Hunt budget being overshadowed by Lineker row is no bad thing for chancellor

theguardian.com:

T he only way was up for Jeremy Hunt when he took over at the Treasury last October. Appointed by Liz Truss in an attempt to save her job, he was the fourth chancellor of 2022 and the Conservatives were at rock bottom.

The economic legacy handed to Hunt was dire. Inflation was above 10%, living standards were falling, house prices were going down while interest rates were going up. In the aftermath of Truss’s departure from Downing Street, the Bank of England said the economy was already in recession and would remain that way for the whole of 2023. Opinion polls were pointing to a landslide victory for Labour at the next election.

But since the turn of the year, the news on the economy has been consistently better than expected. A technical recession was avoided – by the narrowest of margins – in late 2022 and since then figures for growth, the public finances, inflation and consumer spending have all been stronger than forecast. There have even been some signs in recent days that house prices may soon bottom out. Forecasters, including the Bank of England, now think the recession will be shorter and shallower than they expected last autumn. Some now think there will be no recession at all.

This is obviously good news for Hunt, who would clearly prefer not to be announcing a budget with the economy in recession. The brighter economic picture hasyet to lift the poll ratings for the Conservatives all that much but the Labour party fears it may eventually do so. There is probably still 18 months to go before the election, and during that time inflation should continue to fall and living standards will start to pick up. Neither Sir Keir Starmer nor Rachel Reeves thinks the election is in the bag.

But Hunt, too, has his reasons