Jeremy Hunt sent an icy chill through Britain on Thursday as he tried to fix a gaping black hole in its public finances with a wave of tax rises and spending cuts.
He froze a range of tax thresholds, hitting the wealthy hardest, as part of moves to raisesome £24 billion and scaled back the energy bills support package. At the same time he announced around £30 billion of spending cuts, with the worse of the squeeze potentially coming after the next general election.
