The economic outlook may be grim – but Jeremy Hunt will have more options as the year goes on

Britain’s downturn looks like being more of a nasty brush with a black hole than a voyage into one, writes James Moore

The UK economy is on track to shrink in 2023 but recovery is forecast for the second half of the year (PA)

It wasn’t a good day for Jeremy Hunt, already under pressure from Tory MPs who can’t control their need for tax cuts.

New figures show the public finances “doing a Thelma and Louise” over the fiscal cliff. The difference between how much the government spent and how much it raised in December came to £27.4bn – the most in that month since records began. The corresponding figure for the previous year was £10.7bn.

That the figures were bad shouldn’t come as any surprise. The government spent billions subsiding the energy bills of households and businesses while incurring record interest payments as a result of debt linked to the retail prices index. RPI is a largely-discredited measure that has been consistently higher than the consumer prices Index, the official measure of inflation. Crazy? This is Britain.