another flagship policy of the “mini-budget”, scrapped, and Truss’s credibility crushed.
I would be surprised if Truss was still in office by Christmas. If Hunt does not deliver stability and success within his first weeks as Chancellor, then he, and the Truss government will be out. In that case, the Conservatives will be in an untenable position. The only right way out of this seemingly never-ending farce of Tory blunder and bluster is with a general election, with regime change. We cannot be expected to endure two more years of this.
stay safe
/e