U.K.'S Tory MPS tell Biden to butt out
President has criticized Truss's tax-cut plan
Joe Biden should stick to sorting out his own problems, Conservative MPS said after the U.S. president called Liz Truss's tax-cutting plans a “mistake.”
Truss made low taxes part of her pitch to become Tory leader and Prime Minister, insisting last week it was the way to long-term economic growth.
She has since been forced into about-turns on abolishing the 45 per cent top rate of income tax and freezing corporation tax following political and fiscal pressure.
The latest U.S. inflation data showed persistently high prices, while business leaders warned last week that its Federal Reserve — which has raised interest rates five times this year — would now struggle to cool the country's economy without causing a recession.
Asked about Truss's climbdown, Biden said: “Well, it's predictable. I wasn't the only one that thought it was a mistake. The idea of cutting taxes on the super wealthy at a time when ... anyway, I disagreed with the policy.”
Biden claimed the American economy was “strong as hell” and inflation was “worse off everywhere else.” He told reporters on a visit to Portland ahead of next month's midterm elections: “The problem is the lack of economic growth and sound policy in other countries, not so much ours.”
Craig Mackinlay, the Tory MP for South Thanet, compared Biden's remarks to Barack Obama's warning that Britain would go to the “back of the queue” for a trade deal if it left the EU.
“From president Obama weighing in on the Brexit debate in 2016, probably at the request of Downing Street at the time, U.S. presidential interventions into U.K. politics is a diplomatic line that should never be crossed and rarely ends well,” Mackinlay told The Telegraph.
“I expect he'd felt emboldened by similar behaviour by the IMF, who decided to weigh in on U.K. taxation policy. I'd recommend that President Biden look to his own country's issues rather than a wider international net.”
Mackinlay was referring to the International Monetary Fund's thinly veiled swipes at Truss this month after it told governments to embrace austerity measures to curb inflation and warned there was “no room for missteps” in fiscal and monetary policy.
Andrew Bridgen, the MP for North West Leicestershire, wrote in a blog post: “Some of us did predict the outcome of (Truss's) mini-budget in advance — but I don't recall Joe Biden being one of them.
“The fact that President Biden has joined the pile-on will do nothing but hasten her fast-approaching departure from No. 10.”
Shortly before a sit-down meeting with Truss at a United Nations summit last month, Biden had said he was “sick and tired of trickle-down economics.”
“It has never worked,” he wrote on Twitter. “We're building an economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”
While most people interpreted his remarks as aimed at a domestic audience as he seeks to shore up Democrat candidates next month, some wondered whether it was a swipe at Truss.
On the same visit, Truss admitted some of her measures, including removing a cap on bankers' bonuses, “will be unpopular” but were necessary to end years of stagnation.
Labour attempted to seize on Biden's intervention, with David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, defending the president's interference in British politics.
“As well as crashing the economy, Liz Truss's humiliating U-turns have made Britain's economy an international punchline,” Lammy said.
“President Biden knows the dangerous folly of trickle-down economics.”
The Conservatives were on the brink of open warfare on the weekend as ministers warned of “an assault on the Right” and supporters of Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, described Truss as a “prisoner” of new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. One senior Tory said: “She's in office, he's in power. That's why she's got to go.”
As relations within the party became increasingly acrimonious, one senior government source claimed that Truss's critics were intent on inflicting “maximum damage” on their own party.