UK PM Truss battles to stay in power after tax reforms trashed

GBNEWS24DESK//

British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Tuesday battled to stabilise her position after an economic crash forced her into humiliating U-turns on tax reforms, putting her future as leader in doubt.

“It’s hard to conceive of a more serious political and economic crisis in recent times than that which Britain now faces,” right-wing broadsheet The Daily Telegraph wrote in an editorial.

The paper, which previously supported Truss, wrote that she faced “the ignominy” of becoming the country’s second shortest-serving prime minister in history, unless her own MPs gave her “breathing space”.

Truss on Tuesday was to meet her cabinet and attempt to rally support among Conservative MPs, some of whom have publicly said she has no future as prime minister.

She was set to face parliament on Wednesday for a session of Prime Minister’s Questions.

The right-wing Sun tabloid on Tuesday called Truss “The Ghost PM”, while left-wing tabloid The Mirror called the situation a “catastrophic humiliation”.

The embattled prime minister on Monday apologised in a BBC interview for going “too far and too fast” with reforms, a month after taking office.

This came after her new finance minister Jeremy Hunt in a brief televised statement on Monday axed almost all the debt-fuelled tax cuts announced last month in a budget by his sacked predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng.

Hunt told parliament that he and Truss “agreed yesterday to reverse almost all the tax measures announced in the growth plan three weeks ago”, flanked by a grim-faced Truss.

The announcement came as Truss’s governing Conservative party tanked in the opinion polls amid the reversals and Britain’s worsening cost-of-living crisis.