Taxes must rise to plug £40bn black hole in Sunak and Hunt’s budget

There's limited scope for further spending cuts so the PM and chancellor must surely look to higher taxation to repair damage done by the mini-budget

Devon county council leader John Hart dreads the return of austerity. A Conservative who has long complained about Whitehall's tenuous grasp on regional issues, Hart must find savings of 27m next year before Jeremy Hunt has even begun looking for further cuts in local authority funding.

England's counties, most of them Tory run, face a 500m shortfall next year, according to the Local Government Chronicle. The big cities and unitary authorities are also on course for huge deficits and worse when the chancellor slashes their budget allocations for the 2023-24 financial year and beyond.