Jeremy Hunt’s grim Autumn Statement to Parliament on 17 November sought to address a £54bn black hole in Britain’s public finances by introducing £24bn in tax hikes and £30bn in spending cuts.
The chancellor’s measures were necessitated by the disaster of his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-Budget” of 23 September, a radical but uncosted tax-slashing agenda reliant on heavy government borrowing that promised to deliver “growth, growth, growth” but instead spooked the international markets, tanked the pound, sparked chaos in the mortgage sector, forced a dramatic intervention from the Bank of England to prop up pensions and brought a swift end to the premiership of Liz Truss.
