LONDON, Oct 16, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Britain's Prime Minister Liz Truss insisted 
on her devotion to "sound" economics heading into crisis talks Sunday with 
her all-powerful new finance minister, and a tense week of plotting by 
Conservative critics.

With even US President Joe Biden joining in attacks on her economic agenda, 
Truss admitted it had been a "wrench" to fire her friend Kwasi Kwarteng as 
chancellor of the exchequer.

But writing in the Sun on Sunday newspaper, she said: "We cannot pave the way 
to a low-tax, high-growth economy without maintaining the confidence of the 
markets in our commitment to sound money." 

That confidence was jeopardised on September 23 when Kwarteng and Truss 
unveiled a right-wing programme, inspired by 1980s US president Ronald 
Reagan, of o45 billion ($50 billion) in tax cuts financed exclusively by 
higher debt.

Markets tanked in response, driving up borrowing costs for millions of 
Britons, and the Conservatives' poll ratings have similarly slumped, leading 
to open warfare in the governing party mere weeks after Truss succeeded Boris 
Johnson.

She dramatically fired Kwarteng on Friday, despite co-authoring the package. 
His replacement Jeremy Hunt is now dismantling the tax cuts, while pressing 
for difficult spending restraint by his cabinet colleagues even as Britons 
endure a cost-of-living crisis.

The new chancellor met Truss at the prime minister's country retreat on 
Sunday to thrash out a new budget plan which he is due to deliver on October 
31.

"It's going to be very, very difficult, and I think we have to be honest with 
people about that," Hunt said in a BBC television interview broadcast Sunday.

He defended Truss after her climbdowns, and after a disastrous news 
conference she held on Friday shortly after sacking Kwarteng.
"She's been willing to do that most difficult of things in politics, and that 
is to change tack," Hunt said, adding: "The prime minister's in charge." 

Newspapers and several Tories questioned that verdict, arguing that Truss's 
central policy platform now lies in ruins.
The Treasury declined to confirm reports that Hunt plans to delay a planned 
cut to the basic rate of income tax, removing yet another headline measure 
announced by the new government last month.
- 'Libertarian jihadists' -

Up to 100 letters expressing no confidence in Truss have been submitted by 
Tory MPs, the Sunday Times and Sunday Express said.

Opponents were said to be coalescing around Truss's defeated leadership rival 
Rishi Sunak and another one-time foe, Penny Mordaunt, for a possible "unity 
ticket" to rebuild the stricken Tories.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace could be another compromise candidate for 
leader, the Sunday Mirror reported.

"I worry that over the past few weeks, the government has looked like 
libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory 
mice in which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments," Tory MP 
Robert Halfon, who supported Sunak, told Sky News.

"Of course, colleagues are unhappy with what is going on, with haemorrhaging 
in the opinion polls," he said. "It's inevitable that colleagues are... 
talking to see what can be done about it."

But Johnson loyalists -- still seething at Sunak's perceived disloyalty 
toward the scandal-tainted former leader -- warned against a coronation that 
cuts out Tory grassroots members, and said the party would face irresistible 
pressure to hold an early general election.

The coming week could be key for Truss, starting with the first reactions on 
bond and currency markets when trading resumes on Monday, and as her restive 
members of parliament reconvene in Westminster.

Hunt at least has won important backing from Bank of England governor Andrew 
Bailey, who had to stage costly interventions to calm the bond markets up to 
Friday.

Bailey welcomed a "very clear and immediate meeting of minds" with the new 
chancellor, as the central bank readies to hold its next rate-setting meeting 
on November 3.

But Biden, in a highly unusual intervention in an ally's financial affairs, 
decried Truss's attempts to cut taxes on the "super-wealthy".
"I wasn't the only one that thought it was a mistake," the Democratic 
president argued.