Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss are a Chancellor and a Prime Minister in a hurry, they know they have only got 18 months to get the economy growing if they are to win-re-election. So, they went all out in today’s non-budget Budget. Not only did they cancel the corporation tax rise and reverse the National Insurance increase but they abolished the higher rate of tax and brought forward the cut in the basic rate of income tax. This is all against the backdrop of an energy price guarantee that the Chancellor said would cost £60 billion over the next six months. This and the tens of billions of tax cuts will be paid for by borrowing; the government will borrow £72.4 billion more than it expected to in April.
Truss and Kwarteng also provide Labour with ammunition to claim that the last 12 years of Tory government have been a failure
Kwarteng’s argument is that what the economy needs is growth, so he is going all out for it.
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