Who’s in Charge?

British Prime Minister Liz Truss and her then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng proposed a serious personal and corporate tax reduction for British subjects. The Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey demurred—loudly—and sent the British securities and debt markets into a tailspin.

As a result of the turmoil, Truss folded, fired Kwarteng, and removed the corporate tax reduction.

That wasn’t enough for Bailey and now the TINAs—Tories in Name Alone—and now Truss has virtually quit the game altogether: she’s now withdrawn all of the tax reductions, even those income tax reductions that would have benefitted the ordinary British subject.

Never mind, either, that the tax reductions would have spurred British economic growth and gone a long way toward getting its high inflation back under control and back down.

Elected Truss doesn’t seem to be in charge. Bureaucrat Bailey does. On the other hand, between the two of them, only Bailey seems to have the courage to stay the course he’s set.

One of those TINAs, a carefully unnamed Conservative lawmaker who won his district in 2019 with a 65% majority had this:

One says that he lies awake at night worrying about being kicked out when the country next goes to the polls.
“I’ve got private school fees to pay and my mortgage is going through the roof[.]”

More worried about his elite status and personal welfare than he is about the job his constituents hired him to do.

And isn’t all of that a sad state of affairs for the British people.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *