STEPHEN GLOVER: Someone should put a rocket under Jeremy Hunt. If he doesn’t promise tax cuts, the Tories are finished

Jeremy Hunt’s father may have been an admiral, but the martial spirit doesn’t appear to have flowed down the generations.

That’s not just my view. As the Mail reported yesterday, some Tory MPs are privately calling on Rishi Sunak to sack the timid, over cautious Chancellor.

After last week’s by-election disasters in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, panic is sweeping the Conservative benches. There is a pretty widespread feeling that the remarkably unruffled Mr Hunt isn’t the man for the hour.

This may be another way of saying that, in the view of some Tories, Rishi isn’t the man for the hour either. But it is easier for MPs to pick on Mr Hunt — who is liable to lose his Surrey seat even if there is a much smaller swing to Labour than in last week’s by-elections.

I don’t think Mr Hunt should be sacked — at least, not yet. But someone should put a rocket under him. His naval father would have grasped that the Tory ship has been badly holed and appears to be sinking as the laid-back Chancellor is peering into various screens and dials on the bridge.

STEPHEN GLOVER: Jeremy Hunt’s (pictured) father may have been an admiral, but the martial spirit doesn’t appear to have flowed down the generations. That’s not just my view. As the Mail reported yesterday, some Tory MPs are privately calling on Rishi Sunak to sack the timid, over cautious Chancellor

Earlier this week, research for MailOnline revealed that Labour is viewed as a bigger champion of lower taxes than the Conservatives by a sizeable margin of 37 per cent to 21 per cent.

Isn’t this incredible? I happen to believe that anyone who regards Sir Keir Starmer’s party as being remotely attracted to lower taxes may require medical attention. Nevertheless, the fact that many people do hold these views shows how far the Tories have strayed from their traditional values and core beliefs.

When Jeremy Hunt stands up to deliver his Autumn Statement in just under four weeks’ time, Britain will be groaning under the heaviest tax burden in peacetime. This should be a matter of shame for any Tory Chancellor — not that Mr Hunt, or indeed Mr Sunak, seem at all crestfallen.

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak must sack ‘timid’ Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Tory MPs urge as they seek to avoid ‘annihilation’ at the next election

Since 2019, the Tories have put a booster under public spending, which has risen from 38.2 per cent of national income to a projected 46.2 per cent in the current financial year. These are official figures produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is often unreliable but probably to be trusted in this instance.

If you increase public expenditure by such a huge amount, you have to raise taxes, or borrow more, or both. The Tories have cheerfully done both.

By the way, this increase in spending doesn’t include the one-off splurge of £400 billion during the pandemic, when the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, frittered enormous sums on the furlough and other schemes. The laughably ineffectual NHS Test and Trace cost £37 billion, the futile Eat Out To Help Out caper, £840 million. But, hey, it’s only money!

Back to Mr Hunt. He’ll stand before us on November 22 and, if his recent utterances are to be believed, won’t offer us anything in the way of tax cuts. There may be a modest pre-election offering next spring, but that would probably be too little, too late.

The line is that the public finances are tight, and that markets would be spooked by tax giveaways — as happened a little over a year ago, when Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng gave us all a nasty shock.

Actually, there is some rewriting of history there. The tax cuts unveiled by Truss and Kwarteng — a good name, perhaps, for a removal firm guaranteed to mislay your chattels — were not as stratospheric as is often made out.

STEPHEN GLOVER: By the way, this increase in spending doesn’t include the one-off splurge of £400 billion during the pandemic, when the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak (pictured), frittered enormous sums on the furlough and other schemes 

What really unnerved the markets was the accompanying increase in public spending of up to £100 billion in the form of energy subsidies. The manner in which Truss & Kwarteng removed the Office for Budget Responsibility from the picture also induced palpitations in financial circles.

Jeremy Hunt doesn’t want to go down that path — hence the extreme caution on tax cuts. Yet there is another way, though one that is utterly foreign to this high-spending Government’s way of thinking: cut public expenditure.

Trim would be a better word. Public spending in this financial year is estimated at £1,189 billion. If this gigantic amount were reduced by 5 per cent — just 5 per cent! — that would give the Chancellor a war chest of nearly £60 billion, some of which could be handed back to taxpayers, and the rest used to chip away at our vast national debt.

READ MORE: Jeremy Hunt delivers stark message on hopes of tax cuts at Autumn Statement as he warns public finances are even WORSE than in the Spring – as Bank of England chief warns more interest rate hikes are still on the cards

Most households, except poor ones, could apply a 5 per cent cut to their budgets, and continue to function. Indeed, this is what they’ve had to do over the past year as a result of high inflation. Many medium-sized and large companies could reduce their costs by 5 per cent and scarcely notice.

But the idea that the Government should indulge in some prudent housekeeping, such as might have been advocated by Margaret Thatcher, is greeted with howls of outrage or gasps of incredulity.

I don’t suggest that a 5 per cent reduction should be applied across the board. With a war raging in Europe, and a conflagration possibly looming in the Middle East, this is no time to cut back the defence budget. Debt repayment, running at around £110 billion a year, can’t be unilaterally reduced any more than your mortgage can.

But most government spending could be judiciously trimmed without adverse consequences. Let me give an example — one of many — of this profligate Government having taken its eye off the ball in a characteristic bout of absent mindedness.

Recent official figures show that there are more than 2.2 million benefit claimants deemed incapable of working who are not required to look for work. Their number increased by 50,000 last month alone for reasons that no one can explain.

Why an ever-increasing number of people are considered unable to work is a mystery, particularly in the post-pandemic era when many fit people work at home. Can’t some of these benefit claimants do the same for their own good, and for the good of taxpayers?

Government spending on incapacity benefits has risen by 62 per cent in real terms from £15.9 billion in 2013-14 to £25.9 billion this year. It is predicted to climb to £29.3 billion by 2027-28 if present trends continue.

STEPHEN GLOVER: Does Jeremy Hunt have the courage? Come to that, does Rishi Sunak? We’ll find out in nearly four weeks. No promise of tax cuts, and the Tories are truly finished

No one in government has looked at this problem for a decade. Now, at last, there is a ‘consultation process’, which should be concluded before next month’s Autumn Statement. If the Government decides to make policy changes, they won’t come into effect until 2025.

This is one example of ministers having fallen asleep at the wheel, and woken up with a start as they realise they’re driving into a bog. It’s preposterous to suppose that within a spending budget of well over £1 trillion there aren’t potential savings, individually modest but collectively substantial.

They just have to be identified, and the Government has to have the determination and energy to push them through.

But does it? The Tories’ electoral prospects and — even more important — the country’s economic prosperity depend on reducing taxation from its unprecedentedly high levels. This can be done if waste and extravagance are brought under control.

Does Jeremy Hunt have the courage? Come to that, does Rishi Sunak? We’ll find out in nearly four weeks. No promise of tax cuts, and the Tories are truly finished.

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