Yesterday’s post introduced the sad saga of Prime Minister Liz Truss and her first Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng over their fateful fiscal event of Friday, September 23, 2022.

My post ended with the market turmoil and negativity up to Friday, September 30.

Many of us hoped that his plan would work. After all, the market turmoil is global, for different reasons in different Western countries.

What motivates Kwarteng

On Wednesday, September 28, Rachel Sylvester wrote an interesting profile of Kwarteng for The Times, complete with photos of him and Truss from their earlier days as MPs. One from 2013 shows them together at a book awards event and another from 2018 has them enjoying a picnic at that year’s Hay literary festival.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine.

Kwarteng was pleased with his fiscal event and believed the market’s jitters were temporary:

So sure was he of his plan that he smiled as he announced that he was abolishing the cap on bankers’ bonuses introduced by David Cameron in 2014.

Within hours the pound had tanked, but Kwarteng doubled down, promising that he had “more to come”. As the markets reacted to the UK’s biggest tax cuts in 50 years, the pound fell to a record low against the dollar. One senior figure in the City described the fiscal statement to me as “economically reckless”. Yet the chancellor did not blink, with an ally suggesting that this was just “the City boys playing fast and loose with the economy” and insisting, “It will settle.”

Although it is unclear what Kwarteng thinks today, he and Truss were allies dating back at least a decade:

At 47, Kwarteng is the same age as Liz Truss and is one of her closest political allies. Earlier this year, he moved into a house just down the road from her in Greenwich and now they are neighbours in Downing Street. His appointment as chancellor was one of the first decisions she made when it became clear that she was likely to win the Tory leadership contest. Truss and Kwarteng have been working for weeks on their “shock and awe” shake-up of taxes, including changes to stamp duty and the abolition of the top 45p rate of income tax. The blueprint has been in their dreams for years …

His allies say his politics have also evolved. In 2012 the chancellor was one of a group of free marketeers – including Truss – who published a pamphlet called Britannia Unchained, which described British workers as “among the worst idlers in the world” and railed against a “bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation”. He has since distanced himself from the controversial text.

His parents arrived in England from Ghana. Both received a first-class education and had top-flight careers:

An only child, Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng was born in Waltham Forest, northeast London, in 1975. His parents had come to Britain as students in the Sixties. His father, Alfred, an economist for the Commonwealth Secretariat, was educated in Ghana at an Anglican school with a Winchester-educated English headmaster. His mother, Charlotte, a successful barrister, was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. “It was a self-reliance thing,” Kwarteng once explained. She instilled in her son a ferocious work ethic and education was of fundamental importance to the family.

When his father was posted to Switzerland, Kwasi was sent at the age of eight to board at the fee-paying Colet Court – now St Paul’s Juniors – in southwest London. He admits it was probably too young to be separated from his parents but he not only survived, he thrived. He won a scholarship to Eton where friends recall a “lanky malcoordinated” but hard-working teenager who was determined to make the most of the opportunity he had been given.

Like Boris Johnson, Kwarteng played the wall game – a brutal mixture of football and rugby. “He’s so tall that he was a great addition to any team,” one fellow pupil recalls.

Kwarteng is not attracted to identity politics:

Kwarteng never expressed his desire to be “world king” in the way that Johnson did. “I was slightly surprised when he went into politics,” says a contemporary from Eton and Cambridge. “He wasn’t in a political activist circle at university. People sometimes think one Etonian is just like another, but Boris and Kwasi are very different. Boris wants to rule the world; Kwasi wants to solve problems, rather than just being in power for the sake of it. He’s not going to go out there to break rules. Kwasi does listen to people and wants to discuss ideas” …

Kwarteng’s 2011 book Ghosts of Empire is a far more nuanced analysis than the rose-tinted version of British history favoured by Tory traditionalists. He rejects the “sterile debate” over whether “empire was a good or bad thing” and concludes, “Much of the instability in the world is a product of its legacy of individualism and haphazard policymaking.” According to those who know him well, the chancellor is uncomfortable with “culture war” politics and describes his own philosophy as “relentless pragmatism”. One aide insists, “He is sometimes lazily pigeonholed as a ruthless, black and white free market ideologue. It is true that he is a low-tax Conservative. He’s a free marketeer, but there are occasions when the state does need to intervene.” In 2019, the chancellor told a Tory party conference event: “There’s nothing [better] to convert someone from being a radical free marketeer to seeing the virtues of government action than making them an energy minister.”

He focused on his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge:

“As a student he was charismatic and a bit chaotic,” says a friend from that time. “He was scholarly. The everyday run of things didn’t worry him. He would be immersed in his books.”

He began meeting the great and the good in the Conservative Party:

… the future chancellor was spotted by Dr John Casey, an English fellow and legendary figure among Conservative thinkers, who invited him to his dining club, the Michael Oakeshott Society. There Kwarteng met Tory politicians and journalists such as Norman Lamont, Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit and Charles Moore. Casey insists it was never a political society: “It is devoted to intelligent conversation and strong views don’t go with that.

“He has a first-rate mind and a first-rate personality,” Casey continues. “He is intellectually and personally equipped to be chancellor. He’s a cultured man, an intellectual – there are very few in politics. He’s not like anybody else; he’s himself.”

After Cambridge, Kwarteng won a Kennedy scholarship to Harvard. When he finished his time there, he returned to Cambridge to earn a doctorate in economic history, after which the City of London beckoned:

He then worked as a fund manager at the bank JP Morgan and at Odey Asset Management, run by the Brexit-backing investor Crispin Odey, as well as chairing the Bow Group, a conservative think tank.

His political career began afterwards:

In 2005 he stood as the Conservative candidate for Brent East, coming third, before being elected as MP for the safe Tory seat of Spelthorne in Surrey in 2010, the same year as Truss entered politics. He spent several years on the back benches after criticising coalition policies including the help-to-buy scheme. “He’s genuinely clever, with a very strong academic, scholarly mind,” one old friend says. “But that academic, scholarly mind meant he was happy to speak out against David Cameron and George Osborne and didn’t really worry about the consequences.”

Kwarteng understands the importance of a Prime Minister and Chancellor working closely together:

For now, Kwarteng and Truss are united on economic policy. The chancellor tells colleagues that his role is to support the PM, explaining: “I will facilitate; I won’t emasculate.” One ally says, “Kwasi was completely disillusioned with the battles between No 10 and No 11 under Rishi and Boris. When No 10 and No 11 are at war, nothing works. Kwasi will deliver what the prime minister wants. She is the first lord of the treasury, Kwasi is the second lord of the treasury. That will change the entire mood and approach of government. The institutions will try to break No 10 and No 11 apart, but they underestimate the strength of the relationship between Kwasi and Liz.”

Hmm. Interesting.

British public gaslit

The last week of September was one of news about unfunded tax cuts, the Bank of England stepping in to calm the UK markets, how Kwarteng and Truss didn’t bother to communicate their economic plan and how awful everything was.

On Friday, September 30, Tom Harwood, GB News’s political correspondent and Guido Fawkes alum, put things into perspective, rightly saying that the media were gaslighting Britons:

That day, The Telegraph‘s Matthew Lynn wrote, ‘There’s no such thing as unfunded tax cuts — it’s our money’:

It is hard to imagine that three simple words could be quite so lethal. But over the last few days “unfunded tax cuts” have been held responsible for the potential destruction of the British economy, and, come to think of it, the global financial system as well.

We are told that the Government’s £45bn package of cuts announced last week have crashed the currency markets, sent mortgage rates soaring, and left the stock market to keel over and die. Any government crazy enough to even attempt unfunded tax cuts can expect to be evicted from office within days if not hours. 

Tosh. Although the phrase has become ubiquitous, we should be a lot more cautious about how we use it. In reality, tax cuts don’t need to be funded, for the same reason that staying home instead of going out to dinner doesn’t need to be ‘funded’, and nor does opting to spend Christmas with your parents rather than flying off to Mauritius need to be ‘funded’ either.

It isn’t spending. It is simply taking less of your citizen’s money. It is state spending that needs to be ‘funded’, and not its opposite – and until we get that straight, and change the language we use, we will never be able to have a grown-up debate about how to manage our economy.

If Kwasi Kwarteng had a grand for every time our broadcasters, newspapers, a think tank, or indeed a growing legion of City analysts, used the term “unfunded tax cuts”, or UTCs as we should probably call them, he’d have enough money to wade into the markets and send sterling back over the two dollar mark. The phrase probably has its own emoji by now, just to make it easier to discuss on WhatsApp (some sort of variant of the scowling face, I’d imagine).

Ever since the pound started falling modestly against the dollar on Monday – because after all “crashing” seems a slightly extreme term for a downwards correction of less than 10pc – the phrase has dominated the headlines.

According to just about every think tank, constant broadcasts from the BBC, dozens of newspaper analysts, the IMF, and just about every major City bank, not to mention a small army of retired central bankers, it was the Chancellor’s decision to cut a few taxes without announcing accompanying decisions on reducing spending that led immediately to a dramatic sell-off in sterling and a rise in bond yields that could only be controlled by emergency intervention by the Bank of England. 

A quick Google search yields 28,000 mentions of the phrase, and that is without even counting social media. According to the credit ratings agency Moody’s “large unfunded tax cuts are credit negative” while according to the former Bank Governor Mark Carney “the message of financial markets is that there is a limit to unfunded spending and unfunded tax cuts in this environment.”

And yet, in reality, we should be a lot more careful about the language we use. We can leave aside the point that the “unfunded” parts of last Friday’s fiscal package amount to no more than a few billion pounds, a trivial sum give the size of state spending, and that by far the largest part of it was made up of the energy support package that all sides of the political spectrum had been calling for. The more important point is this: we shouldn’t ever describe tax cuts as “unfunded”.

By definition a tax cut is not spending any money. It is simply a decision to take less from a particular group of people in one particular way …

Next, the term ignores the possibility that tax cuts might pay for themselves …

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it concedes the argument before it has even begun. “Unfunded” is a boo word, and even more so when you put the inevitable “reckless” in front of it. The language deliberately skews opinion against a reform of the tax system. Even worse, it is used by banks and broadcasters who pretend they are staying neutral – when in reality they are anything but. 

… fundamentally it is only state spending that needs to be funded – not leaving more money in the pockets of long-suffering taxpayers. If we could be a little clearer about that we might be able to have a slightly more sane debate about how much tax the government should be raising and how – instead of hysterical catastrophizing about UTCs.

On Saturday, October 1, The Sun rightly defended the Truss-Kwarteng plan, citing other Western economies’ woes:

On Sunday, October 2, GB News’s and The Telegraph‘s Liam Halligan, formerly of Channel 4 News, was on the money when he said that the market meltdown was the fault of quantitative easing (QE):

… This week of financial turmoil has left millions frightened and angry.

While Kwarteng’s statement sparked last week’s alarming debt repricing, it was by no means the underlying cause. There are far bigger forces at play …

… what we saw last week was just the beginning of a long-term shift away from over a decade of ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing. We’ve indulged in ultra-loose monetary policy since the 2008/09 financial crisis – a necessary emergency measure, which ossified into a lifestyle choice.

And now, the obvious excesses, dangers – and crass stupidity – of this policy, are coming home to roost.

Since that financial crisis, the Bank of England has created hundreds of billions of pounds of QE money, as have similarly aligned central banks, which have blown huge asset price bubbles in stocks, bonds and property.

QE has helped governments borrow cheaply, while making the rich even richer – which is why, having begun as a £50 billion temporary measure to inject liquidity into bombed-out banks, it has morphed, thirteen years on, into an £895 billion monster.

The early tranches of QE stayed largely within the financial system – so didn’t cause serious inflation. But the Covid-era variant, funding furlough and an avalanche of business support loans, has fed directly into the real economy – helping to explain today’s inflation predicament.

This is an inconvenient truth that no-one wants to admit – certainly not the likes of the International Monetary Fund and central bankers who oversaw QE. Better to blame an incoming Tory government ­– one led by a politically vulnerable Prime Minister, with only lukewarm support from her own MPs.

… the idea that this “unfunded cut crashed the pound” is preposterous. Yet that is now the accepted political narrative – that a greed-driven Tory policy collapsed sterling and sent 10-year gilt yield surging as fears swirled of government insolvency, sending higher borrowing costs rippling across the economy, damaging hard-working families and firms.

What I suspect happened is that global currency traders, understanding the top tax cut was politically tin-eared, could see ministers were in for a kicking. With the Government introducing a potentially expensive energy price cap, the moment seemed right to start shorting – that is, betting against – the pound, knowing the media would pile in.

When that happened on Asian markets on Monday, and we woke to a plunging currency, I was astonished that ministers fell silent – given the strength of the arguments on their side …

For now, the Bank of England’s intervention on Wednesday – buying gilts to rein in borrowing costs – seems to have worked. By Friday, the pound was back where it was pre-statement, the 10-year yield having retreated from over 4.5pc to around 4.0pc.

But the City and Wall Street moneymen, having loaded pension schemes with billions of pounds of debt, yet again have the upper hand – effectively forcing the UK authorities to restart the QE asset-boosting machine. This cannot end well.

“Tory tax cuts”. It’s such an easy and convenient scapegoat. The truth is we’re in for a sustained period of painful adjustment – one which our political and media class must urgently start to explain.

The Times‘s Robert Colvile pointed out the global aspects of market turmoil, driven in part by the United States:

The markets were already primed to punish the UK, he [Albert Edwards of Société Générale] argues, because of the Bank of England’s decision the previous day to raise rates at a slower rate than the US and to keep trying to dispose of the assets accumulated under quantitative easing. So Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision to throw in a few more tax cuts just gave an extra push to a boulder that was already rolling …

Admittedly, the attempts of some in government to blame last week’s rout in the markets entirely on global factors strained credulity. But they did have the core of a point. A year ago the Bank of England believed interest rates would stay below 1 per cent. A month ago they were set to top out at 3 per cent. By the time Kwarteng got to his feet, the expected peak had risen to 5 per cent — soaring over 6 per cent at the height of last week’s panic.

Now, some of that rise in September was probably due to anxieties about the new government. But it was also driven, yes, by global factors — in particular decisions made in Washington. Even if Kwarteng had replaced his planned statement with a lusty rendition of the Marseillaise, mortgage-holders would still be facing eye-popping jumps in interest rates. For example, at that 6 per cent rate a typical UK mortgage would, according to the Resolution Foundation, cost an excruciating £4,800 a year extra — but £3,800 of that was already on the way before Friday’s speech. The age of cheap money is over not just for Britain but for everyone.

Over the past three years, a number of conservatives must have wondered why Boris Johnson never delved deeper into economic policy. A letter to The Telegraph gives a possible explanation — global forces at work:

SIR – It takes great strength of character and conviction to stand up and face a baying mob, especially a political one. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have my admiration.

I always wondered why Boris Johnson did not attempt to enact some of his early policies after Brexit, for which he had great public support. Perhaps he understood how the pro-EU and socialist contingents in Parliament and the wider political world would react, and was fully aware of the force that would be against him.

I wish Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng good luck. They have shown enough courage in their beliefs to see this challenge through.

Conservative Party Conference

The Conservative Party Conference opened on Sunday, October 3, in Birmingham.

That day, The Times reported that Kwarteng had requested Cabinet ministers to cut expenditure in their respective departments:

Kwasi Kwarteng has told ministers to make cuts in their departments and warned them “we have a duty to live within our means”.

The chancellor has asked cabinet ministers to send him their “proposals to support growth” by the end of the month.

He is also launching a reprioritisation, efficiency and productivity review across the public sector, which will re-examine “existing spending commitments” and repurpose budgets to deliver the government’s “core priorities”, including growth.

I wrote about the conference, including Truss’s and Kwarteng’s U-turn on abolishing the 45% tax rate, the prominent Conservative MPs in disarray, the rebels and Truss’s closing speech.

On Monday, October 3, the duo pulled out of a fringe event, which cost £3,000 a ticket:

Nigel Farage, looking on from the outside, predicted a Labour rout in the next general election:

Meanwhile, Guido Fawkes kept us apprised of market movements, which weren’t nearly as alarming as expected that week:

He rightly criticised Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves for stirring the pot unnecessarily:

On Wednesday, October 5, as the conference closed, Guido wrote (emphases his):

The Bank of England has been easing off its interventions in the gilt market, leaving Rachel Reeves’s hyperbolic attack lines exposed for their inaccuracies. Julian Jessop points out the fact the Bank did not have to buy any gilts again today, leaving total purchases stable at £3.66 billion. A tad short of the £65 billion she repeatedly claims. This is a further sign market jitters have been effectively mitigated, far from Labour’s claims of an “economic crash”. As a trained economist and former Bank of England employee, Rachel really must know better. Her sums were out by a factor of 17…

At the weekend, while anti-Conservative pundits were still banging on about the 45% tax rate, which Truss and Kwarteng did a U-turn on …

… The Telegraph‘s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard pointed out that gas prices were already falling, indicating that ‘Liz Truss may be winning her gamble on the energy price cap after all’:

Plummeting global gas prices have slashed the cost of the UK’s energy price cap and may ultimately reduce the monthly subsidy to zero, greatly alleviating the strain on Government borrowing.

NatWest Markets estimates that the price guarantee would cost approximately £30bn over the first six months based on current futures contracts, half the £60bn figure assumed by the Treasury and the rating agencies …

While NatWest remains wary of gilts after the mini-budget and the bond shock last month, it said pessimism over the UK’s public finances may have gone too far. Gilts may no longer be a one-way bet for traders …

Goldman Sachs thinks European wholesale prices may fall a further 40pc by late winter. Average energy bills in the UK would in that case fall to £2,000 or less.

The Government could put its cheque book back in the drawer.

Douglas McWilliams, from the Centre of Economics and Business Research, says that the public finances are in better shape than widely-supposed.

An odd week that began well

By Monday, October 10, things appeared to be looking up for Truss and Kwarteng.

Mel Stride MP, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee and not one of their best friends, was satisfied that the then-Chancellor agreed to review his economic plan on Halloween rather than in November:

Tuesday, October 11, was a red-letter day.

The head of JP Morgan said that Truss deserved a chance:

Guido wrote:

… Speaking last night from London with US broadcaster CNBC, Dimon backed Liz’s tax plans and hammered home the need for laser-like focus on growth – adding he’d “love to hear that out of their mouth every time a president or prime minister speaks”…

It’ll take time to execute the policies and kind of drive growth and what’s important … [but] there’s a lot of things the UK has going for it and proper strategies to get it growing faster … then it can accomplish some of the other objectives it wants to accomplish too […] I would like to see the new Prime Minister, the new Chancellor, be successful […] I think every government should be focusing on growth. I would love to hear that out of their mouth every time a president or prime minister speaks.

Another proud member of the Pro-Growth Coalition. Although he did warn the US will likely tip into recession in about 6 months…

The IMF did an about-face, as The Telegraph reported:

Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cutting mini-Budget will help Britain to be the fastest growing major economy this year at the cost of higher long-term inflation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said.

Strong momentum at the end of 2021 means UK economic growth will outpace the rest of the G7 this year. Tax cuts announced in the mini-Budget are expected to lift it even higher than the IMF’s current forecast of 3.6pc, which was published on Tuesday but finalised before the Chancellor announced his plans …

The paper‘s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote, ‘Rejoice: we may be very close to Fed capitulation’:

Not only is the Fed rushing through jumbo rises of 75 points each meeting, it is also draining global dollar liquidity with $95bn a month of quantitative tightening (QT). It has never done the two together before. And it does not understand how QE/QT actually works, as admitted cheerfully by one Ben Bernanke, Nobel Prize laureate as of yesterday …

Ben Bernanke flagged the dangers of a strong dollar and the capital exodus from emerging markets yesterday. Without naming the British gilt market, he said financial stress in the international system was building up and posed a threat. “We really have to pay close attention,” he said. 

On Wednesday, October 12, it was noted that a Federal Reserve hike in interest rates took place before Kwarteng’s economic statement:

Furthermore, the US was also experiencing an unusual increase in mortgage rates, meaning that the UK was not the only country with that problem:

On Thursday, October 13, Truss had her weekly meeting with King Charles, who greeted her with ‘Dear, oh dear’ while the press were there:

What did he know?

He would have heard Foreign Secretary James Cleverly defend Truss and Kwarteng on that day’s news round. The poor man.

The Telegraph has a running diary of what went on that morning. This is the summary:

James Cleverly has warned it would be a “disastrously bad idea” to replace Liz Truss as Prime Minister.

Ms Truss is under intense pressure from some of her own MPs to abandon her economic plan following a market backlash to the measures set out in the mini-Budget.

The Prime Minister’s leadership is being questioned after little more than a month in the job, with some Tory MPs already considering who could replace her.

ConservativeHome‘s editor Paul Goodman was also on the airwaves. He told BBC Radio 4 that some Conservative MPs had suggestions for Truss’s and Kwarteng’s replacement:

The former Tory MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “All sorts of different people are talking about all sorts of different things because the Conservative backbenchers are casting around for a possible replacement for Kwasi Kwarteng, even for a possible replacement for Liz Truss.

“All sorts of names are being thrown about, Rishi Sunak, even Boris Johnson, Kit Malthouse, Sajid Javid.

“But one idea doing the rounds is that Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak, who, after all, between them got pretty much two-thirds of the votes of MPs, come to some kind of arrangement and essentially take over.”

The King probably also knew that Truss and Kwarteng were going to do a U-turn on corporation tax, which they planned to lower to 19%, as it is in Ireland:

On Wednesday, at PMQs, Truss stood by the cut:

What we are doing is simply NOT putting up corporation tax. It’s not a tax cut, we’re just not raising corporation tax. And I feel that it would be wrong, in a time when we are trying to attract investment into our country, at a time of global economic slowdown, to be raising taxes. Because it will bring less revenue in.  And the way that we are going to get the money to fund our National Health Service… is by having a strong economy with companies investing and creating jobs.

On Thursday, October 13, Guido wrote:

What a difference 24 hours makes: this lunchtime The Sun broke the news that Truss “is considering raising Corporation Tax next year in spectacular mini-Budget U-turn”. A source tells Harry Cole that while the U-turn is being seriously considered, it wouldn’t be back up to the 25% proposed by Rishi before leaving the Treasury.

An unpleasant surprise for Kwarteng

Meanwhile, Kwarteng was in Washington at the annual IMF meeting.

Guido’s post had an update:

Channel 4 doorstepped him on his way in, where he said “I’ll be coming out with a statement on 31^st October and I’m not going to pre-empt that.” As The Speccie’s James Forsyth points out, if the markets are now pricing in a U-turn, and the government decides against one, they’ll likely be in a worse position than they were 24 hours ago…

On Friday, October 14, we woke up to the news that Kwarteng was summoned back to London, under the guise that emergency budget negotiations had to take place. The IMF meeting was to last into the weekend:

This could mean only one thing — that his time as Chancellor was over.

Guido reported that Mel Stride was happy that Kwarteng’s economic package was about to be shot to bits:

… one source quoted in the Financial Times claims “Almost everything in the Budget is now up for grabs” …

For those who enjoyed the excitement of tracking Priti Patel’s flight back to the UK ahead of her sacking by Theresa May, you can follow Kwasi’s flight in real time here …

Mel Stride, Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, spoke on the Today Programme and welcomed a U-Turn. He called it a “powerful” signal to markets and added the government’s “fiscal credibility is now firmly back on the table”. He added the Conservative party should give the government “more time” and space to “rest”. How generous…

Sterling and bond markets had rallied following the first reports of a U-turn, which only adds on the pressure for more reversals. Elsewhere in the markets, today is the final day of the Bank of England’s gilt operations. Although gilt markets appeared steady this morning, the real test will come on Monday…

A Downing Street source tried to downplay Kwarteng’s return:

Kwarteng had scrambled to take the last commercial flight from Dulles Airport to Heathrow:

The next bit of news was that Truss was going to hold a press conference that afternoon.

Guido wrote:

Liz is set to U-turn on the corporation tax freeze at 2pm this afternoon. It’s rumoured she’ll whack it all the way up to 25% in the spring. Kwasi won’t be appearing alongside her…

Speculation began on who the new Chancellor would be. The Sun‘s political editor Harry Cole tweeted the following in the hours before the press conference, indicating Jeremy Hunt:

Cabinet members were correct about Jeremy Hunt:

King Charles approved the following appointments from Truss: