Free Republic

LONDON — British Prime Minister Liz Truss has fired her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, as she fights to hang on as prime minister after her budget crashed the markets. Truss will give a press conference later Friday, amid reports of another imminent U-turn on significant parts of her plan to cut taxes. Downing Street announced Jeremy Hunt, who has previously served as health secretary and foreign secretary, would replace Kwarteng as chancellor. Despite several attempts to calm the markets, including reversing a plan to cut tax for the highest earners and bringing forward a more detailed budget statement, Truss has...

LONDON — The British government has dropped plans to cut income tax for top earners, part of a package of unfunded cuts that sparked turmoil on financial markets and sent the pound to record lows. Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng said Monday that he will not scrap the top 45% rate of income tax paid on earnings above 150,000 pounds ($167,000) a year. “We get it, and we have listened,” he said in a statement. The U-turn comes as more lawmakers from the governing Conservative Party turn on government tax plans announced 10 days ago. It also comes hours after the...

MP Rupa Huq has been suspended from the Labour Party after she was heard describing the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, as "superficially" black. Criticism came flooding in from senior Labour politicians such as Angela Rayner and David Lammy. The comments were revealed via audio which was published online. In the audio, Ms Huq can be heard discussing Mr Kwarteng's educational background at an elite school, where she mentions that "you wouldn't know he is black" when listening to him on the radio. The comments were believed to have been made at a fringe event at the Labour conference in Liverpool on...

The new British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Tuesday selected a cabinet where, for the first time, a white man will not hold one of the country's four most important ministerial positions. Truss appointed Kwasi Kwarteng – whose parents came from Ghana in the 1960s – as Britain's first Black finance minister while James Cleverly is the first Black foreign minister. Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone and whose father is white, has in the past spoken about being bullied as a mixed-race child and has said the party needs to do more to attract Black voters. Suella Braverman,...