‘Turning the corner… into oncoming traffic’: As a feeble attempt to narrow the polls, Hunt’s budget will make no difference
When somebody in an official capacity announces that things have ‘turned a corner’ usually the hope for those waiting with bated breath is that something positive awaits.
Jeremy Hunt is one of those in ‘an official capacity’ who has already said this, and acting in ‘an official capacity’, we should believe him.
However -
Hunt said previously that the economy had ‘turned the corner’ last year in November before he announced a cut to national insurance in a Treasury giveaway worth around £10 billion a year; the hope was that the reduction in the main rate of employees’ national insurance would save someone earning around £27,000 a year roughly £450 per annum, and it would benefit approximately 27 million people.
Great news! Except for one thing. One of the problems the government had at the time was that when it came into effect in January, the public responded with apathy - approval ratings actually dropped. Almost nobody noticed. Very few actually ‘felt’ it. Insiders were apparently “concerned” that the government’s announcements in relation to national insurance cuts, “had little or no cut-through with voters.”
Hunt said it again in February, too - that the economy had ‘turned a corner.’
The problem that Hunt had when he said it at that point was that everybody knew that the economy had not turned a corner after all, and that it had, in fact, dipped into technical recession in Q4 of 2023. Statistically, at least, the news that the economy had gone into recession provided a short and simple answer to the question of why we ‘felt’ no better off than we did a year ago, and why, for example, national insurance cuts “had little or not cut-through with voters.”
Most people who see the precarious situation facing most public services and experience the real world far away from the Treasury spreadsheets do not even need to be reminded via ‘technical recession’ that their lives are not better. They know it already. This is what they ‘feel’; they ‘feel’ it because they see, hear or experience the general [and relentless] decline in some form or another every day.