UK PM U-turns on tax cut for wealthiest to avert rebellion

THE new Liz Truss-led UK Government on Monday made its first major U-turn on its central plank of tax cuts by withdrawing a policy to abolish the top rate for the wealthiest, following market turmoil and to avert an expected rebellion within the governing Conservative Party.

LONDON

It came after days of turmoil on the global financial markets spooked by the prospect of huge government borrowing costs and the pound tumbling against the dollar as the Bank of England had to step in to shore up the country’s pension funds. “We get it, and we have listened,”

who replaced Boris Johnson as Prime Minister after a hard-fought leadership battle with British Indian former Chancellor Rishi Sunak last month, soon referenced her Chancellor’s tweet to add. It came just a day after she had insisted that her government remained committed to abolishing the top rate of tax for the highest earners in a BBC interview on Sunday, despite critics within her own party seeing it as sending out the wrong signal at a time when the majority of the country was struggling with a cost-of-living crisis and soaring household bills.

The Chancellor claimed he did not see the policy reversal as serious enough to consider his own position in the Cabinet and said the Government remained focussed on his radical growth plan backed by lower taxes to “put more money that people earn in their pockets”.

“We can always have a debate about when we could’ve made the decision, but the important thing is we’ve made the decision and we can now move forward with making the push for the growth plan,” he said.