Sunak and Hunt to 'kitchen sink' the bad news in autumn statement – and it won't be pleasant | Ed Conway

Corporate executives call it “kitchen sinking”.

The minute you get into a new job you collect all the bad news, announce the miserable stuff at the same time and take the grisliest, most painful decisions all at once. You throw the kitchen sink at it.

You’ll have spotted this strategy before, and not just in politics – though George Osborne’s 2010 summer budget is often held up as the prime example.

Note how when a new chief executive takes over at a company, they will invariably begin by telling you the whole place needs a desperate clean-up and a change of strategy.

The autumn statement will be Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt’s attempt to “kitchen sink” the bad news for the UK economy.

And to some extent, there’s little they have to do to amplify what’s already coming from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

The OBR’s forecasts for the economy – the official numbers against which the government must set its own policy decisions – were already…