The Mancunian Way: The Bankers' Budget

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Here is today's Mancunian Way:

Hello,

‘Thatcher Max’. ‘The Bankers' Budget’. The reaction to Kwasi Kwarteng’s so-called mini-budget has not been so positive here in Greater Manchester.

The Chancellor has abolished the top rate of income tax for the highest earners, axed the cap on bankers’ bonuses and added restrictions to the welfare system. He argued that tax cuts are ‘central to solving the riddle of growth’.

The plans include Liz Truss’s promises to reverse the national insurance rise and axe the hike to corporation tax.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves described the plans as ‘reckless’ and a ‘return to the trickle down of the past, not a brave new future’. “This is casino economics - gambling the mortgages and finances of every family in the country. It is reckless, and it is irresponsible,” she said.

Shadow Levelling Up secretary and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy said it spells a transfer of wealth from the North and Midlands to London. “The tax cut for the wealthiest costs £2.3bn this year. That’s more than the entire Levelling Up Fund given out so far,” she tweeted.

In a pithy tweet, Manchester Council leader Bev Craig described the plans as ‘The Bankers Budget’. While Andy Burnham said the flavour of the new government is ‘Thatcher-max’. “Get ready for images of corks popping in the City alongside miserable hordes huddled in ‘warm banks’,” he wrote in his Evening Standard column.

Leigh’s Conservative MP James Grundy said ‘Lower taxes. A growing economy. Higher wages’ is the ‘Conservative Plan for Growth’. But the