“The chancellor should have come here today to ask for forgiveness,” the Labour Party’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said in a response to Mr. Hunt. Conservative-led government, she said, had left Britain with “inflation spiraling, growth plunging, living standards falling.”
Still, many of Mr. Hunt’s measures had been telegraphed by the government, and the markets largely shrugged off his address. The British pound, which had risen in advance of the speech, fell slightly, to $1.18.
The budget is a pivotal test for Mr. Sunak, a former chancellor who once worked for Goldman Sachs and who has brought a more technocratic, fiscally minded approach after the supply-side experimentation of Ms. Truss. He won a contest to replace Ms. Truss last month after failing to beat her in a leadership campaign in the summer during which he warned that her tax cuts would cause havoc.
Mr. Sunak’s bet is that the measures will put public finances back on sound footing, claw back Britain’s reputation in global markets and position the economy for a rebound before an election. In the short term, however, Mr. Hunt acknowledged that the measures were likely to deepen the misery for Britain, which is still suffering the economic aftershocks of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic.
Some likened the budget to the austerity measures imposed by Prime Minister David Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, after the financial crisis of 2009. That hollowed out many of Britain’s public services, including the N.H.S., which has struggled with the additional burdens of the pandemic.
Conservative lawmakers appeared largely united behind Mr. Sunak. But Jacob Rees-Mogg, a right-wing lawmaker who served in the cabinets of Ms. Truss and of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, criticized the plan for imposing tax increases at a time when Britain was in recession.
