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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Heather Stewart and Larry Elliott

Jeremy Hunt’s austerity budget: necessity or political choice?

Volunteers sort food into parcels at the Rumney Forum community charity in Cardiff.
Volunteers sort food into parcels at the Rumney Forum community charity in Cardiff. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Jeremy Hunt is preparing to wield the axe over public spending this week and raise taxes for everybody in an autumn statement that will be long on pain and short on good news. After Liz Truss’s short and catastrophic premiership, the “abacus economics” she despised is back in the ascendancy under Rishi Sunak.

The message from the government is that Britain has to live within its means, which Hunt and Sunak say requires action to reduce government borrowing and ensure that the national debt starts to fall as a share of national income.

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