Truss faces rebellion as Gove threatens to vote against budget
FORMER British minister Michael Gove threatened to vote against prime minister Liz Truss’s budget when it comes before parliament.
The Conservative party veteran, who is influential in the parliamentary party, said he was ‘profoundly’ concerned about the amount of borrowing to cover £45billion worth of tax cuts, particularly the abolition of the top income tax rate.
Party chairman Jake Berry warned any rebels during a Commons vote on the plans would be turfed out of the parliamentary party, intensifying a row as the party conference began in Birmingham.
Damian Green, a former deputy prime minister, warned that the Tories would lose the next election if ‘we end up painting ourselves as the party of the rich’.
Tory ex-chancellor George Osborne said it was ‘touch and go’ whether chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng can survive, telling the Andrew Neil Show it would be ‘curtains’ for Mr Kwarteng if his speech today went badly.
Mr Gove welcomed the prime minister’s acknowledgement that she had made mistakes around the mini-budget but said she displayed an ‘inadequate realisation’ of the scale of the problem.
He told the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show that cutting the 45% income tax rate for the highest earners was a ‘display of the wrong values’ and called for Ms Truss to U-turn.
The MP even suggested he could vote against the plans in the House of Commons, as critics eye a possible rebellion.
‘I don’t believe it’s right,’ he said, when pressed on the BBC One show if he would vote for the mini-budget.
Ms Truss had earlier admitted she could have been better at ‘laying the ground’ for the plans that have sparked a backlash on the financial markets.
But Mr Gove said there remained ‘an inadequate realisation at the top of government about the scale of change required’.
He said there were ‘two major things’ that were problematic
‘I’ve never voted against the whip’
with the plans set out on September 23. ‘The first is the sheer risk of using borrowed money to fund tax cuts. That’s not Conservative,’ he said. The second, Mr Gove argued, was the move to cut the top rate of income tax and axe the cap on bankers’ bonuses ‘at a time when people are suffering’.
Mr Gove has vast experience in government, having held Cabinet positions under Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron, and is popular among Tory MPs.
He insisted he was not leading a co-ordinated rebellion but could face losing the Tory whip if he voted against the tax cuts.
Asked on Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday show if a rebellion would result in the drastic action, Mr Berry said: ‘Yes’.
Mr Gove told the Telegraph podcast that it would be ‘very, very, very difficult’ to argue it was right to impose real-term cuts on benefits while cutting tax for the highest earners.
But he invited Ms Truss to reverse her high-borrowing, taxcutting plans to prevent a rebellion.
He told Ms Truss there was an ‘opportunity for a course correction’, adding: ‘I’ve never voted against the Conservative whip and I want therefore to make sure that we can have a civilised conversation about priorities.’