The right is babbling about tax cuts while Britain burns. Pay no heed, Jeremy Hunt | Will Hutton
It is time to focus on growth", intoned the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, on Friday. The economy, he seems to think, has turned a corner. Before Wednesday's autumn statement - the biggest set-piece economic event of the year - anticipation on Tory backbenches and in the rightwing media is beginning to run high, as estimates about his potential largesse balloon. A focus on growth in their eyes can have only one meaning: buying back popularity with tax cuts.
It is breathtakingly wrong. Tax cuts, especially the widely mooted deep cuts to inheritance tax that Hunt is said to be considering, will do little for growth - instead choking off a much-needed source of revenue and inflating inequality. That they should be framed as crucial supports to aspiration, enterprise and growth is tribute to the huge rightwing bias in our national conversation, with the reasons for the prolonged stagnation facing us going largely unacknowledged. Britain is suffering from an intensifying four-decade-long investment drought in the public and private sectors - the root cause of the crisis in stagnating productivity and living standards that shapes our politics and daily lives. Every spare pound should be consecrated not to tax cuts but to raising public investment - a key trigger for increased private sector investment and, ultimately, a better future.
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