Since the 2008 financial crash, British politics has been moving faster and faster, and becoming less stable. This frenzy reached its apogee with Liz Truss’s 44-day stint in No. 10 which had enough drama for a ten-year premiership.
One of the challenges for Rishi Sunak is to calm things down and to return politics to a more normal pace. It will be a good sign for the government if the World Cup dominates newspaper front pages for the next month.
However, there is one area where Sunak needs politics to move faster than normal. Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement is the kind of fiscal event that you would expect at the beginning of a parliament. It is about dealing with a difficult fiscal inheritance. It is designed to fix the ‘mistakes’ of the previous administration. It emphasises that tough decisions taken now will bring future benefits. Yet Hunt and Sunak have only two years for their approach to bear fruit.
Across the world, the era of cheap money is coming to an end, and the fiscal choices are unappealing
We already know the tests by which the government expects the Autumn Statement to be judged.
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