Kwarteng scraps top 45% rate of income tax and cuts stamp duty

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Tory backbenchers despair at 'toxic' mini-budget

Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget will prove “politically toxic and economically dubious”, Conservative MPs have said as they lambasted the extra £72bn of borrowing needed to pay for swingeing tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the very wealthy.

The divisions of the Tory leadership campaign roared back to the fore after Kwarteng’s statement, with critics claiming the chancellor was trying to avoid scrutiny by refusing to publish economic forecasts from the independent budget regulator.

Kwarteng’s “plan for growth” was also compared by one senior party figure to the ill-fated “Barber budget” of 1972, which emulated a similar aim but ended in boom, soaring inflation and ultimately the demise of Ted Heath’s premiership.

“I’ve never known a government that has had so little support from its own backbenches, just four sitting days in,” observed one MP.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/23/tory-backbenchers-despair-at-toxic-mini-budget