'Chancellor looks relaxed as higher interest rates push Britain into recession'

28 May 2023 , 20:02

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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt speaking at the British Chambers of Commerce Global Annual Conference in London (Image: TOLGA AKMEN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Volunteering to crash the economy is Tory madness to rival the Brexit catastrophe.

Nonchalant Jeremy Hunt should no longer be thought of as a saner Conservative when the Chancellor is relaxed about plunging Britain into recession.

I appreciate he’s been knocked off course again, worse than expected inflation and record migration a double-pothole on stumbling Rishi Sunak’s narrowing election chances.

But to be relaxed about higher interest rates pushing Britain into recession is suicidal.

Chuck in the civil war between Sunak and Boris Johnson, plus a breakdown in Cabinet discipline and the Tory in charge of the economy shrugging his shoulders about contraction, and they’ve lost the plot.

Hospitals run out of oxygen and mortuaries full amid NHS chaos

Rishi Sunak speaks during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons (PA)

British inflation – stubbornly high at 8.7% – remains the worst in the G7 major economies.

Yet making everybody poorer to reduce the rate is like amputating a foot to cut a toenail.

No wonder Labour and Keir Starmer are enjoying healthy double-digit poll leads when living standards, NHS, lawlessness and disorder, housing and transport are all in crisis. Refusing to accept responsibility after 13 years in office, nuttier failing Tories and their risible apologists claim they’re victims of a coup.

Trade unionists, anybody not in power, civil servants, a (seriously) “blob” and presumably a big boy with a stick who ran away are all blamed.

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer (Tejas Sandhu/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock)

The delusion is a laughable excuse for the disaster of Cameron’s austerity, May’s inability, Johnson’s lunacy, Truss’s mayhem and Sunak’s floundering. These Tory fantasists are cowardly as well as nasty and incompetent, conspiracy theorists inventing excuses.

Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.

Carry On Conservatives is a show coming to its end.

Hunt and Sunak swallowed by their own unnecessary recession would be an expensive final episode.

Kevin Maguire