Can Jeremy Hunt’s mini-budget reversal save Truss?
Markets respond favourably but some pundits say newly announced U-turn may make PM’s position even worse

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
Jeremy Hunt has announced the reversal of “almost all” of the tax measures proposed in the growth plan put forward by Liz Truss and his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng only three weeks ago.
In a statement this morning, the new chancellor also said that Truss’s flagship energy cap price guarantee, which was due to last for two years, would now be reviewed in April. A Tory party insider described the energy and tax U-turns as “an utter humiliation of the prime minister”, according to the Financial Times’s Sebastian Payne.
Pundits had expected the reversal of the tax cuts, which triggered market turmoil, but the axing of Truss’s long-term spending commitment on energy was a “big surprise”, said The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow. “There is nothing left of the Truss agenda at all.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What the papers said?
The pound “spiked” and “borrowing costs are falling further” following Hunt’s statement about the government’s medium-term fiscal plan, said The Telegraph.
The announcement was brought forward from 31 October amid growing calls from both outside and within the Tory party for Truss to quit. The aim will be “to appease markets and Tory MPs alike” following the “disastrous fallout” from Truss’s original plan, said Politico.
But “abandoning the existing energy price cap scheme from April leaves this government holed below the waterline”, argued Sky News’s political editor Sam Coates. As well as households now having to face energy bill rises from April, “just as millions face mortgage payments too”, the reversals also suggest that “Labour got it right when Truss got it wrong” by proposing universal rather than targeted support.
And if the bid to steady market nerves is successful, Hunt is likely to get all the credit, according to some analysts. Truss “is no longer leading”, wrote The Telegraph’s associate editor Christopher Hope. Instead, “she is being led”.
What next?
One of Truss’s “biggest political problems is that cabinet ministers and senior MPs are already leadership plotting and organising in private”, tweeted the FT’s Payne. “Much like the end of Boris Johnson, it’s very hard to put all that back in the bottle once it's out.”
Amid mounting speculation yesterday about Hunt’s announcement, Payne reported that “even at the most senior levels of government, there is a sense that the arrival of a new chancellor has not saved the prime minister”.
But a “senior” Conservative ally of the PM told The Sun that “it is time the plotters thought about who they work for, it is the British people”.
“Those wanting a People’s Vote-style rerun of the summer contest will simply bring about an early general election,” the unnamed insider reportedly warned.
Like Truss and the Tories, the markets are also facing an uncertain future. Bloomberg economist Jamie Rush said that “Hunt has taken meaningful steps toward restoring fiscal sustainability”.
“But there’s a huge amount still to do to convince markets the UK is on the right path,” Rush continued. “His next challenge will be to identify spending cuts that are actually deliverable – that will be hard to do.”
Benjamin Nabarro of US bank Citi told The Times that the UK still had a “chronic credibility issue” that “doesn’t look set to be addressed anytime soon”.
Some believe that the damage to the credibility of both Truss and the country from last month’s mini-budget could be irreversible. “When I saw that 6am emergency statement from the Treasury, I had a flashback to my frenetic time reporting on the financial collapse of Greece during the global financial crisis 14 years ago,” tweeted ITV’s Political editor Robert Peston.
“The UK is still a long way from being in the kind of hole that Greece was in. But I genuinely never thought I’d see this kind of rolling series of tax and spending u-turns by any British government, a crisis caused exclusively by the ill-judgement of that same government.”
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Jamie Timson is the UK news editor, curating The Week UK's daily morning newsletter and setting the agenda for the day's news output. He was first a member of the team from 2015 to 2019, progressing from intern to senior staff writer, and then rejoined in September 2022. As a founding panellist on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast, he has discussed politics, foreign affairs and conspiracy theories, sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. In between working at The Week, Jamie was a senior press officer at the Department for Transport, with a penchant for crisis communications, working on Brexit, the response to Covid-19 and HS2, among others.
-
Should you fire your financial adviser? 4 signs it's time to say goodbye.
The Explainer Breakups are never fun, but you have to protect your wallet
By Becca Stanek Published
-
The daily gossip: Man arrested in connection with shooting of Tupac Shakur, an OceanGate movie is in the works, and more
Feature The daily gossip: September 29, 2023
By Brendan Morrow Published
-
What to expect from an El Niño winter
The Explainer Things might be different thanks to this well-known weather phenomenon
By Devika Rao Published
-
Why is the government on the brink of a shutdown?
Today's Big Question GOP infighting is bringing the country to a standstill, but even Republicans aren't entirely sure why
By Rafi Schwartz Published
-
Is Donald Trump finished in New York?
Today's Big Question How the former president's fraud ruling could ruin him in the city that made him famous
By Rafi Schwartz Published
-
Why is the UK pushing Germany on fighter jets for Saudi Arabia?
Today's big question Berlin has opposed the sale of weapons to Riyadh on humanitarian grounds
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
Is Sen. Bob Menendez's refusal to resign intransigence or smart politics?
Today's Big Question The indicted New Jersey Democrat is standing firm amidst calls to step down
By Rafi Schwartz Published
-
Is it time the world re-evaluated the rules on migration?
Today's Big Question Home Secretary Suella Braverman questions whether 1951 UN Refugee Convention is 'fit for our modern age'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Rishi Sunak's tree code: what is the PM's election strategy?
Today's Big Question Conservative leader lining up major policy announcements in bid to rebrand as 'change' candidate
By Elliott Goat Published
-
Will the US keep aiding Ukraine?
Today's Big Question Republicans give Volodymyr Zelenskyy a 'cold shoulder' in D.C.
By Joel Mathis Published
-
Will Rishi Sunak's green wedge issue win over the public?
Today's Big Question The PM draws dividing line with Labour on net zero ahead of the next general election
By Sorcha Bradley Published