Liz Truss’s gaoler has just done another BBC interview. Jeremy Hunt continued to try and give himself maximum room for manoeuvre, saying ‘I’m not taking anything off the table’. He repeated his message:
We are going to have to take some very difficult decisions both on spending and on tax. Spending is not going to increase by as much as people hoped, and indeed we’re going to have to ask all government departments to find more efficiencies than they’d planned. And taxes are not going to go down as quickly as people thought, and some taxes are going to go up.
It will be fascinating to see if Truss is as direct on this when she is asked the question at PMQs next week.
The abacus is back
Hunt also pledged that the Halloween fiscal statement would be ‘a bit like a Budget’ and that the government would ‘properly account for every penny.’ On the OBR’s assessments, he said ‘we’ve been honest that it was a mistake not to do that in the mini-Budget before.’
The abacus is back. He set the government the test of minimising the rise in interest rates: remember the Bank of England monetary policy committee meets on 3 November to set interest rates. The market still expects big rate rises, from 2.25 per cent now to 4.25 per cent by Christmas.
On Truss, Hunt insisted ‘she’s listened, she’s changed’. He maintained that she was still in charge, but that the government’s mission had been delayed, not stopped:
She has changed the way we’re going to get there. She hasn’t changed the destination, which is to get the country growing. I think she’s right to recognise, in the international situation and the market situation, that change was necessary. But change absolutely determined to deliver that economic growth that’s going to bring more prosperity to ordinary families up and down the country.
When asked about his own prospects, Hunt said he wanted to show that he was an ‘honest Chancellor’. He also said of his own leadership ambitions:
I think having run two leadership campaigns and having, by the way, failed in both of them, the desire to be leader has been clinically excised from me.
Seal of approval: Over in Washington this weekend, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said of Hunt that there had been an ‘immediate meeting of minds on the importance of stability and sustainability.’ But, in what will be seen as a hint of more interest rate pain to come, Bailey suggested a ‘stronger response’ might be needed to combat inflation. Reuters has more.
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