Many of us listened to, watched and pondered about this Budget. The commentary from all sides has been illuminating.
Rachel Reeves
The Shadow Chancellor is an outstanding economist.
Her response to Jeremy Hunt is one I won’t forget in a hurry.
“The mess we are in is the result of twelve weeks of Conservative chaos, but also twelve years of Conservative economic failure.”
She accused the Tory chancellor of pickpocketing the public and said that Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt has handed the nation, “an invoice for the economic carnage” caused by Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget, which sent the pound plunging and sparked higher mortgage rates.
“The Conservatives have pocketed the purses and wallets of the entire country as the chancellor has deployed a raft of stealth taxes, taking billions of pounds from ordinary working people.”
The government was aiming to shift blame for the economic turmoil on global factors such as the war in Ukraine. In response, Reeves pointed out that “this was a crisis made in Downing Street.”
Sir Andrew Dilnot
Sir Andrew Dilnot CBE is a Welsh economist and broadcaster. He chaired the Commission of Funding on Care and Support, requested by Cameron’s government in 2010. He was angered by the Chancellor’s decision to delay the introduction of the cap on social funding from this year until at least 2025.
Sir Andrew said that the cap was urgently needed and that the delay would come as a betrayal to thousands of people.
“It is hard to think of a more vulnerable group than people who need social care for a long period and their families,’ he told Radio 4.
The headlines
Press reaction to the Autumn Statement was negative on all sides of the political spectrum, from The Guardian’s ‘from bad to worse’ through The Sun’s ‘foulest medicine’ and the Daily Mail’s ‘Tories soak the strivers’ all the way to The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson wailing in a piece for The Telegraph ‘Is there any hope at all?’
Many of us have followed Hunt’s career. He was brought in after the disaster of the mini-budget to steady the ship. The middle classes thought he might be OK. Yet the shock of his Autumn Statement on families, on my friends and relatives, is huge. While the rich have been let off gently. Again.
