IT WAS ‘sackcloth and ashes day’ at The Sunday Telegraph yesterday as it surveyed the collapse of the Truss regime.
It wrote that: ‘Jeremy Hunt, the new Chancellor, our fourth in one year, has said that difficult decisions will have to be made in his Medium-Term Fiscal Plan: taxes won’t go down as promised, some may well go up, and all government departments will have to find efficiencies. The latest development is that the cut to the basic rate of income tax will be delayed.’
Its editorial added: ‘Liz Truss’s brave attempt to forge a different economic path for the UK, rejecting the “abacus economics’’ of the Treasury in favour of an unashamed dash for growth built on lower taxes, is over.’
It adds: ‘Mr Hunt cannot be blamed for this. The new Chancellor is doing everything he can to appease markets that decided to single out the UK for daring to go against the grain of global economic orthodoxy.
‘But it is a tragic development nevertheless.’
In fact, the capitalist UK was put in its place as was its attempt to make huge profits for the rich that the poor would have to pay for, by granting massive tax exemptions.
Even the IMF said that GB was now acting like a banana republic, without an adequate supply of bananas.
With PM Truss on the slippery slope to oblivion, the baton is being passed to the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. The duo held talks at Chequers yesterday.
Hunt has already warned that his focus is on growth ‘underpinned by stability’. He has already warned that there will be tax rises and major savings in public spending saying the mini-budget went ‘too far, too fast’.
Meanwhile, leading Tories are saying that Truss will be gone as PM by mid-week.
According to former Home Office special adviser Mo Hussein: ‘People have been organised, some of the bigger names are getting their supporters in line,’ adding that ‘the next few days would be tumultuous’.
The Tory mafia is moving in for the kill – as far as Truss is concerned she is already history. The Sunday Mirror reported that Ben Wallace could be the unity candidate to replace Liz Truss in Downing Street.
These reports come amid a series of interviews from the new Chancellor on Saturday.
‘I’m going to be asking all government departments to find additional efficiency savings,’ he said.
The Times reported that Hunt planned to delay by a year a 1p cut to the basic rate of income tax – a flagship part of the 23 September mini-budget.
Hunt is due to outline the government’s refreshed economic plan in a statement on 31 October. Presumably by that date Truss will be history.
Hunt is saying that he intended to be ‘honest with people’ about the ‘very difficult decisions’ that had to be made ‘both on spending and on taxation to get debt falling’.
‘I will set out clear and robust plans to make sure government spending is as efficient as possible, ensure taxpayers money is well spent and that we have rigorous control over our public finances,’ Hunt added.
In fact, the ruling class is planning to make a ferocious attack on the wages, jobs and the trade union rights of the working class as their way out of the crisis by super-exploiting the working class.
Jeremy Hunt has been clear that nothing is off the table and that tax rises and spending cuts will be needed. And he has got form in that department.
He has been here before. Throughout 2016 as Health Secretary he launched a major attack on the BMA’s junior doctors, insisting that they had to work in a ‘7-day NHS’, and therefore had to sign new contracts that removed all of their rights.
In May 2016, Hunt forced through a deal with the BMA which brought in an unfunded extension of the junior doctors’ working week that would place an intolerable strain on the already-stretched health service.
In July the deal was put to the junior doctors with the recommendation of the BMA to accept. However, the junior doctors threw it out, rejecting the advice of the BMA to accept. The BMA was forced to call a new wave of strikes that saw Hunt off.
Now he is back as Chancellor and is keen to impose wage cuts, job cuts and new anti-trade union laws on the working class. The working class will take up the challenge, as did the junior doctors.
The TUC Congress is meeting tomorrow in Brighton and will be lobbied by workers and youth led by the WRP and Young Socialists to demand that the TUC call an indefinite general strike at this Congress to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism! This is the way forward!
