The front pages of Thursday’s newspapers were full of cheer for the chancellor’s autumn statement, with the Metro and The Sun among the nationals to pop the Champagne corks in celebration of what’s to come in 2024.
Rupert Murdoch’s red-top tabloid declared Jeremy Hunt’s announcement as a “payday for millions” thanks to tax cuts and boosts to income, while The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail appeared similarly enamoured, seizing on words said by Hunt as he revealed the autumn statement: “These are the biggest tax cuts since the 1980s”.
But as the Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson pointed out, there is reason to believe that the public could have been mis-sold on the autumn statement, with many of the fundamentals staying the same or getting worse.
“The public finances haven’t meaningfully improved, the growth outlook has weakened, inflation is expected to stay higher for longer and the chancellor seems unwilling to use the increased tax receipts to ease the ongoing ‘fiscal drag’”, he said, a point which was echoed by Sophy Ridge on Sky News.
Watch her superb assessment of the autumn statement below:
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