Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have kept a baffling near-silence when we need leadership
End the drama
NO ONE can deny the drama that has followed last week’s mini Budget.
Some pension funds even came close to being wiped out yesterday, before the dithering Bank of England was finally moved to hit the panic button.
Mainly there has been a crazy over-reaction to what in most respects was a commendable effort to reduce our overall tax burden from its 70-year high.
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng rightly promised billions to help families and firms with soaring energy bills, as in other countries. He reverted National Insurance rates to their April level.
He halted a business tax rise not yet even in force. He brought forward by a year a 1p basic-rate income tax cut. Good.
What spooked the City was the five per cent cut for the richest — a smallish measure in itself but one PM Liz Truss had never mentioned — and the fact the plan is not yet properly costed.
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Much of the Pound’s fall has nothing to do with the mini Budget. Like other major currencies, it has been sliding for months against a strengthening dollar.
But the Tories’ enemies have pounced on it, with gleeful political commentators — at best only half-understanding the situation — whipping up fear among the public via TV and social media.
They ignore that much of the blame for our woes rests with the Bank and its governor Andrew Bailey, who has been way too timid over tackling inflation.
And how happily they seized on yesterday’s bizarre uninvited attack on the Chancellor by the International Monetary Fund, which claimed his mini Budget supposedly increases inequality.
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The IMF is a left-wing body run by Jean-Claude Juncker’s former Brussels deputy, and inequality is none of its business . . . but for Brexit-hating broadcasters this was the word of God.
The hysteria has also engulfed some Tory MPs, wildly predicting election wipeout and muttering about sacking the Chancellor. They should grow up.
But the truth is Mr Kwarteng and the PM HAVE inexplicably left a void for critics to fill. He has no OBR forecasts on the impact of his cuts on the public finances, nor a credible plan for funding them aside from more debt.
Both have kept a baffling near-silence when we need leadership. Sun readers should not have to wait till Kwasi’s planned November 23 date to reveal all.
This chaos will obliterate next week’s Tory conference unless No 10 reasserts control. What’s the plan?
Rid us of him
HE is trying to steal a country, based on his deranged misinterpretation of history.
He forces terrified Ukrainians to vote for “independence” at gunpoint.
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He drafts untrained civilians into his broken army and will let half a million die for his warped dream. He threatens Western cities with nuclear annihilation.
Is there no one sane left in the Kremlin willing and able to rid Russia and all humanity of the monstrous creature Putin?