‘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 [...]
Truss and Kwarteng did not brief BoE on mini-budget, dep governor Cunliffe says October 19, 2022 Liz Truss or former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng did not tell the Bank of England of their plans to slash taxes £45bn in last month’s botched mini-budget, one of the central bank’s executives said today. Sir Jon Cunliffe, the Bank’s deputy governor of financial stability, told the treasury select committee today the government did not brief [...]
Hunt mini-budget overhaul right for now but investment relief needed, Thatcherites urge October 19, 2022 New chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s decision to junk pretty much all of prime minister Liz Truss’s botched mini-budget has damaged the UK’s tax competitiveness, a new report out today says. Britain has dropped to 33rd out of the 38 nations part of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a result of Hunt’s tax [...]
UK borrowing costs fall below US, Italian and Greek equivalents after Hunt mini-budget reversal October 18, 2022 UK borrowing costs have dropped below their European and transatlantic counterparts after new chancellor Jeremy Hunt tore up prime minister Liz Truss’s tax cutting mini-budget. Since Truss and her former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng decided to launch £45bn of unfunded tax cuts in a bid to boost economic growth, gilt yields have shot higher. Rates on [...]