What if Jeremy Hunt’s rebooted centrism doesn’t calm the markets?

He will control spending, reverse the few remaining tax cuts that are still in the works, and bring in every kind of official body imaginable to check over all the figures. Jeremy Hunt made the best of a very difficult hand of cards in his first outing as Chancellor on Saturday morning. He was calm, rational, sensible, and conciliatory. His strategy was clear enough. To calm the markets, and buy the government some breathing space while it figures out what to do next. There is a catch, however. What if it doesn’t work?

Hunt’s plans as Chancellor are clearly very different from his short-lived predecessor. In a nutshell, it is George Osborne Mark II. There will be some hardcore austerity, with a clampdown on spending in every department, with a few tweaks for entrepreneurs and small businesses on the side, but it will be dressed up in centrist, compassionate language to make it more palatable.