Prime minister Liz Truss sought to hold her nerve during the course of a fraught Sunday at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, but at around 11pm in her hotel suite she finally admitted defeat.
Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng met in the Hyatt Regency to consider whether a key plank of his “mini-Budget” could be saved. The verdict, as they sat gloomily in a private room high above the city, was a resounding “No”.
Their rapid U-turn on his plan to axe the 45p top rate of income tax — announced only nine days earlier — was the culmination of a series of tense discussions after his fiscal statement unleashed turmoil on financial markets and prompted widespread anger among Tory MPs and voters.
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