TOMORROW’S Autumn Statement is clearly going to be a major event and our new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt have an almost impossible job.

As we stand on the brink of a recession, they are going to be cutting spending and raising taxes, whereas most economists would argue that they should normally be raising spending and lowering taxes in order to get people spending the way out of the recession.

The cost of living map, produced by campaign group 38 Degrees shows how people across the country are struggling at the moment, with those in poorer areas, like the North East, struggling the most.

It is not just people. Councils, from Gateshead in the north, which is considering closing leisure centres, to Kent and Hampshire in the south, which are on the brink of bankruptcy and are asking to be freed from their legal obligation to provide libraries, cannot make budgets meet.

But in one respect, Messrs Sunak and Hunt have it easy. Britain’s fiscal reputation has taken a hammering and the British people have grown accustomed to budgets that have pulled the wool over their eyes – how arrogant it was of the previous pairing of Kwarteng and Truss to expect the British public to accept their tax cuts for the rich without being told where the money was coming from.

So tomorrow’s statement must be solid, straightforward, transparent and honest – is that too much to ask of a politician?