Jeremy Hunt announces March 6 Spring Budget

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UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced that the Spring Budget 2024 will be held on March 6, leaving the door ajar for a possible early general election in May.

Hunt is expected to announce pre-election tax cuts at the Budget, creating what he hopes will be a dividing line with Labour and a signal that Britain is moving into better economic times.

The choice of March 6 leaves open the possibility that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could call a general election immediately after the Budget with a polling day coinciding with local elections on May 2.

However Downing Street insiders say Sunak is most likely to call an election in the autumn. “It will give more time for lower inflation, tax cuts and — hopefully — lower interest rates to feed through,” said one.

An election takes place 25 days after the dissolution of parliament, which means Sunak would have to call a poll in the week starting March 25 if he wanted to go to the country on May 2. An election must be held by January 2025.

However with opinion polls showing the Conservatives trailing Labour by an average 19 points, many Tory MPs believe Sunak will play it long and hope to persuade voters during the course of next year that the economy is moving in the right direction.

Latest gross domestic product figures showed the British economy was flatlining, but Hunt told the Financial Times last week that 2024 was the year “when we need to throw off our pessimism and declinism”.

He added: “There’s a reasonable chance that if we stick to the course we’re on, we’re able to bring down inflation, the Bank of England might decide they can start to reduce interest rates.”

On Wednesday the chancellor launched the Budget process when he commissioned the Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, to prepare an economic and fiscal forecast to be published on March 6.

The…