The UK’s new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has insisted that prime minister Liz Truss is still running the government after reports suggested he was preparing to scrap further parts of her “mini” Budget.
Following Truss’s decision to sack her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday, senior Conservative MPs believe it is a matter of time before she is replaced as prime minister. Kwarteng has privately told friends he believes the prime minister will last only a matter of weeks.
When asked who was leading government, Hunt told the BBC on Sunday that “the prime minister’s in charge”, adding that Truss could be trusted because “she’s changed, she’s been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack”.
The government will be tested again on Monday, after gilt markets were hit by a fresh sell-off on Friday afternoon as investors warned that Truss’s attempt to reassure markets by scrapping an £18bn corporate tax cut was not enough. Whitehall is braced for further turbulence.
Some MPs believe that Hunt’s position is stronger than that of Truss after he stated that he was “not taking anything off the table” in terms of cancelling further tax cuts planned by the prime minister.
The chancellor did not confirm whether a reduction in the basic 1p rate of income tax, another plank of the last month’s fiscal statement, would be delayed until 2024.
He added: “I want to keep as many of those tax cuts as I possibly can because our long-term health depends on being a low-tax economy. And I very strongly believe that.”
Hunt warned that Whitehall departments would have to find further “efficiency savings” following the “mini” Budget, which has left a spending gap in the public finances. The Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank had estimated that the fiscal plan would create a £60bn hole, with suggestions the figure could be higher.
The chancellor insisted there would be no return to sweeping spending cuts. “I was in the cabinet in 2010 when we had that first period of austerity. I don’t think we’re going to have anything like that this time,” he said.
Truss and Hunt met at Chequers on Sunday to discuss options for the government’s updated fiscal plan, which will be announced on October 31.
In an article for the Sun, Truss said: “We are going to do things differently and chart a new course to growth, it remains the core mission of this government.” She added it was “a wrench” to see Kwarteng leave his post.
Yet with support for the Conservative party at 19 per cent in a recent poll, the prime minister’s survival continues to look uncertain, with some Tory MPs saying Hunt is now the obvious candidate to replace her.
The chancellor insisted he had no desire to be prime minister, despite twice running for the Tory party leadership, adding that his aspirations had been “clinically excised from me”. He said: “I want to be a good chancellor. It’s going to be very, very difficult but that’s what I’m focusing on.”
Matt Hancock, former health secretary, told the BBC on Sunday that Truss would need to make further changes to her government to survive. He said the prime minister should bring MPs who did not support her leadership bid into her cabinet. “There’s a huge amount of talent on the backbenches,” he said.