Today's episode with Richard Seymour was recorded on Friday before the government

U-turn on the cut to the 45P top rate of tax that occurred on Monday morning.

So I spoke again with Richard just an hour ago to get his thoughts on Liz Truss and

Quasi Quateng's partial retreat on their mini budget.

You'll hear Richard's comments on this morning's developments next, and then afterwards you'll hear the interview we conducted on Friday.

A couple of days ago, we spoke about the UK government's disastrous mini-budget and the economic and political turmoil that came in its wake,

and you suggested when we spoke that we might either see Prime Minister Liz Truss and her Chancellor Quasi Quartang

stick to their guns and try and hold the line on the abolition of the 45P tax rate and the rest

of their proposed rather unpopular measures, or instead that they would suffer what you called

a graceless retreat that would be politically damaging for them. The one thing that you ruled out

was any kind of effective tactical

retreat that would enable them to steady their position somewhat. This morning we've seen them

partially U-turned with the announcement that the 45P tax rate will now remain in place. Do you

regard that as just the kind of panicked response that you were talking about, or do you think

there's any way they can finesse this U-turn and steady their position? It depends what we're talking about. I mean, first of all,

just to be clear, the retreat is on one aspect of the tax agenda. I understand that the 45P tax rate

would have cut government funds by about $2 billion, whereas the total tax cuts would amount to 45 billion. So we've seen

a fraction of the tax cuts reversed. This happened to be one of the more obviously unpopular tax cuts

because it's clearly directed at higher income earners, but, you know, corporation tax cut is

much more expensive. So there's a number of things going on here.

First of all, I've noticed that the CBI and a number of business coalitions are cautiously in favor of a version of what the conservatives are doing.

They don't like the political instability and the market's instability, but they are in favor of what's called supply-side reforms.

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