TODAY the new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, fresh from his bizarre performance in gurning and laughing his way through the Queen's funeral, unveiled his much-anticipated mini-budget, and I am genuinely speechless, which is awkward because I have this article to write and the deadline is looming.

But having had a wee sit down with a cup of tea and performed the breathing and relaxation exercises taught by my physiotherapist, I've just about calmed down enough to continue without writing a piece which is basically a string of swear words directed at the Tories.

We knew that the Truss government was going to be bad. Today, we got a taste of just how awful and nasty it's going to be. Truss had already stated that she was prepared to make unpopular decisions in order to reward the Conservatives' corporate donors – sorry, “grow the economy” – and we all thought that wasn't going to be too difficult for her given how unpopular she already was. However, on today's performance, Truss is going to make herself so unpopular that by comparison Margaret Thatcher could have been the guest of honour at the Durham Miners' Gala.

She started by lifting the cap on bankers' bonuses and loftily announcing that this was a part of the levelling-up agenda.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon rips into Tories' mini-budget: 'Super wealthy laughing all the way to the bank'

The Chancellor has continued the giveaway to the rich and revealed a £45 billion package of tax cuts which will put more money in the bank balances of the better off, and help those on the lowest incomes not at all – the very households which are most desperately in need of help during this cost of living crisis.

If your income is too low to qualify you for paying income tax, Kwarteng's mini-budget helps you out by exactly zero pounds. If your annual income is £100,000 you will be better off by £1470. If you are fortunate enough to have an annual income of £1,000,000, you will be better off by £55,250, and if you have an income of £10,000,000, you'll be better off by a whopping £617,720, a portion of which you could decide to donate to the Conservative Party in thanks for their services to corporate greed.

Kwarteng has abolished the top rate of income tax, the 45p in the pound paid by those whose taxable income exceeds £150,000 a year – that's more money for the 629,000 richest people in the UK. And make no mistake, if your taxable income is more than £150,000 a year, you can afford to employ a good accountant who can ensure that a decent chunk of your total income is non-taxable.

Kwarteng has also refused to allow the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) to assess the economic impact of his tax cuts, a move which was condemned in a strongly worded statement from Mel Stride MP, the Conservative chair of the Treasury select committee.

Imagine how the Conservative Party would react if – with debt and interest payments at their current level, soaring inflation and the pound crashing against the dollar – a Labour or an SNP government announced a package of tax cuts targeted at their core vote paid for by a big increase in borrowing and had prevented the OBR from carrying out an assessment of the economic impact. They would be screaming from the rafters where they suspend themselves in their bat form about the economic vandalism of an irresponsible government. Douglas Ross would be spluttering outrage to the BBC's Glenn Campbell and might even forget to mention ferries for five minutes.

But Kwarteng didn't forget the poors entirely. It's the fault of people on Universal Credit and not Brexit that the UK is suffering from a labour shortage, so he has introduced new measures to financially penalise the poorest if they fail to take up low-paid jobs with unsociable hours. In Tory Britain, if you are rich, you must be incentivised by being made even richer; but if you are poor, you have to be incentivised by being made even poorer. He also announced new measures to clamp down even further on the right of unions to take strike action, because the real problem here is not a Conservative-created cost of living crisis – it's those who protest about it.

This is a budget to entrench and deepen inequality in a UK which is already one of the most unequal economies in Europe. The rich get even richer, the poor get poorer.

Meanwhile, in other news, Gordie Broon's plan to "save the union" has been unveiled, it amounts to devolution of stamp duty, which the Scottish Parliament already has, "constitutional rights" which aren't legislatively possible in the UK – remember what happened when the Sewel Convention was written into law – and a promise to look at abolishing the House of Lords, again.

This is a UK in a death spiral, with a callous government and an ineffectual opposition. Scotland needs out as soon as possible.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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