Jeremy Hunt has just finished the most upbeat economic statement we’ve heard in a good while – certainly since the one from Kwasi Kwarteng that plunged the UK into economic turmoil. Today, the Chancellor was keen to impress upon MPs that the swathe of tax cuts he was announcing could only happen because of the repair job he and Rishi Sunak had carried out following the Truss premiership. There was a lot of self-congratulation: Hunt told the House of Commons that this was an ‘autumn statement for a country that has turned a corner, an autumn statement for growth’. The Tories want voters, somehow, to start thinking that they are the party managing to clear things up and make things less expensive.

The key announcements were what Hunt described as ‘the biggest business tax cuts in modern British history’ and ‘the largest ever cut to employee and self employed national insurance and the biggest package of tax cuts to be implemented since the 1980s’. There was also a revival of welfare reform, something the Tories haven’t done much on for the past five years but which could be a key battleground with Labour at the next election. Again, Hunt’s language was big and boastful: this was the ‘biggest set of welfare reforms in a decade’, and was focused on giving people the support – and then the sanctions – to get them off sickness benefits and into work.

There was a lot of self-congratulation

Those tax cuts included abolishing class 2 national insurance contributions altogether, and cutting class 4 contributions for the self-employed by one percentage point to 8 per cent. He will also cut the main rate for employee national insurance by 2 points to ten per cent, meaning 27 million people will benefit when it comes in from January, thanks to emergency legislation allowing him to bring the cut in earlier than next April. He is also extending the 75 per cent business rates discount for hospitality, retail and leisure for another year, and the pre-trailed £11 billion decision to make full expensing permanent.

Hunt claimed that the benefit changes he was announcing would ‘more than halve the flow of people who are signed off work with no work search requirements’. As I blogged yesterday, it is going to be difficult to help people with mental illnesses back into the workplace if they don’t have the correct occupational health support and therapy, and Hunt pledged to spend £1.3 billion on helping ‘nearly 700,000 people with health conditions find jobs’. including ‘nearly 500,000 more people’ being offered treatment with mental health. That’s a very ambitious increase – and it is worth noting that the considerably more modest targets set for the NHS on access to psychological therapies weren’t met. If after 18 months of intensive support, the jobseekers have not found a role, they will then have to take part in mandatory work placements, and if they don’t engage with this process for six months, then their case will be closed and their benefits stopped.

As ever, there was a tour of constituencies as the Chancellor thanked MPs, many of them in marginal seats that the Tories are currently projected to lose, for their campaigns on one measure or another. And there were a few jokes, though Hunt is not famed for his wit. He drew the biggest laugh when he said that both he and Keir Starmer had tried to make a Jeremy prime minister, but to the relief of both parties, they had failed. ‘This Jeremy is growing the economy, his Jeremy would have crashed it’, he added. It was a neat summary of what the Conservatives will say in the next election as they try to persuade voters that Labour still can’t be trusted.