British Prime Minister Liz Truss said on Wednesday she was “a fighter and not a quitter” in response to pressure from the opposition to resign after the financial crisis that led to the reversal of promised tax cuts.
“I am a fighter and not a deserter. I acted in the national interest to ensure economic stability,” he said, in the weekly debate in the House of Commons, while some MPs chanted “resign”.
This was the first weekly parliamentary debate with Truss since newly appointed finance minister Jeremy Hunt canceled tax cuts introduced by the government less than a month ago.
Truss began by reiterating an apology and acknowledging that he had made “mistakes” in economic strategy.
“But the right thing to do in these circumstances is to make changes, which I did, and get on with the job and deliver. [os compromissos] with the British,” he stressed.
Labor Party leader Keir Starmer said Truss “should not have conducted an economic experiment” in the country and that the result is that “millions of people” will be affected by rising mortgage interest rates.
“Last week, the prime minister promised here that there would be absolutely no spending cuts. (…) This week, the finance minister announced a new wave of cuts. What good is a prime minister whose promises do not deliver? They don’t even last a week?” he joked.
A package of tax cuts announced on September 23 without a convincing explanation of how to finance it sent turmoil through financial markets, sinking the value of the pound and driving up interest rates on British government bonds.
The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the broader economy and putting pension funds at risk.
Under intense political and economic pressure, the prime minister last week fired his ally Kwasi Kwarteng as finance minister, replacing him with Jeremy Hunt, a critic of Truss’s policies.
On Monday, after just three days in office, Hunt canceled nearly all announced tax cuts, tweaked the energy price guarantee package and backtracked on his promise not to cut government spending.
The minister has said that the government will have to save billions of pounds and that it will have to make “many difficult decisions” in the medium-term fiscal plan, which is due to be published on October 31.
In less than two months in office, Truss currently has the lowest approval rating of any prime minister, with just 10% favorable opinion among Britons, according to a YouGov study.
In the most recent poll on voting intentions, carried out by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, the Labor Party has 56% of the preferences, compared to 20% for the Conservative Party.
Source: TSF
