Markets and analysts had been expecting the first fiscal statement from the new Truss government to follow through on her campaign pledges. The planned rise in corporation tax was widely expected to be scraped and April’s increase in NICs to be reversed. Those two measures alone would have come with an annual price tag of around £30bn in lower revenues. But Kwasi Kwarteng Britain’s new chancellor went much further. A 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax was brought forward by a year stamp duty was cut and the top 45p tax rate on incomes above £150 000 was cut back to 40p. Instead of £30bn of unfunded annual tax cuts the chancellor delivered £45bn. The scale of the tax cutting was so large that it almost entirely drowned out attention from the estimated £60bn cost – in the next six months – of...
