Jeremy Hunt appointed as Chancellor despite backing tax cuts this year

Mr Hunt, who has twice previously run unsuccessfully for leader of the Conservative Party, against Boris Johnson in 2019 and most recently this year following Mr Johnson’s resignation, backed Rishi Sunak after he did not receive the backing of enough MPs.

Liz Truss has previously been criticised by backbenchers for not appointing enough of the MPs that supported her to the cabinet, after Sunak-supporting and long-serving ministers such as Michael Gove and Grant Shapps were sacked when she appointed her top team.

It is thought that Mr Hunt, who is from the more moderate wing of the party, could potentially alleviate some of the political pressure that she is under from her own MPs, many of which are privately calling for her resignation.

Although Ms Truss axed the planned cut to corporation tax when she fired Mr Kwarteng, Mr Hunt also campaigned for the tax to be lowered significantly when he was running to be leader of the party earlier this year.

Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said that this showed he could not be trusted to change course on the economy.

“His flagship policies were cuts in corporation tax even deeper than Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. So I’m not convinced he’s got the right approach on the economy,” he told Sky News.

“Jeremy Hunt, like Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss, signs up to this trickle-down model of economics, which has failed our country and has resulted in the instability and the insecurity and volatility that we’ve seen in the last three weeks since the former chancellor’s mini-budget,” added Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow chancellor.

The Treasury yesterday confirmed yesterday that the Government’s fiscal plan will still be delivered by Mr Hunt on 31 October.

“Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt will set out the government’s Medium-Term Fiscal Plan on 31 October, alongside a full forecast from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility,” according to a statement issued by the Treasury after a day of turmoil in Liz Truss’s Government.

One of Mr Hunt’s closest allies, Steve Brine, who worked with the former health secretary, suggested that he would be the “chief executive” to Ms Truss’s “chairman” as she seeks to steady her administration after a brutal day for the Prime Minister.

Mr Brine called his friend “calm personified” and said the Conservative Party now needs to unite, as they all “detractor or otherwise, should want this Government to succeed.”

His appointment was also welcomed by the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, with its chief executive, Henri Murrison, saying that Mr Hunt was a “longstanding supporter of the importance of closing regional disparities and of the Northern Powerhouse as an economic project”.

“There is no way to sustainably boost growth without sound public finances and raising the prospects of low-productivity parts of the UK,” he said.

Closing regional disparities involves addressing health inequalities as well as investing in education, skills, and infrastructure such as HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail - all issues Jeremy Hunt understands well.”