Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget is not simple: Britain’s economy is misfiring and things need turning around fast. Yet a fiscal consolidation on the scale the chancellor is expected to require could push in exactly the opposite direction.
The latest figures from the economy are hardly encouraging. Growth slowed from 0.3% in the second quarter to just 0.1% in the third, driven down in part by the cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover.