Rayner calls for general election after Hunt unveils 'nightmare' budget

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Labour's deputy leader has called for a general election following Jeremy Hunt's 'nightmare before Christmas' budget.

Angela Rayner said it was clear Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had no plan to pull the UK economy out of the current crisis.

"His only plan is to raise taxes on working people to pay the bill the Tories left behind after 12 weeks of chaos and 12 years of economic failure," she said.< /p>

“Britain simply cannot afford Tory mismanagement any longer. Nobody voted for it; we need a general election now."

On Friday, the highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the economy had been damaged by a series of personal goals, including Brexit and Liz Truss' botched mini-budget.

Think tank leader Paul Johnson has warned that a projected drop in living standards is the "biggest drop in living memory" and that middle-income people as well as "central England [are] set for a shock".

"The truth is that we have become much poorer. We are going to have a long, hard and unpleasant journey; a journey that has been made more arduous than it could have been by a series of clean economic goals,” he said.

Ms Rayner said that after three prime ministers, four chancellors and four budgets in a single year, "our country is in even worse shape than when it started. No one is to blame for that except the Tories.

Mr Hunt's budget has been dubbed the 'nightmare before Christmas' after he unveiled stealth taxes totaling £25bn and £30bn in cuts to public services to fill a £55 billion void in government finances.

At the same time, interest payments on the public debt will soon exceed £100 billion a year, more than than spending on any public service except the NHS.

The overall tax burden is due to hit its highest level since World War II in 2024, while unemployment will increase by more than 500,000 to a peak of 4.9%.

Services Utilities such as police, transport and local government are now on track for austerity, with no extra cash to offset soaring inflation over the next three years and lower than expected increases over the next three years. of the following three years. And the Office for Budget Responsibility said a 7% drop in household income would wipe out the gains of the past eight years.

A Conservative source said: 'The Chancellor has laid out a credible plan to get finances back on a stable footing after a...