I'm John Baster with my colleague Joseph Sternberg of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

He writes political economics. He's based in London and he helps me understand the headlines

from London that don't track with my assumption of what you do in a recession. You reset the

economy and the strong survive and the week have better ideas.

That's how the US deals with recessions or has historically.

Last week Joe and I discussed something called Council Taxes that were being raised

perhaps a hundred pounds per family and I puzzled how that matched up

with the news that the UK's economy is poorly performing let Let's leave it there.

Joe's been equating me with more tax decisions,

many in London since, and then I learned that

Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, means to announce a tax cut in some fashion of some

detail of 1%. It's lost, however, in the general understanding that taxes are surging

ahead.

Joe, does the Chancellor make an attempt to explain this?

Because I see a lot of excuse-making, like we have no choice,

we have to do this, we have to do this we have to do that

does he talk to the people well I the Conservative Party is in a trap of its

own making now because remember back in autumn 2022 they briefly brought in a new Prime Minister

Liz Truss whose big agenda was to try to revive the economy, shake it out of its

torpor with you know bold supply side tax cuts that would have stimulated production

and encouraged work and tried to unshackle the economy.

And then, you know, for a variety of reasons,

...