BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom — Britain’s Prime Minister
Liz Truss insisted
Tuesday she felt “no shame” and vowed to press on with unpopular economic
reforms despite lurching into a self-inflicted crisis just a month into her
term.
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Despite Truss’s
attempts to move on, cabinet splits emerged as the ruling Conservatives endured
another stormy day at their annual conference in Birmingham, central England.
Truss and
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Kwasi Kwarteng have been forced to climb down on
their plan to cut income tax for the richest, as ordinary Britons suffer the
worst cost-of-living crisis in generations.
The plan met
with uproar from Tory critics, deep disapproval in opinion polls, and
destabilized financial markets given its reliance on billions extra in
government borrowing.
“I think there’s
absolutely no shame in a leader listening to people and responding, and that’s
the kind of person I am,” Truss told Sky News.
Budget confusion
Truss and Kwarteng were widely reported as bringing forward a major
debt reduction plan to later this month, having insisted previously that it
would only come on November 23.
Its unveiling
will be accompanied by independent forecasts from the Office for Budget
Responsibility, in a bid to calm febrile financial markets.
But the two
politicians both insisted November 23 remained the date, with Kwarteng telling
GB News that media had been “reading the runes” incorrectly.
Mel Stride, the
Tory chairman of the powerful Treasury committee in the House of Commons, had
welcomed the reporting of an earlier date to show how the government intends to
fix its finances.
Acting in
advance of the
Bank of England’s next rate-setting meeting on November 3 could
“reduce the upward pressure on interest rates to the benefit of millions of
people up and down the country”, he added.
Potential cuts
to the welfare budget are shaping up as the next battle with dissident Tory MPs
after the aborted tax cut.
“We have to look
at these issues in the round. We have to be fiscally responsible,” Truss told
BBC radio.
‘Coup’
But senior minister Penny Mordaunt, one of the candidates Truss beat in
the Tory leadership race, stepped out of the cabinet line.
It “makes sense”
that welfare should still rise in line with soaring rates of inflation, she
told Times Radio.
“That’s what I
voted for before, and so have a lot of my colleagues.”
Truss said she
did not intend to fire Mordaunt, and denied that she had lost control of her
cabinet after putting on a show of unity with Kwarteng on a visit to a
construction site in Birmingham.
“We are working
with our MPs, this is a team, this Conservative team, putting forward our
policies for the country and delivering for the country,” she told ITV.
There was little
team spirit on display from Home Secretary
Suella Braverman, however, as she
accused party critics of seeking to stage a “coup” against Truss.
And many
commentators argued Truss’s credibility was already in tatters not long after
she succeeded Boris Johnson on September 6.
The Daily Mail
newspaper, normally a trenchant voice in support of the new leader’s right-wing
agenda, headlined its main story: “Get a grip!”
Honoring Boris
Dissident ringleader Michael Gove kept up criticism of Truss, stressing
all Conservative MPs had been elected on Johnson’s manifesto of 2019.
It included a
pledge to end arbitrary evictions of tenants by private landlords, he noted at
a conference fringe event held by the housing charity Shelter.
“We’ve got to
keep faith with what Boris wanted, we’ve got to make sure that manifesto
commitment is honored,” Gove said, after Truss reneged on a Johnson commitment
to ban fracking.
But asked by reporters
if Truss would survive past the end of the year, the former minister said:
“Yes.”
Shelter presented
poll findings that suggested private renters who voted Tory in 2019 are
deserting the party in droves for Labour and other opposition parties.
Wider opinion polls in
recent days have shown Labour breaching 50 percent as the Tories slump under
Truss, fraying nerves in Birmingham as she prepares to close the conference on
Wednesday.
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