British finance minister vows to ‘stay the course’

• Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng will speak at the annual conference of ruling Tories.
• Prime Minister Liz Truss has conceded communication faults in how the plan was presented.
• The right-wing policy blitz has backfired with the electorate, polls show Labour opening up a massive lead.

On Monday, the British finance minister will affirm that the Conservative government’s proposal to pay for controversial tax cuts with additional borrowing of billions of dollars will not be abandoned.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, will speak at the annual conference of the ruling Tories one day after Prime Minister Liz Truss conceded communication faults in how the plan was presented on September 23, without recognizing the need for adjustments.

“We must stay the course. I am confident our plan is the right one,” Kwarteng will say in his speech to party members gathered in Birmingham, according to the Conservatives.

He will promise “a new economic deal for Britain… backed by an iron-clad commitment to fiscal discipline”.

In the midst of Britain’s biggest cost-of-living crisis in decades, Truss and Kwarteng have refused to exclude budget cuts, including those affecting benefit recipients.

In addition, their plan includes tax cuts for the wealthy and the elimination of a bonus cap for bankers.

The right-wing policy blitz has backfired with the electorate, according to polls that show the opposition Labour party opening up a massive lead. The Truss administration is not even a month old.

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Numerous prominent Conservatives in Birmingham are anxious.

Increasing debt to pay for the £45 billion ($50 billion) in tax cuts is “not conservative,” former minister Michael Gove told the BBC on the same day Ms. Truss departed the studio following her own interview.

Gove, ex-prime minister Boris Johnson’s 2016 Brexit campaign right-hand man, expressed “deep” concern and refused to rule out voting against the idea in parliament.

Others who, like Gove, supported Truss’s recent competitor for the Tory leadership, Rishi Sunak, have also pledged to vote against the bill, creating the possibility of a significant confrontation in the House of Commons.

The markets had plummeted in response to the plan, and the Bank of England undertook an emergency intervention to save pension funds last week.

Truss stated to the BBC that she had not discussed the elimination of the 45 percent tax rate for wealthy incomes with her cabinet, and appeared to distance herself from the move by asserting “that was the chancellor’s choice.”

This provoked an immediate reprimand from Johnson supporter Nadine Dorries, who accused the incoming prime minister on Sunday of “throwing (Kwarteng) under a bus on the first day of the conference.”

As Truss prepares to wrap the party conference with a major address on Wednesday, the stakes are growing.

According to a survey conducted by YouGov on Friday, 51% of Britons believe she should resign, while 54% want Kwarteng to step down.

Multiple polls conducted within the past few days indicated a Labour lead of up to 33 points over the Conservatives, the largest since the heyday of former Labour prime minister Tony Blair in the late 1990s.

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