i is abuzz with the UK’s “lost decade” and what the paper calls the “biggest fall in living standards on record… sending UK earnings back to 2013”. Its report says the country is paying the price for “Putin’s war in Ukraine, the pandemic, Brexit policies and Liz Truss’s damage to market confidence”. Typically reliably sympathetic to the Tory party, the Daily Mail turns its fury on Hunt’s budget under the headline ‘Tories soak campaigners’. The paper’s political editor says the overall tax burden will be pushed to its “highest level since the second world war”, with “higher earners hit hardest”. The verdict of the paper’s star columnist, Sarah Vine, is reported on the front page: “And there I was, thinking we’d voted Conservative!” The Telegraph is also blunt in its assessment, quoting an economist in its headline: “Osborne’s rhetoric… with Brown’s policies”. The paper’s lead story said Britain’s welfare bill is set to rise by almost “£90bn after Jeremy Hunt shielded benefit claimants and pensioners from soaring inflation with a raid on workers”. Tory peer and former Brexit negotiator David Frost writes in a front-page opinion piece that “The ship has steadied – but we’ve all been left with less of our own money”. The title of the Mirror is simply ‘Carnage’. The paper reports that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said “all the country got today was a bill for the economic carnage the government created”. Tomorrow’s paper today: 💥CARNAGE🔴Millions to feel deep pain after Tory hell.Energy bills rise and unemployment, house prices fall🔴The fall in living standards is the worst since 1956.Chase and avoid all blame #TomorrowsPapersToday pic. twitter.com/UoQ2RWmC3c — The Mirror (@DailyMirror) November 17, 2022 The Times writes that as the chancellor seeks to balance the books, there will be “years of fiscal pain ahead”. The Financial Times carried a similar headline with the headline “Hunt paves way for years of pain”, quoting the chancellor as saying “We must give the world confidence in our ability to pay our debts”. Scotland’s Daily Record refers to another era of Tory rule with the headline “You’ve never had it so bad”, as does the Metro. The Record says that after 12 years of Conservative rule, the UK is facing its “biggest-ever build-up in living standards” as well as “a wave of unemployment and a year-long recession”. However, the Express can find some good news in it all. In a full-page picture of Hunt, the newspaper claims “Victory” in its campaign to secure a 10.1% rise in the state pension, saying it will “help millions of people cope with the cost of living crisis”. The Sun, meanwhile, relegates the autumn statement to a short front-page article, headlined ‘Tax hell.. Thank God for the little leg!’
