When the UK’s new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced a raft of tax cuts for high earners last week in his mini-budget, the response from the markets was damning. The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since decimalisation, and the cost of government borrowing jumped sharply.
But the announcements were cheered on by a group of secretive think tanks closely connected to Liz Truss and her advisers. After years of lobbying, a Conservative government had finally adopted their proposals to scrap the top rate of income tax, remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses, shelve a planned rise in corporation tax, and pledge a fresh crackdown on unions.
The Adam Smith Institute, where Truss’s political secretary Sophie Jarvis was head of government affairs, said the plans were “a welcome first step to getting the British economy back on track”.
