Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are under increasing pressure to explain how they will assist British families during the autumn’s cost-of-living crisis.
With inflation anticipated to exceed 13 percent in October, the energy price ceiling expected to increase, and a recession forecast for the rest of the year, economic policy has become the central issue in the Conservative leadership race.
With inflation anticipated to exceed 13 percent in October, the energy price ceiling expected to increase, and a recession forecast for the rest of the year, economic policy has become the central issue in the Conservative leadership race.
On the weekend, a dispute erupted after Ms. Truss told the Financial Times that she intended to reduce taxes rather than provide giveaways.
This provoked a sharp condemnation from Mr. Sunak, who stated that it is “absolutely wrong” to rule out additional direct aid for needy families this winter.
Ms. Truss’s supporters later informed that her words had been “misconstrued.”
Penny Mordaunt stated, “I think she has rightfully questioned the rationality of taking vast sums of money out of people’s pockets through taxation and then returning a portion of that money in ever more convoluted ways.”
In other news, former prime minister of the Labour Party Gordon Brown has made his second intervention in as many days.
Mr. Brown, himself a former prime minister, is requesting that the COBRA emergency committee be in “permanent session” throughout the current crisis.
He is also demanding an immediate recall of parliament if Boris Johnson and the two Tory leadership candidates cannot agree on an emergency budget in the coming days.
Mr. Brown wrote in the Daily Mirror, “Even if Boris Johnson is presently on vacation, his deputies should be negotiating aggressively to purchase new oil and gas supplies from other nations and urgently developing the additional storage capacity that we currently lack.”
And he warned that some of the planned tax cuts during the run for the presidency “would not benefit the truly poor.”
A report commissioned by Mr. Brown warned over the weekend that some low-income families are up to £1,600 per year worse off as a result of the cost of living problem due to a triple blow to their earnings, even when government assistance is considered.
While households of working age receiving Universal Credit and other means-tested benefits are receiving up to £1,200 in additional assistance, Professor Donald Hirsch, a poverty expert, argues that these initiatives have been overshadowed.
In these “extraordinarily difficult times,” one of Mr. Sunak’s allies, Tory MP Damian Hinds, conceded that the current package was insufficient.
He stated, “Energy bill forecasts have worsened since this measure was implemented, and [Mr. Sunak] has made it plain that he is prepared to implement additional measures if necessary.”
According to newly released statistics by the Labour Party, one pound out of every five spent by retirees this winter will go toward energy costs, and “fantasy tax cuts” offered by Conservative leadership candidates will not benefit the elderly.
