Jeremy Hunt’s austerity budget: necessity or political choice?

The chancellor insists Britain has to live within its means' - but many economists say painful cuts are neither inevitable nor proven to work

Jeremy Hunt is preparing to wield the axe over public spending this week and raise taxes for everybody in an autumn statement that will be long on pain and short on good news. After Liz Truss's short and catastrophic premiership, the abacus economics" she despised is back in the ascendancy under Rishi Sunak.

The message from the government is that Britain has to live within its means, which Hunt and Sunak say requires action to reduce government borrowing and ensure that the national debt starts to fall as a share of national income.