The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, looks ahead to Jeremy Hunt’s crucial autumn statement, which is set to usher in a new era of austerity, and explains why is likely to fail just like George Osborne’s before it
When the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, stands up in the Commons later on Thursday to deliver the government’s autumn statement on the economy it will be to lay out in stark terms the problems the country is facing and the painful way he intends to fix them.
But not everyone is convinced the fiscal pain will lead to economic gain. The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, tells Nosheen Iqbal that far from ushering in a new period of economic prosperity, the solutions Hunt is coming up with sound strikingly similar to those of George Osborne, whose own austerity drive failed to return the UK to economic health. Now Elliott argues that raising everyone’s taxes while slashing government spending will simply further choke the economy of growth and lead to a prolonged recession. The government argues it must reassure markets about Britain’s creditworthiness (after the spectacular failure of Trussonomics). The treatment will hurt, but will it work?
