Rishi Sunak’s potential tax rises would guarantee a recession

It could be National Insurance. It could be income tax. Perhaps it could even be a rise in VAT. We don’t yet know what taxes Rishi Sunak and his Chancellor Jeremy Hunt have planned for their fiscal statement later this month. One point is surely clear, however. There will be no point in pretending that those can be paid for by either ‘big business’ or ‘the rich’. And, even worse, it will guarantee a recession, making even more tax rises inevitable in the future.

It may not be quite so bad on the day. Both Sunak and Hunt are slick enough political operators to know that if they leak in advance that the fiscal statement will involve eye-watering tax rises – and if the rises are in the end simply very painful rather than completely brutal, many of us will be relieved.

Even so, there is little question that there will be some steep rises.