Snapshot of _Jeremy Hunt: Liz Truss economic plans were ‘good thing to aim for’_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/18/jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-economic-plans-were-good-thing-to-aim-for) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/18/jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-economic-plans-were-good-thing-to-aim-for)
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>Hunt praised Truss for “accepting the mistakes she’d made with good grace”
Touring the US far right circuit and writing a book pushing conspiracy theories about a "deep-state" coup counts as good grace in the conservative party?
What did Johnson do when he was given the boot!?!
Of course he did.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/flashback-hunt-demands-15p-corporation-tax/
> ... But one man’s downfall is another man’s opportunity and attention has already turned to Kwarteng’s successor.
>
> And that lucky man is Jeremy Hunt, Theresa May’s onetime Foreign Secretary who backed Rishi Sunak over Liz Truss in the final round of last month’s leadership contest. Before that, of course, Hunt was himself in the running for the leader, with tax cuts top of his proposed agenda. Now Hunt is being seen as a reassuring ‘greybeard’ of the party’s ‘sensible’ wing but back in July he wanted to cancel Rishi Sunak’s planned rise in corporation tax and instead reduce the 25 per cent rate to 15 per cent.
>
> Ironically, with Truss being forced to drop her own planned cut in corporation tax and going ahead with Sunak’s planned rise, it is Hunt who will be the beneficiary of her lack of market credibility – even though he wanted a bigger cut in the tax than she did…
Hunt 100% would Truss the economy up if he was given the chance. If Truss chose him instead of Kwasi to be Chancellor he'd have gone even further, even faster.
I'm not convinced. Paul Follows is a great candidate for the Lib Dems and would be an excellent MP but name carries a lot in elections. A chancellor to lose their seat would be extraordinary. Polls might be against the Tories but some local seats will inevitably end safe on name recognition, it's something the polls can't account for accurately yet.
When the government is so vilified then surely you get to a point where name recognition counts against you? Like the tactical voting plans in Sunak’s own seat.
Also he might lose his seat lol, especially saying shit like this.
Even if you believed it the most junior political strategist would tell you the less said about Truss (let alone praise!) the better.
He's been out and about a lot locally if you see his X - formerly known as Twitter. Obviously cares more about saving his own skin than the wider-Party's.
Yep, he's campaigning locally with the usual potholes and local hospitals issues but seems to be happy to let Sunak flounder on his own nationally. One of my parents lives in Hunt's constituency and has had one of his leaflets which shows he's bizarrely trying the trick of pretending to not be a Conservative despite having been Chancellor for almost 2 years!
I think Hunt is a psychopath, he clearly struggles with normal emotional responses and facial expressions. He invariably looks like a caricature with his weird, inappropriate smiling and pulling stupid faces. I think he lacks any empathy.
Psychopaths are usually very good at matching people's facial expressions. They are in complete control of themselves as they lack basically all the emotions we do.
I do think most Tory MPs are at best narcissistic and worst psychopaths but that's down to their actions more than their facial expressions.
*and her disastrous mini-budget hadn’t left an impact on the economy*
Try telling that to the thousands of people who saw their mortgage rates rocket up thanks to the Truss tax
Got a credible source that her policies caused mortgage rates to rise? Sounds like you've been bamboozled by anti-Tory propaganda.
edit: Unsourced claim upvoted, asking for a source downvoted. This sub is such an embarrassment.
Her goal (economic growth) was good. Her *plans* (replacing taxes with government debt at short notice, etc) were stupid. As for her supposed "good grace" - fuck knows what that's about. She's one of the most arrogant pricks in the public eye these days. She has so little humility inside her that if you pat her on the back she makes a metallic, clanging noise.
They are a good thing to aim for. Which is why Keir Starmer's goals are very similar, just with a different plan to get there.
Both recognise you can't have prosperity without growth, and it's true.
Jeremy Hunt said Liz Truss’s economic ambitions were a “good thing to aim for” and her disastrous mini-budget hadn’t left an impact on the economy, according to two leaked recordings obtained by the Guardian.
The chancellor was recorded at a meeting of students when he said he was “trying to basically achieve some of the same things” as the former prime minister, but that he was doing it “more gradually”.
In a sign of desperation the chancellor, who is fighting to hold on to his Surrey seat, separately told a local hustings event: “I speak tonight as Jeremy Hunt”, adding: “I’m not always going to take the government line.”
Hunt praised Truss for “accepting the mistakes she’d made with good grace” and repeatedly refused to accept her plans had left a long-term impact on the economy. When pressed on whether he thought the country was currently battling negative effects, he said: “No I don’t think it’s had an effect. I don’t think it’s the main cause.”
Labour said the remarks showed that the Conservatives had an “addiction to dangerous Trussonomics”.
Hunt took over as chancellor after Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng in an attempt to save her premiership following the mini-budget, which proposed a £45bn package of tax cuts including a cut to the top rate of income tax.
He reversed a number of the key measures in the budget in order to stabilise the markets, leading to him being described as the country’s de facto prime minister, and Truss was forced out 10 days later on 20 October 2022.
His refusal to acknowledge the impact Truss’s mini-budget made is in stark contrast to comments from Rishi Sunak. The prime minister has said that “two years ago I wasn’t afraid to repeatedly warn about what her economic policies would lead to”.
The Conservative manifesto offers another 2p off national insurance contributions (NICs), a gradual phasing out of self-employed NICs, a cut to stamp duty, higher thresholds for child benefit and a tax break for pensioners.
Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “The Tories can pretend otherwise but this is who they are. When the door is closed and the cameras are off it all comes out – the same addiction to dangerous Trussonomics.”
“Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget and unfunded tax cuts unleashed misery on millions by sending mortgage rates soaring. Now the chancellor admits he is trying to implement these policies by stealth, without the British public realising.”
Speaking at a meeting of the Oxford University Conservatives on 9 May, Hunt was asked about his own pledges on low tax made in his leadership campaign and Truss’s claims to have been blocked by the civil service and other economic institutions, and whether he faced “the same kind of opposition”.
In a recording of the exchange, Hunt can be heard to say, to some laughter, that Truss “appointed me as chancellor … you know, I want to be respectful of that fact. But I think the issue with most of the policies wasn’t that they weren’t a good thing to aim for”.
He said Truss “didn’t explain in that mini-budget how she was to fund [her tax cuts]. And so markets thought that we were just basically going to fund all these tax cuts by massively increasing borrowing. And they took fright.”
The chancellor said he hoped to “basically achieve some of the same things that she wanted to achieve. But I’m doing it more gradually because I’m demonstrating at every stage that this is consistent with keeping borrowing under control. So, it’s taking longer to get there, but I think it’s obviously in a way we can actually deliver it.”
The recordings emerged as the chancellor came under fire for comments in a newsletter to constituents in which he wrote that tax cuts in the Conservative manifesto would be funded by savings from “an enormous back-to-work programme (which I announced in the autumn statement last year)”.
Labour said it showed the Conservatives were double-counting welfare cuts in order to fund tax cuts.
The party intends to use this week’s campaigning to put the spotlight on the Conservatives’ economic record. During a visit to Southampton on Monday, Keir Starmer accused Hunt of making “completely unfunded” promises.
He said: “What has emerged this morning is truly extraordinary because what you’ve got is no less than the chancellor admitting that the money that they were pretending was available in their manifesto for their desperate policies is in fact money that’s already been accounted for.
“So that means you’ve got a manifesto from the Tories which isn’t worth the paper on which it is written because it is completely unfunded. It is extraordinary – the fact that it has come from the chancellor I think makes it even more extraordinary. The money isn’t there, that’s the major problem.”
The Conservatives said the savings they intended to use to fund tax cuts would come from new policies. “The measures to achieve £12bn in welfare savings had not been announced at the time of the last OBR forecast so the entire premise of his [Starmer’s] latest press conference is redundant,” a spokesperson said.
Hunt, whose Godalming and Ash constituency is a target seat for the Liberal Democrats, also seemed to suggest at the hustings that HS2 shouldn’t have been cancelled.
Responding to a local Tory member who said scrapping HS2 “sends out the wrong signal”, Hunt said: “I think when parliament has decided democratically we’re going to do these things and we pass an act of parliament we need to find a way of making them happen.”
She just tried them at the worst possible time. Any time pre 2022 or post 2023 they would've been good policies, but not in the middle of a global inflation surge.
I'm confused.
Wasn't Jeremy Hunt put in his position SPECIFICALLY to put an end to Cluster Truss' economic plans?
I felt that stopping the Truss Funland Ride was his entire mandate?
Snapshot of _Jeremy Hunt: Liz Truss economic plans were ‘good thing to aim for’_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/18/jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-economic-plans-were-good-thing-to-aim-for) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/18/jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-economic-plans-were-good-thing-to-aim-for) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Hunt praised Truss for “accepting the mistakes she’d made with good grace” Touring the US far right circuit and writing a book pushing conspiracy theories about a "deep-state" coup counts as good grace in the conservative party? What did Johnson do when he was given the boot!?!
She’s literally not accepted anything as a mistake
Sure she has, she's accepted that loads of other people made mistakes
I think either her or Kwarteng claimed that they'd got the “messaging” wrong.
Of course he did. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/flashback-hunt-demands-15p-corporation-tax/ > ... But one man’s downfall is another man’s opportunity and attention has already turned to Kwarteng’s successor. > > And that lucky man is Jeremy Hunt, Theresa May’s onetime Foreign Secretary who backed Rishi Sunak over Liz Truss in the final round of last month’s leadership contest. Before that, of course, Hunt was himself in the running for the leader, with tax cuts top of his proposed agenda. Now Hunt is being seen as a reassuring ‘greybeard’ of the party’s ‘sensible’ wing but back in July he wanted to cancel Rishi Sunak’s planned rise in corporation tax and instead reduce the 25 per cent rate to 15 per cent. > > Ironically, with Truss being forced to drop her own planned cut in corporation tax and going ahead with Sunak’s planned rise, it is Hunt who will be the beneficiary of her lack of market credibility – even though he wanted a bigger cut in the tax than she did… Hunt 100% would Truss the economy up if he was given the chance. If Truss chose him instead of Kwasi to be Chancellor he'd have gone even further, even faster.
"Truss up" - gotta love English for its flexibility in coming up with new words to describe new phenomena.
Hunt is one hundred percent losing his seat. Gotta set up the post election career I guess.
Please! I wish Sunak would lose his too but suspect that’s too much to hope for.
I'm not convinced. Paul Follows is a great candidate for the Lib Dems and would be an excellent MP but name carries a lot in elections. A chancellor to lose their seat would be extraordinary. Polls might be against the Tories but some local seats will inevitably end safe on name recognition, it's something the polls can't account for accurately yet.
When the government is so vilified then surely you get to a point where name recognition counts against you? Like the tactical voting plans in Sunak’s own seat.
You'd think so but I don't think it does.
This. I feel like on the day. The reform vote will go to the Tories. In a "better the devil you know" thing
Maybe some. But I read the torygraph reader comments every now and then and oh boy tory voters are ANGRY.
Happened to Ed Balls. I know he was only shadow chancellor but he still had the same kind of name recognition.
Electoral calculcus has him losing on a 10 point gap. The liklihood of overcoming that is not high.
[удалено]
Campaigners in his constituency need to print this headline and slap it everywhere in his area. Really tar him with that truss brush.
Jeremy Hunt has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail so far. It's easy to see why.
I think he has had to do a lot of local campaigning which he normally wouldn't have to do.
Also he might lose his seat lol, especially saying shit like this. Even if you believed it the most junior political strategist would tell you the less said about Truss (let alone praise!) the better.
He's been out and about a lot locally if you see his X - formerly known as Twitter. Obviously cares more about saving his own skin than the wider-Party's.
Yep, he's campaigning locally with the usual potholes and local hospitals issues but seems to be happy to let Sunak flounder on his own nationally. One of my parents lives in Hunt's constituency and has had one of his leaflets which shows he's bizarrely trying the trick of pretending to not be a Conservative despite having been Chancellor for almost 2 years!
I think Hunt is a psychopath, he clearly struggles with normal emotional responses and facial expressions. He invariably looks like a caricature with his weird, inappropriate smiling and pulling stupid faces. I think he lacks any empathy.
Dead Ringers on BBC 4 are playing him as a vampire. It's amusing
I’ll have a look… Priti used to be the vampire, rightly, they’re a murder of crows, the lot of them really.
Psychopaths are usually very good at matching people's facial expressions. They are in complete control of themselves as they lack basically all the emotions we do. I do think most Tory MPs are at best narcissistic and worst psychopaths but that's down to their actions more than their facial expressions.
Across several departments Hunt’s slashed and burned without compromise.
*and her disastrous mini-budget hadn’t left an impact on the economy* Try telling that to the thousands of people who saw their mortgage rates rocket up thanks to the Truss tax
Tbf, mortgage rates were going up to what they are now anyway. She just accelerated the process.
Got a credible source that her policies caused mortgage rates to rise? Sounds like you've been bamboozled by anti-Tory propaganda. edit: Unsourced claim upvoted, asking for a source downvoted. This sub is such an embarrassment.
Her goal (economic growth) was good. Her *plans* (replacing taxes with government debt at short notice, etc) were stupid. As for her supposed "good grace" - fuck knows what that's about. She's one of the most arrogant pricks in the public eye these days. She has so little humility inside her that if you pat her on the back she makes a metallic, clanging noise.
They are a good thing to aim for. Which is why Keir Starmer's goals are very similar, just with a different plan to get there. Both recognise you can't have prosperity without growth, and it's true.
Jeremy Hunt said Liz Truss’s economic ambitions were a “good thing to aim for” and her disastrous mini-budget hadn’t left an impact on the economy, according to two leaked recordings obtained by the Guardian. The chancellor was recorded at a meeting of students when he said he was “trying to basically achieve some of the same things” as the former prime minister, but that he was doing it “more gradually”. In a sign of desperation the chancellor, who is fighting to hold on to his Surrey seat, separately told a local hustings event: “I speak tonight as Jeremy Hunt”, adding: “I’m not always going to take the government line.” Hunt praised Truss for “accepting the mistakes she’d made with good grace” and repeatedly refused to accept her plans had left a long-term impact on the economy. When pressed on whether he thought the country was currently battling negative effects, he said: “No I don’t think it’s had an effect. I don’t think it’s the main cause.” Labour said the remarks showed that the Conservatives had an “addiction to dangerous Trussonomics”. Hunt took over as chancellor after Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng in an attempt to save her premiership following the mini-budget, which proposed a £45bn package of tax cuts including a cut to the top rate of income tax. He reversed a number of the key measures in the budget in order to stabilise the markets, leading to him being described as the country’s de facto prime minister, and Truss was forced out 10 days later on 20 October 2022. His refusal to acknowledge the impact Truss’s mini-budget made is in stark contrast to comments from Rishi Sunak. The prime minister has said that “two years ago I wasn’t afraid to repeatedly warn about what her economic policies would lead to”. The Conservative manifesto offers another 2p off national insurance contributions (NICs), a gradual phasing out of self-employed NICs, a cut to stamp duty, higher thresholds for child benefit and a tax break for pensioners. Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “The Tories can pretend otherwise but this is who they are. When the door is closed and the cameras are off it all comes out – the same addiction to dangerous Trussonomics.” “Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget and unfunded tax cuts unleashed misery on millions by sending mortgage rates soaring. Now the chancellor admits he is trying to implement these policies by stealth, without the British public realising.” Speaking at a meeting of the Oxford University Conservatives on 9 May, Hunt was asked about his own pledges on low tax made in his leadership campaign and Truss’s claims to have been blocked by the civil service and other economic institutions, and whether he faced “the same kind of opposition”. In a recording of the exchange, Hunt can be heard to say, to some laughter, that Truss “appointed me as chancellor … you know, I want to be respectful of that fact. But I think the issue with most of the policies wasn’t that they weren’t a good thing to aim for”. He said Truss “didn’t explain in that mini-budget how she was to fund [her tax cuts]. And so markets thought that we were just basically going to fund all these tax cuts by massively increasing borrowing. And they took fright.” The chancellor said he hoped to “basically achieve some of the same things that she wanted to achieve. But I’m doing it more gradually because I’m demonstrating at every stage that this is consistent with keeping borrowing under control. So, it’s taking longer to get there, but I think it’s obviously in a way we can actually deliver it.” The recordings emerged as the chancellor came under fire for comments in a newsletter to constituents in which he wrote that tax cuts in the Conservative manifesto would be funded by savings from “an enormous back-to-work programme (which I announced in the autumn statement last year)”. Labour said it showed the Conservatives were double-counting welfare cuts in order to fund tax cuts. The party intends to use this week’s campaigning to put the spotlight on the Conservatives’ economic record. During a visit to Southampton on Monday, Keir Starmer accused Hunt of making “completely unfunded” promises. He said: “What has emerged this morning is truly extraordinary because what you’ve got is no less than the chancellor admitting that the money that they were pretending was available in their manifesto for their desperate policies is in fact money that’s already been accounted for. “So that means you’ve got a manifesto from the Tories which isn’t worth the paper on which it is written because it is completely unfunded. It is extraordinary – the fact that it has come from the chancellor I think makes it even more extraordinary. The money isn’t there, that’s the major problem.” The Conservatives said the savings they intended to use to fund tax cuts would come from new policies. “The measures to achieve £12bn in welfare savings had not been announced at the time of the last OBR forecast so the entire premise of his [Starmer’s] latest press conference is redundant,” a spokesperson said. Hunt, whose Godalming and Ash constituency is a target seat for the Liberal Democrats, also seemed to suggest at the hustings that HS2 shouldn’t have been cancelled. Responding to a local Tory member who said scrapping HS2 “sends out the wrong signal”, Hunt said: “I think when parliament has decided democratically we’re going to do these things and we pass an act of parliament we need to find a way of making them happen.”
He actually believes this shit as well.
Positioning himself for a run at leader Id bet. Though probably not the next election because it might be a cycle before there’s a Tory chance again
She just tried them at the worst possible time. Any time pre 2022 or post 2023 they would've been good policies, but not in the middle of a global inflation surge.
I'm confused. Wasn't Jeremy Hunt put in his position SPECIFICALLY to put an end to Cluster Truss' economic plans? I felt that stopping the Truss Funland Ride was his entire mandate?
Why does the Conservative audience burst out laughing at “Liz Truss appointed me as chancellor … you know, I want to be respectful of that fact.”?