Philip Hammond started his autumn statement to the House of Commons by saying his style would be rather different to George Osborne’s. Yet the Chancellor still had a rabbit to pull out of his hat at the end — albeit one designed to show he wasn’t a political meddler like previous holders of his job by saying there would no longer be two economic statements involving changes to fiscal policy ‘for the sake of it’ — and even continued Osborne’s practice of announcing money to restore a historic building.
While his statement still had a clear political message about helping the ‘Jams’, telling the Commons that ‘the announcements I have made today lower taxes on working people; boost wages; back savers; and bear down on bills’ and that the government was ‘determined in our ambition to build a country that works for everyone’, it had less of a political theme.
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