'The Mail couldn’t hide its glee at the unfunded tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the wealthiest'
The Daily Mail, a newspaper which rather than holding power to account regularly acts as the propaganda arm for the Tory government has been ridiculed, with its former front pages which cheered on the disastrous mini-budget resurfacing as the crisis affecting Liz Truss’s premiership continues to deepen.
The Mail couldn’t hide its glee at the unfunded tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the wealthiest with a headline on the 23 September which heralded the ‘biggest tax cuts in 30 years!’ The paper predicted that the cuts would ‘turbocharge growth’.
Instead, the exact opposite happened as the pound fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar and the markets went into turmoil. Bloomberg reported that in Liz Truss’s first month in office, at least £300bn was wiped from the combined value of the nation’s stocks and bonds as investors turned away from ‘British policy chaos’.
On the 24th September, the Mail published a front page with the headline: “At last! A true Tory budget.”
The newspaper’s City editor, Alex Brummer, wrote: “The boldness and courage of Kwasi Kwarteng’s debut budget is seismic,” and predicted it would result in “lifting confidence and sparking a surge in consumption and investment”.
What it instead led to was the likes of the IMF urging a reversal in policy and the Bank of England having to intervene to prevent pension funds from collapsing.
Since then, Jeremy Hunt has taken a wrecking ball to the policies the Mail and others such the Institute of Economic Affairs championed, reversing many of them in his statement yesterday, leaving the prime minister’s programme for government dead in the water.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
As you’re here, we have something to ask you. What we do here to deliver real news is more important than ever. But there’s a problem: we need readers like you to chip in to help us survive. We deliver progressive, independent media, that challenges the right’s hateful rhetoric. Together we can find the stories that get lost.
We’re not bankrolled by billionaire donors, but rely on readers chipping in whatever they can afford to protect our independence. What we do isn’t free, and we run on a shoestring. Can you help by chipping in as little as £1 a week to help us survive? Whatever you can donate, we’re so grateful - and we will ensure your money goes as far as possible to deliver hard-hitting news.