Jeremy Hunt takes on his biggest role yet as UK finance minister
Hunt #Hunt
By Elizabeth Piper, Andrew MacAskill and Kylie MacLellan
LONDON (Reuters) – He won only 18 of 357 votes from his parliamentary colleagues when he tried for a second time to become Britain’s prime minister this summer, but Jeremy Hunt now finds himself taking on his most powerful role in his 17-year political career.
Just three months after he all but admitted his ambitions to get the top job in politics had ended, Hunt was appointed finance minister, propelled into the job to clean up the market mess created by his boss, Prime Minister Liz Truss.
With lawmakers saying he now wields more power than Truss – a suggestion dismissed by her team in Downing Street – Hunt has been given a green light to rip up almost everything in her economic plan to try to restore stability in the markets, which baulked at the unfunded tax cuts she believed would spur growth.
The fact that he does not attract much passion among Conservatives may work not only in his favour, but possibly in hers too. His appointment has not ruffled feathers in any section of the deeply divided party.
“It feels to me like the parents returning after the children have had a raucous house party,” one Conservative lawmaker said on condition of anonymity.
Senior lawmaker Charles Walker, who had backed Penny Mordaunt – now leader of the House of Commons – in the summer leadership contest, said it was no bad thing that Hunt did not have a huge following in that race.
“No one camp of the other candidates who went further can feel too sore and bad about not having their man or woman as prime minister,” he told BBC radio.
It is hard to find anyone with a strong opinion on Hunt in parliament.
Having been the longest-serving health secretary in British history and had stints running the foreign office and culture ministry, he is widely seen as a safe pair of hands.
Hunt backed the Remain camp ahead of Britain’s 2016 referendum on whether to leave the European Union and he is seen as liberal on social matters, but he campaigned for the party leadership on a pledge of hefty tax cuts.
The 55-year-old is described by at least three lawmakers as personable yet somewhat guarded in interactions with colleagues in parliament’s tea rooms, with one saying he was not a man who had many “mates”.
But it was to Hunt that Truss turned when she was forced to sack her friend and ideological ally Kwasi Kwarteng after he failed to stop a market rout over the economic growth plans they unveiled on Sept. 23.
Truss said she viewed Hunt as someone who shared her aim to create a high-growth, low-tax economy.
“He’s one of the most experienced and widely respected government ministers and parliamentarians and he shares my convictions and ambitions for our country,” she told reporters.
CALMING INFLUENCE
Hunt spent the weekend repeating his message that the government would show the “markets, the world, indeed people watching at home, that we can properly account for every penny of our tax and spending plans”.
On Monday, he then scrapped much of Truss and Kwarteng’s economy plan and scaled back her vast energy subsidy in one of the biggest government U-turns to try restore investor confidence.
As well as touring the broadcasters, he has been meeting lawmakers and trying to calm those pressing for Truss to resign or be ousted.
In a room on the so-called Committee corridor in parliament, Hunt told colleagues that tough decisions would have to be made to balance the books.
“He was very frank about the difficulties with the public finances,” one lawmaker said after leaving the meeting. “It was very depressing.”
Another joked: “It was good to hear from the new prime minister.”
For now Hunt does seem to have brought some relief. The pound soared against the dollar but the cost of government borrowing remains high. He has promised to announce more when he makes another statement on Oct. 31 and publishes an independent forecast from the Office of Budget Responsibility.
ONE STEP AT A TIME
He is likely to take one step at a time, said two people who have worked with him, with one adding that he often sets a small set of defined objectives in his ministerial roles.
“He realises it was better to do a few things well rather than being spread too thinly,” said one government official who had worked for him.
And he will want to avoid the reputation he was left with after serving as health minister from 2012-2018, when he was briefly seen as the most unpopular frontline politician in Britain after facing down the longest strike in the state-run National Health Service’s history.
Hunt has since repaired some of that damage. After losing to Boris Johnson in the leadership race in 2019 he took over as chair of parliament’s health committee in 2020, becoming a critic of the government’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic.
“Given his criticism of the government in the last couple of years I’d imagined his days of frontline politics were behind him,” said one opposition Labour Party lawmaker.
The son of a senior naval officer and later admiral, Hunt studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University and then worked for a management consultancy before going to Japan for two years where he taught English and learned Japanese.
He is one of Britain’s richest politicians after selling his own business, the educational publishing group Hotcourses, in 2017 which netted him about 14 million pounds.
Some are still not convinced his latest appointment will bring him the prize he has pursued for so long – to become prime minister.
As one Conservative lawmaker put it: “What the heck is the question if the answer is Hunt?”
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Hugh Lawson)