Liz Truss Wants To Have Another Go At Delivering A Budget

The former prime minister will challenge Rishi Sunak with an alternative plan, despite the fallout from her last attempt.
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Liz Truss gives a speech on the economy at the Institute for Government in London. Picture date: Monday September 18, 2023. (Photo by Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images)
Stefan Rousseau - PA Images via Getty Images

Former prime minister Liz Truss is to challenge Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt with her own alternative Budget.

Her proposal will be pitched as one that rails against “conventional thinking”, and will be presented to the government as an alternative to the chancellor’s plans.

The report outlining Truss’s suggestions will be released one week before Hunt delivers his autumn statement on 22 November.

It will come one year after Truss delivered the catastrophic “mini-Budget”, which plunged the value of the British pound to its lowest level since 1985 and  preceded her rapid downfall as prime minister.

Called the “Growth Budget”, her suggestions are expected to propose similar ideas to those she announced while in office, including tax cuts and changes to corporation tax, income tax and national insurance.

It is also expected to include ideas about how the “tourism tax” could be dropped by bringing back VAT-free shopping.

At the Conservative Party conference this month, Truss made a speech calling for tax cuts to “make Britain grow again”. 

Truss told the conference that she wanted to see the Conservative Party become the “party of business again”, and for the government to stop “taxing and banning things” and instead “build things and make things.”

Despite her exit from No 10, Truss has again repeatedly called on the current chancellor to make tax cuts, despite the shocking aftermath of her decision last year.

Hunt has suggested that he will not be cutting tax next month but might do so next year when it is “affordable”, before the general election.