Kwasi Kwarteng has been sacked as chancellor, Sky News understands.
Speculation about his future as chancellor started last night when Kwarteng ended his trip to the US a day early to fly back to the UK.
If confirmed, Kwarteng will be the second shortest-serving UK chancellor on record, after taking on the position just 38 days ago.
This also comes amid speculation that prime minister Liz Truss will announce a u-turn on parts of the mini-budget at 2pm today.
On 23 September, the former chancellor announced a flurry of new stamp duty thresholds on a permanent basis as part of his mini-budget.
The budget included a host of other tax cuts that were announced with the aim of boosting UK economic growth.
The cuts received a mixed reaction from the mortgage market with some suggesting it is one of the chancellor’s “crowd-pleasing tricks” while others suggest he “swung his axe boldly”.
In the days following Kwarteng’s tax-cutting statement, a range of large and small lenders have pulled all or part of their residential and buy-to-let loans.
Moneyfacts revealed that on 27 September, a record 935 home loans were withdrawn from the market, more than double the previous highest fall of 462 products on 1 April 2020 at the start of the pandemic lockdowns.
However, since the announcement, the government has reversed plans to cut the top 45p income tax rate after a storm of criticism.
On the u-turn, Kwarteng said “we get it” and that it had “become a distraction” from the government’s main economic policies.
At the time of the announcement, Shaw Financial Services founder Lewis Shaw noted that the government “should never have even attempted this policy in the manner they did”.
