Say what you like about Kwasi Kwarteng, and most people have, but at least he believed in something. Wrongly, as it turned out, and with such fervour that he took a rather exciting punt with millions of people’s retirement savings, but he tried. And then along came Jeremy Hunt, the smug prefect, and he did what people like Jeremy Hunt do: he smoothed things over.
Yesterday Rachel Reeves explained just how much greasepaint and duct tape Hunt had used to make the public finances look presentable at the tail end of Tory government. As soon as Reeves became Chancellor, she asked the Treasury to draw up an audit of the real state of public finances. This audit shows the government’s finances for this year are £22bn worse than Hunt had made them appear.
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