The collapse in disposable income will be about as grim as you can imagine – so why is the government embracing it?
Let’s start with a tale of two charts. Or rather, one chart.
Be warned: it’s not a pretty chart. It shows how average household disposable income changed each year since 1955 and for the most part it’s a story of progress.
As the years have gone on, we have seen our disposable incomes rise in most years.
But here’s where it gets gritty, because that run is about to come to a crashing end. Back in March, the Office for Budget Responsibility produced this chart, and it showed the single worst year for disposable income changes since records began in the 1950s.
Back then, Rishi Sunak was chancellor and behind the scenes he was furious with the OBR. Why did they ruin his finely honed spring statement with their chart of misery?
Now roll forward to today. The OBR updated the chart for the autumn statement and the prognosis was even worse.
Now we are facing not just the worst year for household disposable income in modern history, but the two worst years, one after another. It is about as grim as you could imagine.
And if there’s one chart you want to bear in mind over the coming months as households face a squeeze the likes of which they rarely ever have, and many are pushed closer than ever before towards penury, it’s this one.
However, this time around, far from being furious about the publication of the chart, the Treasury has effectively embraced it. And this change in attitude tells you rather a lot.
Whereas Mr Sunak once wanted to play down the economic misery facing the country, today he wants to emphasise it.
The government wants everyone to know how tough things are because the fiscal remedies it’s implementing in the autumn statement would be doubly unpalatable without some sort of justification.
The rationale in Whitehall is that if people realise how miserable the economic climate is, they might be more willing to put up with another dose of fiscal contraction.
It’s worth saying, however, that the squeeze priced in within the autumn statement is not quite as tough as the pre-event leaks might have suggested
In numerical terms, at least, this is not the austerity we saw during the Osborne years. But for many government departments already cut to the bone, it will feel pretty brutal all the same.
For education and the NHS, there were unexpected increases in funding – but inflation is likely to eat into those increases very quickly indeed.
However, take a step back and look at where the public finances land in five years’ time. Back in March, the plan was to get public sector net borrowing down to £31.6bn by 2026/27. As of the autumn statement, the plan is to get it down to only £80.3bn.
Back in the day, this would have been considered a high budget deficit – above 2% of gross domestic product. Fiscal conservatism this ain’t.
But for all the talk of austerity and cuts, the reality is that the chancellor didn’t cut quite as much as some had expected.
This is not to say there is much joy coming our way from the Exchequer: there will be an average of £55bn of contraction – all to fill in the much-vaunted black hole which some economists argue never really existed.
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But had the chancellor wanted to get the public finances back to where they were supposed to end up as of March, it would have involved an extra £50bn of cuts – truly grisly austerity.
This was, in one sense, a very middle-of-the-road fiscal event: decidedly boring, decidedly unshowy and decidedly lacking in surprises. It reads less like an economic philosophy than an effort to clean up a mess.
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Hunt questioned over autumn statement
Much of the documents are devoted to accounting for how the potential promises of the Truss era ballooned the public finances in one direction, before being yanked back towards earth in the Sunak era.
The question now is whether unwinding all that spaghetti will actually help the Conservative Party rebuild its trust with the British public.
And, most of all, the question is how the public will fare over the coming months.
The OBR’s forecasts paint a picture of a recession unlike most we’ve felt for a long time – a recession not of the business sector or the financial system, but one that hits consumers square in the pocket.
It’ll be a very painful few months. The difference is that this time around, the government isn’t afraid of charts telling you precisely that.
A judo Olympian has said her family is “devastated” after the discovery of body in the search for her missing brother.
Lubjana Piovesana, 28, appealed for help to find her younger sibling, Luis, 26, on Saturday. He had not been seen since the early hours of Friday morning.
A body was found in the River Frome near Napier Road in Eastville, Bristol, at around 6pm today, Avon and Somerset Police said.
Formal identification is yet to take place, the force added.
In a post on Instagram, Ms Piovesana wrote: “Hello everyone, Luis has been found.
“We are completely devastated but he has passed away.
“I am grateful for everyone’s support. And I am so sorry this happened.
“Luis was my little brother and loved by everyone. I wish he could have seen the love from everyone. He will be remembered by us all.”
The post was signed off with a dove emoji.
Luis Piovesana did not have any money or his mobile phone with him when he went missing, police said. Pics: Avon & Somerset Police
Mr Piovesana was last seen at around 3am on Friday at the Eastgate retail park, which is less than a 10-minute walk away from where the body was found.
He had travelled there by taxi from a venue in Little Ann Street, St Jude’s, a 10-minute drive away.
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The 26-year-old’s family spent the weekend searching for him, and asked people to check their sheds and gardens.
His partner, Laurin Bohler, said loved ones had travelled from Birmingham to help.
Mounted officers and police drones were also involved in the investigation.
Ms Piovesana competed for Team GB before switching to the Austrian team, and defeated British competitor Lucy Renshall in the women’s -63kg judo event at the Paris Olympics last year.
A man has been jailed for life for murdering his son’s girlfriend after she returned home from the school run.
Officers from Dyfed-Powys Police were called to an address on Bigyn Road in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, on 5 July last year.
Sophie Evans, 30, had sustained 72 separate injuries on the outside of the body, “all but three of them new injuries”.
Richard Jones, who is now 50, believed he was “being taken advantage of financially” by Ms Evans and his son, with whom she was in a relationship.
While the purpose of Jones’s visit was “purely normal”, he confronted her on that morning about his suspicions and Ms Evans’s reaction was such that Jones “lost [his] temper”.
He subjected Ms Evans to “gross violence” before ultimately strangling her and leaving the property to run errands, including ordering a new bank card and buying pastries from a bakery.
Richard Jones. Pic: Dyfed-Powys Police
‘Last time on their school run’
During sentencing on Monday, the defendant kept his head bowed for most of the hearing.
He will have to serve at least 20 years behind bars before he can be considered for release by the parole board.
Swansea Crown Court heard Ms Evans was the mother of two young children.
Passing his sentence, Judge Geraint Walters said Ms Evans “had just taken her two children for the last time on their school run” prior to the attack.
“She wasn’t to know that when she parted company with them that morning,” he added.
The court heard the Jones believed he was being defrauded by Ms Evans and his son.
“There is clear evidence, that in the days leading up to this, that you had begun harbouring thoughts that Sophie Evans and your own son were in fact financially scamming you,” he said.
“What precisely brought about that view is difficult to determine.”
Judge Walters said Jones “lost [his] temper when [he] didn’t get the answer that [he] thought [he] deserved”.
He added that, having lost his temper, the defendant “subjected [Ms Evans] to gross violence over a period of time, before you ultimately extinguished her life by strangulation”.
The court was told in evidence that at the time of the attack, Ms Evans was wearing only a bath towel.
‘The rock of our family’
In a victim personal statement, Ms Evans’s sister Kerry Quinlan told the court she was “the rock of our family”.
She said Ms Evans was taken from them in a “senseless and cruel act”.
“Words cannot express fully how much of a loss this has been to her children,” she added.
“When they cry themselves to sleep wanting their mum, she isn’t there and never will be.”
Ms Quinlan added that Jones had “taken everything from us, all in the most despicable way possible”.
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Ms Evans’s partner at the time, and the defendant’s son, Jamie Davies, said in a victim personal statement, read on his behalf, that they had both “trusted” Jones, and that Ms Evans had even been planning the defendant’s 50th birthday.
“The thought of having to live my life without Sophie causes me extreme pain and heartache,” he added.
Prosecuting, Michael Jones KC said the offence was aggravated by the defendant’s previous convictions and the fact Ms Evans was murdered in her home.
In mitigation, David Elias KC said there was a “lack of premeditation”.
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