The government’s decision to cut taxes was “deeply appealing” but “complete nonsense” and showed “immense ignorance” a former Conservative minister told Abta’s Travel Convention today.
Ex-MP and Tory Party leadership contender Rory Stewart told Convention attendees: “Politics is becoming increasingly relevant.
“Normally, a Tory mini-budget would be pretty boring. Kwasi Kwarteng revealed his mini-budget and overnight everyone experienced it directly – the drop in the currency, the rise in mortgage rates, the effect on energy prices.”
Stewart suggested: “Cutting taxes is deeply appealing.” But he argued: “It’s complete nonsense to argue Britain’s economy could grow like the US. It reveals immense ignorance. [But] it’s what Liz Truss has done.”
He noted: “Rishi Sunak argued ‘If you do that you will terrify the markets and plunge Britain into recession’.”
Stewart told the Convention: “British politics was pretty static, but it has collapsed like an unstable soufflé. There are no votes in the centre anymore, only on the right and the left.
He argued: “There was never a time when politicians were popular. Politics was always a messy, amateur and unpopular business, but it is getting worse.”
Stewart ran briefly through his career as a minister – for the environment, for the Middle East and Asia, for Africa, for prisons and as minister for international development – noting he barely had time to understand the issues in each department before being moved on.
He left Parliament, he said, because “as an MP you are letting down your constituents and voters all the time, dealing with issues you are not qualified to speak on”.
Stewart argued Russian president Putin “gambled on the European and Russian economies being too entwined by oil” when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February and said: “All our assumptions were wrong.”
He warned: “Now there is a significant risk that China will go into Taiwan.” Stewart noted “90% of semi-conductors in the West are made in Taiwan and said “it would be a catastrophe”.
The deterioration in relations with China had changed some of the calculations on Brexit, he added, saying: “Five years ago every company board was saying ‘Why aren’t we doing more in China’. Now they are saying ‘Why aren’t we doing less’. It means Britain needs closer relations with its neighbours.”
Yet Stewart also argued: “Some parts of the world are getting significantly better.
“In 2005, 40% of Morocco’s population were living in extreme poverty – 15 years later it’s 3%, and it is an economy whose biggest growth area is tourism. That is not unusual.”
He insisted: “We’re reaching a golden age of travel [and] it’s very difficult to find alternatives to travel [for economic development] in developing countries. Travel can create a range of employment.”
Photo credit: Arif Gardner