Pound - live: Liz Truss ditches Kwarteng’s 45p tax cut rate as Tory revolt rages

Kwasi Kwarteng’s defence of the day is that the proposed 45p tax cut was a “distraction” from the other financial polcies laid out in his September mini-Budget.

Reissuing the rebuttal made in his Twitter statement earlier today, the chancellor told BBC Breakfast: “We just talked to people, we listened to people, I get it.

“We not only talked to people, we saw people’s reactions, we were talking to constituents, we were talking to a whole range of stakeholders and we felt that the 45p issue, the 45p rate was drowning out a strong package of intervention on energy, a strong package of intervention on tax cuts for people generally and we decided not to proceed with getting rid of the 45p rate.”

Posting to Twitter this morning, Kwasi Kwarteng said the plans to abolish the 45p tax band had “become a distraction from our overriding mission to tackle the challenges facing our country.”

“As a result, I’m announcing we are not proceeding with the abolition of the 45p tax rate. We get it, and we have listened. This will allow us to focus on delivering the major parts of our growth package.”

You can read his statement in full here:

Kwasi Kwarteng has abandoned his plan to axe the 45p tax rate for top-earners after a Tory revolt, in a humiliating U-turn at the Conservative conference.

Just 24 hours after Liz Truss insisted the cut – for Britain’s richest people, earning more than £150,000 – would go ahead, the chancellor has backtracked under fierce pressure.

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick has this breaking story:

Kwasi Kwarteng has abandoned his plan to axe the 45p tax rate for top-earners after a Tory revolt, in a humiliating U-turn at the Conservative conference.

Prime minister Liz Truss is expected to take a U-turn on her flagship plan to ditch the 45p tax rate amid the huge backlash both inside and outside the Tory party, according to several reports.

Ms Truss, who earlier defended the plan to abolish the 45p rate of tax for higher earners while crediting the idea to chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, could announce the U-turn within the next hour, according to The Sun’s political editor Harry Cole.

The decision reportedly comes after “late crisis talks with the chancellor,” Mr Cole, who is also co-writing a biography of Ms Truss, wrote.

Monday’s newspaper front pages are dominated by the backlash to the chancellor’s tax plans.

The Independent, The Times and The Guardian all lead with former cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Grant Shapps hitting out at the plan to cut income tax for people earning more than £150,000 at a time when millions are seeing their family finances squeezed.

Politics and a heartfelt plea from Mel B feature among Monday’s front pages.

“Sterling investors need high-quality sterling assets but while billions of pounds worth of UK companies have been taken off the London Stock Exchange, they are not being replaced through IPOs,” writes James Moore. Read more:

Sterling investors need high-quality sterling assets but while billions of pounds worth of UK companies have been taken off the London Stock Exchange, they are not being replaced through IPOs, writes James Moore

“In the traditional eve-of-conference BBC interview, Liz Truss continued to maintain that the terrible reaction to her Budget in financial markets was in fact a reaction to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.”

Read The Independent’s editorial here:

Editorial: In the traditional eve-of-conference BBC interview, Liz Truss continued to maintain that the terrible reaction to her Budget in financial markets was in fact a reaction to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine

Tory former cabinet minister Grant Shapps has joined a growing revolt against Liz Truss’s tax plans, branding her decision to scrap the 45p top rate as “politically tin-eared”.

Mr Shapps, who was transport secretary under Boris Johnson, accused the prime minister and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng of putting “all their chips on red” in the hope that cutting taxes will deliver growth.

The veteran of government, who is influential in the Tory party, also said he was “profoundly” concerned about the £45 billion of tax cuts, particularly the abolition of the top income tax rate.

Here’s his full statement:

The former cabinet minister said handing ‘big giveaways’ to those who need them least is ‘politically tin-eared’.

King Charles III, who until his accession was quite vocal about the climate crisis, will be absent from the key United Nations climate summit next month in Egypt, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

The news - which was first reported by The Sunday Times newspaper - comes amid speculation that the new British monarch would have to rein in his environmental activism now that he has ascended the throne.

The report said that prime minister Liz Truss objected to King Charles attending the Cop27 conference, and that she mentioned this when she met with the king last month at Buckingham Palace.

But a member of Ms Truss’s cabinet said the government and palace were in agreement about the decision.

“That is a decision that has been made amicably, as far as I am aware, between the palace and the government,” Simon Clarke told Times Radio on Sunday. “The suggestions this morning that he was ordered to stay away are simply not true.”

Mr Clarke also rejected suggestions that Ms Truss didn’t want the King to attend the summit because she intends to water down Britain’s climate goals. The government remains committed to achieving its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, he said.

Charles attended the Cop26 summit in Glasgow last year where he called for a “war-like footing” against the climate crisis. The former Prince of Wales was also expected to attend the summit this year, where national representatives from around the world will gather to negotiate the path forward in fighting the increasingly challenging effects of global warming.