British PM sacks finance minister, scraps tax plan in fight to survive

Ex-Health Secy Jeremy Hunt To Replace Kwasi Kwarteng

London: British PM Liz Truss fired her finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday and scrapped parts of their economic package in a desperate bid to stay in power and survive the market and political turmoil gripping the country. Kwarteng said he had resigned at Truss’s request after being forced to rush back to London overnight from IMF meetings in Washington. Truss, in power for only 37 days, then told a news conference she would now allow a key business levy to rise from next year, raising 18 billion pounds, as she accepted she had gone “further and faster” than markets had been expecting. “We need to act now to reassure the markets of our fiscal discipline,” she said.