There is only one activity less productive than watching the Autumn Statement, and that is watching the prime minister's questions that precedes it. Every question even tangentially related to tax and spend receives the rote reply: "I would not want to pre-empt my honourable friend the chancellor". Perish the thought.
Rather than sitting through Jeremy Hunt's speech, you'd have been better off reading the accompanying Treasury documents and the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) economic and fiscal outlook. Think of them as the highly acclaimed novel to the speech's heavily panned screenplay.
