UK Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt will stage a moment of high political theater Wednesday, unveiling his budget to a crowd of baying lawmakers as consumers demand more help with the high cost of living and workers press for higher wages with strikes at schools, hospitals, and the offices of civil servants.
Even as Hunt plays his historically scripted role — emerging from his official residence with the spending plan in a battered red dispatch box, then carrying it to the House of Commons where he will be greeted by jeers and cheers — the truth is he will try to be as boring as possible.
That’s because the last time the government staged a similar “fiscal event,” the mini-budget presented by Hunt’s predecessor last September, it set off an economic catastrophe by promising huge tax cuts without saying how it would pay for them. The value of the pound plunged, mortgage rates soared and the central bank was forced to intervene to protect pension funds.
This time, strong and stable is the goal. Most of the big-ticket items — an extra 5 billion pounds ($6.1 billion) of defense spending over the next two years, increased funding for child care and help for workers saving for retirement — have already been announced.
“We shouldn’t expect much in the way of rabbits or hats in this budget,” said Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at the investment adviser Hargreaves Lansdown UK, Treasury chief “Jeremy Hunt needs to remain boring and predictable to avoid unsettling the markets.”
But even as Hunt delivers his remarks to Parliament, many people across the country are seething about a cost-of-living crisis that is eroding the spending power of workers as Russia’s war in Ukraine has helped fuel the highest inflation in four decades.
Government workers, teachers, subway drivers and the young doctors who staff the nation’s hospitals were walking the picket line Wednesday, furious that public-sector workers have borne the brunt of the budget austerity implemented by Hunt’s Conservative Party after it took power following the global financial crisis.