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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Polly Toynbee

Before he slashes services even further, Hunt should look at the state of the UK

Jeremy Hunt delivers his statement to the House of Commons, 17 October 2022.
Jeremy Hunt delivers his statement to the House of Commons, 17 October 2022. Photograph: Uk Parliamentary Recording Unit Handout/EPA

Who’s in charge? The 400lb silverback called “the markets”. Sending for the zoo-keeper with a bucket of fruit seems to have calmed the beast for now, but £32bn-worth is not enough. The gorilla will be back in a fortnight, which will mean more of Jeremy Hunt’s promised “difficult decisions”, more taxes and more spending cuts. The worst is yet to come.

How did they do this to us? This party has taken the country through 12 years of economic calamity. Long before Truss, its all-pain-no-gain austerity caused household income growth to drop back: between 2007 and 2018 the UK fell behind the rest of Europe, with only Greece and Cyprus experiencing lower economic growth. Incomes in France grew by 34% and in Germany by 27%, while the typical UK income dropped by 2%.

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