Turn to p98 of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest economic and fiscal outlook, and you’ll find a chart that perfectly sums up the current position of the British economy. It’s a projection of how much each government department will be allocated to spend over the next five years: this year and next year are multi-coloured columns, each band of colour showing how much will go to education, defence, transport and so on. Both columns are capped by a thin line of grey, which is the unallocated spending. The four years after that are entirely grey: four solid concrete monoliths of unknowing.
And yet, when Jeremy Hunt delivered his Autumn Statement on Wednesday (22 November), he acted as if the next five years had all been planned and costs measured – and that he could therefore say with confidence that the UK can afford large tax cuts for people and businesses.
Content from our partners
