Trussonomics is dead

When Jeremy Hunt took the role of chancellor last week, he was thought to have done it under instructions from Liz Truss that he was not to roll back any more of the mini-Budget. That instruction hasn’t stuck. Today’s update on the ‘medium-term fiscal statement’ was not so much a detailed plan to balance the books (that’s still to come on 31 October), but rather a reversal of almost all of the mini-Budget rolled out by Liz Truss and former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng last month.

The plan to bring forward a 1p cut to the basic rate of income tax has been scrapped completely. It was thought that Hunt would return to the timeline Boris Johnson’s government had originally laid out, to come in from 2024. But the plans to cut have been suspended ‘indefinitely’ as Hunt insisted that while he agreed with the principle that taxpayers should keep more of what they earn, it was ‘not right to borrow to fund this tax cut.’

The VAT cut for foreign visitors is also in the bin, as are freezes to alcohol duty; and plans to change IR35 rules for employers and freelancers have also been U-turned.