Kwarteng

Chancellor makes early return from IMF meeting in Washington amid rumours around his job and that of prime minister Liz Truss.

The growth plan (is) the centrepiece, but we’ll have to see some of the detail including a full forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility on the 31st of October. The government will make responses as appropriate as events happen, but the absolute commitment is to publish the medium-term fiscal plan. He’s coming back for discussions with colleagues, we obviously have the medium-term fiscal plan coming up on 31 October, so just in a couple of weeks’ time. But that’s not to say that we can’t reset and I think there is the time to do that. He said he hopes Kwarteng is flying home from the US early to have conversations with Liz Truss and row back on tax cuts. It was more likely to lead I’m afraid in the kind of lack of confidence that’s been in the markets over the last few weeks. The fact that people were speculating about the prime minister’s leadership this early in her premiership is not ideal but I think he’s just got to bite the bullet. It quoted one senior Tory as saying that a “coronation won’t be that hard to arrange”. Markets have seen some stabilisation on the news of a potential U-turn, Stride told BBC Breakfast. “It is quite unusual for this to happen,” he said. Weighed down by huge global problems, Callaghan told reporters at Heathrow “I don’t think other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.” Beleaguered chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s sudden return to London recalls the troubles faced by prime minister James Callaghan in January 1979.