Chancellor and the polls People know they're poorer and all Hunt can do is hope

Some chancellors are sacked. Some are forced to resign. Some exchange the green benches of the House of Commons for the red benches of the Lords. But not in living memory has a chancellor lost his seat at a general election.

- Larry Elliott

If opinion polls are accurate, Jeremy Hunt will break that tradition, with the Liberal Democrats on course to take his newly created Godalming and Ash seat in Surrey. The last time the Conservatives were on the wrong end of a landslide, Kenneth Clarke, the then chancellor, held his Nottinghamshire seat. Hunt has a real fight on his hands.

The state of the economy is not helping the chancellor's survival chances. Growth figures, out this week, are likely to show that activity was flat in February and on course to expand marginally in the first three months of 2024. That will be enough for the UK to emerge from its shallow recession in the second half of last year but it is unlikely many voters will notice.

The Bank of England is not helping Hunt, either. Most of the members of Threadneedle Street's nine-strong monetary policy committee want to see more evidence that the battle against inflation has been decisively won before cutting interest rates, a needlessly cautious approach that is hampering the economy's ability to bounce back after two years of flatlining.