Total government spending was only 39.5pc of GDP that year. It was perhaps understandable that it spiked up to 53pc in the Covid-affected year.
But what is much less excusable is that spending did not return anywhere near its pre-Covid level after the pandemic ended, is scheduled to be over 46pc of GDP this year, and even at the outer horizon of government spending forecasts (if one believes them) is scheduled to be well over 43pc still, in 2027-28.
Hunt and Sunak pitch themselves as the grown-up, responsible folk, focused on fiscal discipline instead of short-term headline-chasing. But what they have delivered is an incontinent flood of spending extending as far into the future as the forecaster’s eyes can see.
If the Government’s policy is to make the massive increases in public spending of recent years permanent – and it seems pretty clear that it is – then of course tax cuts (at least in aggregate) are out of the question.
But why should we accept that it is impossible to get spending back to the levels it had in 2019-20 – or, better, to the levels lower than those George Osborne had scheduled when he was still chancellor?
Maybe that is politically impossible, but aren’t Hunt and Sunak the ones who claim they tell us unpleasant truths even if they are politically unpalatable, preferring them to “economic fairy tales”?
Perhaps part of the reason Hunt feels safe to declare impossible this kind of option – cutting spending back to pre-pandemic levels, relative to the size of the economy, and therefore obviating the need for taxes to rise so much – is that cutting public spending relative to the size of the economy will require cutting the NHS relative to the size of the economy.
