Rishi Sunak refused to apologise six times for errors the Tory party made in their management of the economy.
The prime minister acknowledged that “mistakes were made” by Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng but stopped short of saying sorry.
The pair’s unfunded £45 billion tax cuts sent mortgage rates soaring and sparked a run on the pound.
Financial turbulence caused by Truss’s administration is expected to add billions of pounds of tax hikes and spending cuts to Sunak’s budget this Thursday.
He was asked by Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby to apologise, but he repeated that errors were made and that: “What I want to do now is fix them.”
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is looking to find up to £60 billion from a combination of hikes and spending cuts in his autumn statement on November 17.
Economists at the Resolution Foundation have calculated that Truss’s disastrous mini-budget exacerbated the problem to the tune of £30 billion, while causing chaos in the mortgage market.
During a round of broadcast interviews in Bali, Sunak said: “I think I demonstrated over the summer that I’m prepared to be honest with the country about the challenges we face and to make the difficult decisions that are required to fix them.”
He did not repeat the comments of his Chancellor that “we’re all going to be paying a bit more tax” but said the approach on Thursday will be “fair and compassionate”.
Sunak told BBC News: “The number one challenge we face is inflation. We’re not alone in that, actually, for example, Germany and Italy have inflation that is even higher than ours at the moment.
“And it’s important that we get a grip of that, it’s important that we limit the increase in mortgage rates that people are experiencing. And the best way to do that is to get a grip of our borrowing levels and have our debt on a sustainable basis falling.”