Kwarteng is OUT as Chancellor – as Truss scrabbles to save her own political skin?
They used to say a week was a long time in politics; now it’s down to just half an hour.
When I started writing this article, it was about the press conference Liz Truss has announced, in which she is likely to reverse several – or all – elements of the disastrous ‘fiscal event’ of September 23.
But this has been superceded already – with the announcement that Kwasi Kwarteng has become the UK’s second shortest-serving Chancellor, being out after only 38 days in the job.
As I write this, it isn’t clear whether he has been asked to resign or sacked outright.
Truss herself didn’t have many options after she painted herself into a corner during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
She had previously said she would cut taxes for the already-obscenely rich. This meant she would have to finance the change with more borrowing – or cut public services.
But at PMQs on Wednesday, she said she would not be borrowing – nor would there be any public service reductions.
That left Truss with nowhere to go – and everyone knew it.
Kwarteng himself has been in Washington DC for a meeting with the IMF (some have speculated that he went there cap-in-hand, as Denis Healey did, back in the 1970s) – but has been recalled to London.
This triggered speculation that he is to be asked to resign, as Priti Patel was after it was discovered that she had been trying to run her own personal foreign policy alongside the Israeli government while acting as International Trade Secretary.
And now he’s gone:
Apparently The Times is suggesting Jeremy Hunt could be the next Chancellor.
What next?
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