LONDON — Britain’s new chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said on Monday that he would reverse virtually all the government’s planned tax cuts, sweeping away Prime Minister Liz Truss’s free-market economic plan in a desperate bid to steady the financial markets and stabilize her government.
Mr. Hunt also announced that the government would end its massive state intervention to cap energy prices next April, replacing it with a still-undefined program that he said would promote energy efficiency, but that could increase uncertainty for households facing rising gas and electricity bills.
Ms. Truss’s Conservative government had planned to announce the tax and spending details of its fiscal plan on Oct. 31, but with the markets still gyrating, Mr. Hunt rushed forward the schedule. His announcement constituted one of the most dramatic reversals in modern British political history.
“A central duty for any government is to do what’s necessary for economic stability,” Mr. Hunt said in a televised statement. “No government can control markets but every government can give certainty about the sustainability of public finances.”
Among the new details, Mr. Hunt said the government would shelve a reduction in the basic income tax rate, the centerpiece of a tax-cutting plan that Ms. Truss had promised would reignite Britain’s economic growth. She had earlier scrapped a tax cut for high-income people and announced she would go ahead with a planned increase in corporate taxes.
The pound and British government bonds rallied in the run-up to the announcement, suggesting that the news could buy Ms. Truss a few days of breathing space, though her political survival, after only six weeks in office, remained in deep doubt.
Mr. Hunt’s hastily scheduled announcement came three days after Ms. Truss ousted his predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and reversed another major tax cut, shredding her agenda and staining her credibility. As Mr. Hunt moved to take control of the economic levers of government, Conservative Party lawmakers were meeting to plot ways to force Ms. Truss out of power.
The mechanics of removing Ms. Truss remained murky, with the lawmakers grasping for ways to find a consensus replacement for her that would avoid another full-scale and divisive leadership contest. But many political analysts said her position seemed untenable, given the turmoil of the last three weeks.
Mr. Hunt’s statement laid bare a government forced into a humiliating 180-degree turn in its economic policy by an unforgiving market, rebellious Conservative lawmakers, and a wholesale loss of public support.
Where Ms. Truss had last summer ruled out any new taxes, her government is now planning to rescind tax cuts for ordinary and high-income people and to impose a tax increase on corporations. Where just last week the prime minister had ruled out reductions in public spending, Mr. Hunt made it clear the government would consider painful spending cuts in an array of public services.
The government’s goal is to restore Britain’s credibility in the markets by explaining how it plans to fill an estimated budget hole of 72 billion pounds ($81.2 billion). And Mr. Hunt’s measures go part of the way toward doing that.
