Truss suggests mini-budget may have paid off in the long-term July 12, 2023 Liz Truss appeared to suggest her mini-budget may have paid off long-term as her new taskforce warned the UK risks lagging behind other nations unless it tackles stagnation. Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister likened sluggish growth in recent years to a “boiling a frog situation” as she attended an event to launch the Growth Commission. Members [...]
Kwarteng stung: Mini budget chancellor offered to set up meeting between fake firm and Boris Johnson for ‘£10k’ March 27, 2023 Former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng offered to facilitate setting up a meeting between a fake foreign firm and former prime minister Boris Johnson during a sting interview. Mr Kwarteng was caught up in a hoax organised by campaign group Led By Donkeys in which he was approached about providing political advice to a bogus company it [...]
MPs should ‘put public service first’ after second jobs sting, Michael Gove says March 26, 2023 Levelling-up secretary Michael Gove said today that MPs must “put public service first” after undercover reporting revealed a handful of MPs were willing to provide advice to a foreign company in return for sizeable fees. Politicians Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng were left red-faced after anti-Brexit campaign group Led By Donkeys released footage of them [...]
‘Budget for growth’: Chancellor Jeremy Hunt rolls pitch for Spring statement March 14, 2023 Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said his spring statement will be a “budget for growth” as he prepares to set out key measures to support firms and families with the cost of living crisis. Hunt will make his annual budget statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday. He is expected to focus on efforts to [...]
Liz Truss admits £45bn mini budget would have been scaled back if Bank of England warned on LDI crunch February 6, 2023 Former prime minister Liz Truss has today admitted her calamitous mini-budget could have scaled back had she known about the existence of LDIs. Truss admitted in an interview with Spectator TV that she “didn’t know the existence” of LDIs – liability driven investment vehicles – which sparked a near fire sale in the pension market [...]
Liz Truss breaks silence to blame media and ‘leftward’ shift for £45bn mini budget failure February 5, 2023 Liz Truss has broken her silence for the first time since being booted out from Number 10 to hit back at critics of her tax cutting, pro-growth economic agenda. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph today, Truss, 47, said she was never given a “realistic chance” to implement sweeping tax cuts designed to unshackle businesses and [...]
Hunt confirms full fat budget and OBR forecast on 15 March 2023 December 19, 2022 The government will deliver a full fat budget on 15 March next year, chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirmed today. The announcement will be accompanied by an assessment of the impact of the government’s tax and spending plans on the public finances by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Last month, Hunt delivered what was in effect [...]
‘Carried away’: Kwasi Kwarteng admits Truss government ‘blew it’ over mini-budget December 10, 2022 Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has admitted that Liz Truss’s government “blew it” when it came to the economic reforms proposed in the mini-budget. “People got carried away, myself included,” he told the Financial Times. “There was a brief moment and the people in charge, myself included, blew it.” Kwarteng was ousted from government after he [...]
Optimism abounds in OBR forecasts, but just how feasible are they? November 28, 2022 When former Tory chancellor George Osborne created the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in 2010, he was unlikely to have envisioned it would become the source of financial market turmoil. But, that upheaval was not the budget watchdog’s fault. Instead, it was former prime minister Liz Truss and ex-Number 11 incumbent Kwasi Kwarteng’s disdain toward [...]
Kwarteng breaks silence: I told Truss to ‘slow down’ or last a few weeks – she quit six days later November 11, 2022 Kwasi Kwarteng has broken his silence on Liz Truss’ 42-day tenure as prime minister, saying he warned her to “slow down” and predicted her downfall just a few days later. In his first interview since being sacked on 14 October, after just 38 days in charge of the pursestrings, he said the PM’s problem was [...]