Jeremy Hunt is the heir to Gordon Brown

Jeremy Hunt – known to broadcasters by a slightly different surname) – delivered his Autumn Statement today. He did so on behalf of ‘the British,’ he said. All the way through his speech, it was British this, British that. He vowed to ‘respond to an international crisis with British values,’ whatever that means. He talked of ‘a recession made in Russia but a recovery made in Britain.’ And he claimed, rather eerily, that ‘to be British is to be compassionate,’ as if this were a heritable quality conferred by evolution on one race alone. It sounded like jingoism fuelled by globalist arrogance. On and on he flannelled. ‘British innovation…British resilience…turning Britain into the world’s next Silicon Valley.’ 

Was this the Chancellor or a banking robot programmed to spout a consoling buzzword every 90 seconds? 

His performance centred on bad news, carefully disguised. He avoided saying ‘cuts’ and instead spoke of a ‘consolidation’ worth £55 billion.