KWASI Kwarteng was sacked yesterday afternoon as Tory Chancellor, just weeks after he announced huge unfunded tax cuts that triggered a financial crisis by handing billions to the already rich.
Kwarteng met PM Liz Truss at Downing Street a little earlier, after cutting short a US visit and flying back to London. The former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who waged a year long war against the junior doctors, has been announced as his replacement!
In a letter confirming his sacking, Kwarteng continues to back Truss’ economic ‘vision’ for the country and says he will continue to support her from the backbenches.
Truss held a four minute news conference at 14:30 yesterday, as speculation built up that that the government could reverse more of the tax cuts announced in its mini-budget.
It’s clear from Kwasi Kwarteng’s letter that it was the prime minister’s decision to get rid of him. This wasn’t a mea culpa on his part; he was told to step down and did. He is to be the fall guy for Truss’ rapacious anti-trade union policies.
His allies yesterday confirmed that he saw his job as delivering her plans. He would, we were told, work with her ‘in lockstep’, free from the drama seen in previous PM-Chancellor relationships.
Truss however made the calculation that to move on from the disaster of her mini-budget she needed to get rid of her Chancellor.
Meanwhile a group of senior Conservatives have decided to call publicly on Liz Truss to resign following her sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng.
The party grandees held their discussions and made their decision to act after reports emerged that the Prime Minister was planning to save herself by sacking her Chancellor, which has since been confirmed.
These senior Tories will be speaking out next week. One figure involved in the discussions told BBC Newsnight: ‘These are serious people. The PM will find it hard to survive.’
Senior Tories, including former cabinet ministers, believe the Prime Minister’s position is absolutely untenable because Kwarteng was carrying out her policies.
One said: ‘Liz Truss campaigned on these tax cuts. Liz Truss won the Tory leadership contest on the basis of this programme. It is absurd for her to blame Kwasi.’
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, has called for a general election in response to the news that Kwasi Kwarteng has been sacked as Chancellor.
He said: ‘This mustn’t just be the end of Kwarteng’s disastrous chancellorship, it should be the death knell of the Conservatives’ reckless mismanagement of our economy. It didn’t suddenly start with Kwarteng but it must end now.
‘People are angry, fed up and worried about the future. Most of all they are furious that Conservative MPs seem to think this is an acceptable way to conduct the government of our country in these difficult times.
‘Enough is enough. It started with Boris Johnson failing our country, and now Liz Truss has broken our economy, it is time for the people to have their say in a general election.’
The issue however is not the holding of a general election ; the crisis both economic and political has gone too far for just that.
The trade unions must now intervene and tell the Tories that their time is up – and that workers are suffering too much from rising inflation, from growing poverty and the rising cost of living to just stand by and watch the Tories and and Liberals engaging in political games.
The primary target – of all the bourgeois parties, both the Tories the Liberals, and the right wing of the Labour Party – are the basic rights of the working class, specifically its right to strike and to take all of the actions that will be necessary to defend the basic rights of the working class as the capitalist crisis develops.
The big issue is that the TUC must be made by workers to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government, that will nationalise the banks and the major industries, putting them under workers’ management to bring in socialism.
The TUC Congress is meeting on Tuesday 18th of October in Brighton.
Th News Line and the WRP calls on workers to lobby and demonstrate outside the TUC Congress and to demand that it calls a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in socialism.
Demonstrate outside the TUC Congress when it opens at 8am on Tuesday October 18th in Brighton.
Thousands of workers must demand that the TUC takes general strike action to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and a socialist publicly owned and planned economy, putting an end to capitalism forever and consigning it to the dustbin of history!
