President Joe Biden has launched an astonishing attack on Liz Truss by saying her economic policies, which included cutting the 45p tax rate for the wealthiest people in the UK, were a “mistake”.
The US and the UK are supposed to be the closest allies who have been in a “special relationship” since World War II.
At any rate, their leaders are not supposed to attack each other’s domestic policies.
But during a trip to Oregan, Biden, who is not a great fan of “trickledown economics”, told reporters: “I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake.”
Referring to Truss’s mini-budget, for which she has now sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, Biden said: “I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super wealthy at a time when — anyway, I just think —I disagreed with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain to make that judgment, not me.”
In Britain, the betting is Truss’s days as Prime Minister are numbered. On Sunday, she was holed up with her new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, at Chequer’s, the Prime Minister’s country retreat in Buckingham, as he planned another mini-budget at the end of the month in an effort to steady the market.
On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC TV, Hunt said he was “not taking anything off the table” when it comes to balancing the books, and will ask every government department to find more efficiency savings. He dismissed suggestions he was now effectively running the government, insisting that “the Prime Minister is in charge”.
Pressed on the possibility of a Tory challenge to Truss’s leadership, Hunt said that voters in his South West Surrey constituency wanted stability rather than a change in Prime Minister.
He told Kuenssberg that the public would judge the Conservatives “much more on what happens in the next 18 months than what’s happened in the last 18 days”.
However, William Hague, the former Tory party leader and peer, has said Truss’s premiership is “hanging by a thread”. Hague backed Rishi Sunak for the leadership. And Rishi has been MP for Richmond in Yorkshire, Hague’s old seat, since 2015 and which he held with a thumping 27,210 majority in December 2019.
But Hague’s opinion is shared widely. For example, the chairman of supermarket giant Asda, Lord Stuart Rose, has described Truss as a “busted flush”, which is not the kind of language captains of industry use to describe the country’s Prime Minister.
Getting rid of Truss will not be easy. But even the Daily Telegraph — the paper endorsed her for Tory leader — is running “runners and riders” with the prediction that Rishi “is the favourite to take over if Ms Truss is forced out”.
“Mr Sunak attracted more support from the parliamentary party than the Prime Minister at the start and won every voting round amongst MPs. He warned against unfunded tax cuts and has emerged from the chaos that has followed the mini-Budget with an enhanced reputation as a result.
“But his economic policies were rejected by members, and replacing Ms Truss with him may be seen as too big a snub to the party faithful. There would also be question marks over whether the ex-chancellor could reunite the party given the brutal nature of the leadership contest.”
“Allies of Mr Sunak believe their man could be in No. 10 within months if a sufficient mass of Tory MPs can persuade the 1922 Committee to tell Ms Truss that her time is up.”
