Mr Kwarteng tweeted: “It’s clear that the abolition of the 45p tax rate has become a distraction from our overriding mission to tackle the challenges facing our country.
“As a result, I’m announcing we are not proceeding with the abolition of the 45p tax rate. We get it and we have listened.”
The humiliating move came ahead of his keynote speech to the Tory annual rally in Birmingham.
He was forced to scrap the flagship tax cut just ten days after his mini Budget after a revolt by Tory MPs led by former Cabinet minister Michael Gove.
The decision leaves Prime Minister Liz Truss and Mr Kwarteng’s reputation badly damaged as they had insisted they would press ahead with the tax cut.
Asked on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg if she was absolutely committed to abolishing the 45p tax rate, Ms Truss said: “Yes.”
Live updates
Senior Tory dismisses calls for Chancellor to be sacked
Senior Conservative MP Mel Stride dismissed suggestions that the Chancellor should be sacked, saying now is the time for “calm”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s World At One, the chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee also reiterated his desire for the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast to be brought forward.
He said it is “fact” that the OBR are in a position to provide a “full forecast by the end of this month” and it is now just a case of how quickly the Government can bring together its plans.
Asked if the Chancellor should be sacked, Mr Stride said: “Well he’s obviously under a great deal of pressure and this is a very difficult situation, but I do think that certainly the parliamentary party should take a big deep breath now.
“There’s been a small reset around this top rate income tax, which will relieve many backbenchers. What we need to do now is give the Government the time to come forward with its OBR forecast, come forward with its plans around that, and then judge it in the round.
“And if they can get that right and if they can stabilise the markets, then I think we’re in a position where the party can start to build from that. I don’t think we need to sort of walk in sort of sacking people and having political crises any more than we already have them at the moment, I think now is the time for calm level headedness.”
‘System would rather young people go into Harry Potter studies than construction’ says education minister
The current system would rather young people get a degree in “Harry Potter studies” than apprentices in construction, an education minister has said.
Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Andrea Jenkyns said: “A skilled modern economy competing on the global stage requires technical skills just as much as it needs graduates.
“Yet the current system would rather our young people get a degree in Harry Potter studies, than the apprentices shaping construction.
“It doesn’t take magic powers to work out that this is wrong, which is why the Government is committed to putting the broomstick to good use and carrying out a spring clean of low quality courses.”
Ms Jenkyns insisted “if a course isn’t providing someone with a positive outcome”, it makes “no sense” the Government “should be funding it”.
Ms Jenkyns also argued that in some cases young people are not getting skills that are “fit for the future” at universities, adding: “They are being fed a diet of critical race theory, anti-British history and sociological Marxism, which is why this Government is determined to provide an alternative”.
Rees-Mogg refutes suggestion an election is needed
Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg disagreed with former Cabinet ally Nadine Dorries after she suggested Liz Truss requires a general election to divert significantly from the 2019 Tory manifesto.
He told a Telegraph event at the Conservative conference that they used to get on “like a house on fire” around the Cabinet table and agreed on “almost everything”.
But he added: “I don’t think there’s going to be an immediate election and I don’t think there’s a requirement for one.”
‘Commons wouldn’t vote to withdraw from European Convention on Human Rights’, says Rees-Mogg
There is “no mandate” for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, Jacob Rees-Mogg has said.
He told the Conservative Party Conference: “We would not get withdrawal through the House of Commons…And as we’ve discovered in the last week, there’s no point taking on political battles when ultimately, you’re not gonna be able to stick to it.”
Energy Secretary says he would welcome fracking in his own back garden
Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Conservative Party Conference he would welcome fracking in his own back garden in Somerset.
The Energy Secretary said he would be “delighted to have the royalties” if drilling for gas and oil could be done on his land.
Mr Rees-Mogg said it is “the socialists” and Green MP Caroline Lucas who oppose fracking, adding: “Well that makes my heart bleed.”
‘Tories will win next election’, says Gove
The Conservatives will win the next general election, former minister Michael Gove has said.
Asked whether the Tories would turn around their polling the former levelling up secretary replied: “Will we win the next election? Yes.”
MP Michael Gove at Britain’s Conservative Party’s annual conference in Birmingham on Monday
/ REUTERSHis comments come after Labour surged to a 33 point lead over the Tories in a YouGov poll – thought to be the largest lead enjoyed by any political party since the late 1990s – amid fallout of the Government’s mini-budget last week.
Mr Gove also described Jacob Rees-Mogg as the “best-read man in Parliament” after the Business Secretary reportedly described the 45p tax U-turn as a “tale of sound and fury signifying nothing”.
Rees-Mogg criticises Gove, stands by ‘Boudicca’ PM
Jacob Rees-Mogg has criticised Michael Gove after the senior Tory suggested he would not vote for Liz Truss’s Budget because he did not believe it the right time to cut taxes for top earners.
The Energy Secretary joked that Mr Gove was “wet” for only taking party in nine fringe events at the Tory party conference and said he had always thought of him as “the Tory party’s version of Peter Mandelson”.
Mr Mogg added that Liz Truss has his full support as he described the Prime Minister as like “Boudicca”.
Rees-Mogg brands U-turn fallout an ‘absurd distraction’
Jacob Rees-Mogg has described the row over the 45p tax rate cut as an “absurd distraction”.
The Business and Energy Secretary told a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference that the Government had to make decisions quickly and should not be blamed for changing unpopular policies.
He told the audience: “The problem is with any decision that you ever make …there is always the temptation to ask for one more report, one more expert opinion, one more verification that what we’re going to do is right.”
And by the time you’ve come to making the decision, the time for making the decision has passed.
And government is much too much about this and having another view, another pretend consultation where you set the questions to get the answers that you want. It’s all delay before the fact that they’ve been doing that for years and years and years and we need to get on with things.” Mr Mogg added that he heard about Kwasi Kwarteng ditching the planned axing of the 45 top rate of income tax this morning in a text from the deputy Prime Minister, Thérèse Coffey.
Lammy urges Labour to take chance
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy (Aaron Chown/PA)
/ PA ArchiveShadow foreign secretary David Lammy said the UK Government “must not squander” the opportunity to make progress on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The Tottenham MP said: “The last thing the UK needs, in the middle of a fiscal crisis the Conservatives have created, is new trade barriers with the EU.
“For months, Labour has been calling for the Government to get round the negotiating table with the EU to fix the bad deal it negotiated.
“There is a window now the government must not squander. With hard work and compromise on all sides, a deal is achievable to end this damaging, self-inflicted stand-off.”
Donor blames media for party u-turn
Alasdair Locke, chairman of the Motor Fuel Group, has told Radio 4 that the Conservative Party – whom he donates to – was “blown off path” by the “sensational” media’s reaction.
“Generally cutting taxes when you’re facing an economic downturn if not a recession seems to me to be a pretty obvious thing to do rather than to raise taxes,” he told the Today programme.
