This is no time to play party politics with public finances
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Narrated by The Sunday Times
Another ridiculous week in Westminster has been and gone. The sacking of Suella Braverman as home secretary, the surprise return of David Cameron as ermine-clad foreign secretary and the Supreme Court’s quashing of the government’s plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda obscured some rare good news for Rishi Sunak: inflation dropped to 4.6 per cent last month, allowing the prime minister to claim he had met his pledge to halve it by the end of the year.
Jeremy Hunt also has a windfall to play with — in theory, at least. Inflation and the linked effect of “fiscal drag” — when workers find themselves paying more tax because allowances and thresholds have been frozen — have given the chancellor “fiscal headroom”. That is the
