Autumn Budget summary latest: More than half of Britons blame Tories for cost of living crisis

John Rentoul asks: Is the quality of a Budget in inverse proportion to its initial reception by the media?

Professor Philip Cowley, a political scientist at Queen Mary University, said today: “The usual rule with Budgets is that those immediately lauded by the media turn out to be disasters. On that basis, and having seen today’s headlines, yesterday was pure genius.”

More than half of Britons blame the Conservative government over global factors for the cost of living crisis, new polling reveals.

A nationally representative poll of more than 2,000 people from Find Out Now found that 51 per cent of people believe the government was largely culpable for the soaring cost of household bills, while 37 per cent hold international factors, such as the Covid pandemic and war in Ukraine, responsible.

In the wake of chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s explosive autumn Budget, 29 per cent of voters said they now trust Labour to run the economy. Meanwhile, just 19 per cent put their faith in the Conservative party on fiscal matters.

The poll for Channel 4 News also revealed that just 17 per cent of people think the government remains steadfast to its “levelling up” agenda.

Ministers have been told to “come clean” on the economic argument for the decision not to scrap non-dom status in the UK, after the chancellor suggested he did not know how much money axeing the controversial tax status would raise.

Jeremy Hunt insisted the economy would not be helped by abolishing the controversial tax status, saying on Friday that he would rather the super-rich “stayed … and spent their money here”. And he said he had been told by Treasury officials that they were “very unsure” about how much money the move would actually make.

Labour has now called on ministers to publish figures on how many non-doms there are in the UK, and the amount the Treasury currently loses because of the loophole.

Read the full story by Kate Devlin and Jon Stone here:

Jeremy Hunt has been warned his planned spending cuts may prove “undeliverable” as he faced criticism from some senior Tories for raising taxes as he seeks to rebuild the UK’s battered public finances.

Former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg accused the Chancellor of taking the “easy option” in Thursday’s autumn statement rather than bearing down harder on public spending.

He said the country needed lower taxes to drive up growth after Mr Hunt acknowledged that the UK was already in recession.

Read the full story here:

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has delivered his Autumn Statement to Parliament laying out his plans to restore order to Britain’s public finances.

Mr Hunt succeeded Kwasi Kwarteng on 14 October, becoming Britain’s fourth Tory Treasury boss since the beginning of July, in the wake of the debacle that was his predecessor’s ill-conceived “mini-Budget” of 23 September.

Mr Kwarteng’s radical but uncosted tax-slashing agenda, reliant on heavy government borrowing, promised to deliver “growth, growth, growth” but instead spooked the international markets, tanked the pound, sparked chaos in the mortgage sector, prompted a dramatic intervention from the Bank of England to prop up pensions and brought a swift end to the premiership of Liz Truss, who has barely been seen in public since her humiliating exit from Downing Street.

Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal has caused damaging trade barriers with the European Union, the Chancellor has conceded, as he said immigration will be “very important” for the economy.

Jeremy Hunt insisted the UK would find a way to improve trading ties with the EU without rejoining the single market.

His comments came after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said Brexit caused a “significant adverse impact” to trade volumes and business relationships between UK and EU firms.

The chancellor said his plan would aim to “rebuild our economy” in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, Liz Truss’s disastrous September mini-Budget and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which is fuelling rampant inflation.

Read the full story here:

Retired people in the UK, claiming a full new state pension, are at the risk of paying income tax for the first time as triple lock drives up payments, it was reported.

According to an analysis of figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) by Canada Life, the pension will rise to £12,544 a year in 2028 — just £26 below the threshold for paying the basic rate of income tax.

This means that if inflation goes up and above the OBR estimate, hundreds of thousands of retirees will have to pay taxes for the first time.

James Cleverly will accuse Iran of spreading “bloodshed and destruction” around the world as the foreign secretary reaffirms Britain’s determination to prevent the regime in Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Addressing an international security conference in Bahrain on Saturday ahead of his trip to Qatar for the England’s opening World Cup football match, Mr Cleverly will warn that Iranian-supplied weapons are threatening security in the Middle East and beyond.

He will point to the Iranian-made attacks drone being used by Russia to target Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure as an example of its malign influence, and will warn that Tehran’s banned nuclear programme is at a “more advanced” stage of development than ever before.