Jeremy Hunt won’t enjoy today’s papers. “Tories soak the strivers,” agonises the Mail, the condemnation bolstered by a columnist’s lament: “And there was me thinking we’d voted in the Conservatives”. “From bad to worse,” says the Guardian. “Hunt paves the way for years of pain,” says the Financial Times. “Carnage,” predicts the Mirror. “Years of tax pain,” warns the Times.
But then his autumn statement was never going to be easy or please everybody. It had to meet multiple objectives, some of which are contradictory in the short term; it was positioned to pursue a total fiscal effort that is greater than what I believe is strictly necessary, and it had to reconcile economic and financial realities with political and institutional priorities.
