Yahoo News Great divide: pundits’ reactions to mini-budget run from alarmed to delighted
For
Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph
“This was the best budget I have ever heard a British chancellor deliver. The tax cuts were so huge and bold, the language so extraordinary, that at times I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, that I hadn’t been transported to a distant land that actually believed in the economics of Milton Friedman and FA Hayek.”
Alex Brummer, Daily Mail
“The boldness and courage of Kwasi Kwarteng’s debut budget is seismic. By taking a hatchet to taxes and placing growth front and centre of economic policy, the chancellor has produced a genuine Tory package elbowing to one side the Treasury’s fiscal conservatism.”
Related: Teachers and nurses face tax increase after mini-budget hands cut to bankers
Nigel Farage, ex-Ukip leader
Offers unambiguous support as he compares the budget with the income tax cut from 30% to 29% under Thatcher: “Today was the best Conservative budget since 1986.”
Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute for Economic Affairs
“This isn’t a trickle-down budget, it’s a boost-up budget. It’s refreshing to hear a chancellor talk passionately about the importance of economic growth.”
Related: Kwasi Kwarteng could borrow for the right reasons. These are the wrong ones
Against
Martin Wolf, FT
“This will do nigh on nothing to raise medium-term growth, but risks serious macroeconomic instability. The failure to ask the Office for Budget Responsibility to assess its impact is simply scandalous. This government may be indifferent to painful reality. But reality usually wins in the end.”
Larry Summers, former US Treasury secretary
“Between Brexit, how far the Bank of England got behind the curve and now these fiscal policies, I think Britain will be remembered for having pursued the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time … It makes me very sorry to say, but I think the UK is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market.”
Daily Mirror editorial
“Short of burning £50 notes in front of the poor, Kwarteng could not have delivered a more insulting budget. His plans are economically incoherent, fundamentally unequal and fiscally dangerous.”
Gus O’Donnell, former cabinet secretary
“I have never seen a fiscal stimulus this large. With the Bank of England raising interest rates, [the] economy is being driven with brake and accelerator hard down. Not ideal.”
