Liz Truss, the newly established British Prime Minister, is being compared to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher due to her pursuits in lowering taxes and increasing economic growth.
This past Friday, the new Conservative Party government shut down a rise slated for the corporate tax rate, cut the overall basic income tax rate to 19%, and kicked off a series of talks concerning special economic zones across multiple regions. “Economic growth isn’t some academic term with no connection to the real world. It means more jobs, higher pay and more money to fund public services,” explained British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng in a recently issued press release. “This will not happen overnight but the tax cuts and reforms I’ve announced today — the biggest package in generations — send a clear signal that growth is our priority.”
All the while, many other European countries have set in place restrictions on energy consumption against their citizens while taking further strides to look into renewable power sources, Truss has called out for higher oil production and has set a new goal of putting the nation as a new exporter of energy by as soon as 2040.
“We are cutting off the toxic power and pipelines from authoritarian regimes and strengthening our energy resilience,” Truss stated this past Wednesday via a speech issues at the United Nations General Assembly. “We will ensure we cannot be coerced or harmed by the reckless actions of rogue actors abroad. We will transition to a future based on renewable and nuclear energy while ensuring that the gas used during that transition is from reliable sources including our own North Sea production.”
Officials with the British government recently announced a new series of gas and oil leases for the North Sea and have canceled its moratorium against shale gas production, which blocked and outlawed the practice of fracking. The ban was first set in place roughly three years ago due to concerns about earthquakes.
Due to her goal of doubling the growth rate of the British economy, Truss ended up drawing many comparisons to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan along with her predecessor, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
One article from The Wall Street Journal explained that Truss is trying to set up her public and political image in the same vein as Thatcher, whos policies kicked off an era of economic growth. The Iron Lady, however, set up a series of spending cutes prior to the tax cuts in order to make sure that the government continued to be funded, which means that the agenda from Truss more accurately lines up with that of Gipper, who spiked spending while also dropping the rate of taxes.
