this is bbc news, the headlines... the us and britain say they have carried out fresh strikes, on more than 30 targets linked to iran—backed houthi rebels in yemen. us officials say us—uk joint strikes against houthi targets in yemen are underway, these are additional to the self defence strikes against six houthi missiles. northern ireland's devolved government has been restored and has chosen its first ever irish nationalist leader. michelle o'neill has urged all politicians to put aside their differences and work together. her party, sin fein hopes eventually to unite northern ireland with the republic of ireland. mass demonstrations against the far—right afd party takes place across germany for the third weekend in a row. an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand people have gathered outside parliament in berlin.

now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with rather than an interrogation of someone who shapes our political thinking. this week, i've been down to downing street to number 11 to speak to the chancellor, jeremy hunt, who's preparing his budget. he wanted to tell tory mps not to get ahead of themselves about the taxes that he could cut, but also to have a go at those who are saying he shouldn't cut taxes at all. all those organisations with acronyms — the imf, the obr, the ifs. here now is my conversation

with the chancellor. well, chancellor, thank you for having us here inside number 11 and a rather grand dining room. yes, welcome, nick, it's great to see you here. we're in 11 downing street, this is your office here, you host meetings and dinners in this particular room, but it is also your home — what is it like living above the shop? well, the first thing is that i never expected to be here. and as i think you know, when i when i got the call from liz truss, i was so disbelieving that i actually zapped it, refused to take it because i didn't think she could possibly be wanting to call me. so it's quite a big surprise and, of course, a huge privilege to be here. and the loveliest thing about it is that my family are in the flat upstairs and so my kids can walk into my study and we can chat about this and that. and that is... i've got to a stage in life where i like spending time with my kids. in fact, i have a bit

of a conscience that i haven't been doing enough of that to date and so that is lovely. it's also fun living next door to the sunaks and the families get on. with one exception, our dogs do not get on. i have a very assertive female labrador and rishi has a rather shy male labrador rival dogs. so the dogs... sometimes my poppy overwhelms his nova, but apart from that, it is all harmony. so you ought to really rename them after warring chancellors. you could call one dog thatcher and the other dog lawson. brown and blair. yes, exactly. that would be a great idea maybe for the puppies that follow. now we're in this beautiful oak lined dining room, but i can see as evidence that the family are part of number 11, there's a piano. is this where the practice happens? away from the flat? actually, there is another piano upstairs which belongs to the government and they tend to practice on that.

when we moved in here, that is our family piano and the removal company wanted an extra £3,000 to hump it up the stairs. so we said, no, thank you, and that's why it's there. that's the austerity, the austerity piano. now, you mentioned living next to the boss, as well as living here with your family. it's a curious thing to live next to your boss. do you bump into each other with the dogs, without the dogs? 0utside meetings, of course, in the cabinet. we do, perhaps not as much as you might think, because we both lead very busy lives. but as you would imagine with rishi sunak, there's a lot of weekend working and i would say that the most common way we bump into each other is probably at weekends when he will pop round to my office in number 11 and have a chat about this or that. does he do to you what you used to do to the treasury civil servants? because he's a former chancellor, of course. and when i spoke to officials in the treasury, they went, oh, my god, he brings his own spreadsheets, by which i mean,

he's actually stayed up at night on a laptop and produced his own very complex financial spreadsheets. does he do that to you ever? well, that and the rest. i mean, this is someone... we have never had i've never had a boss, never had anyone i've worked with who works as hard as he does. and that is why one of the things that he's not often credited with is the restoring of international relations with our key allies, the united states, france and so on. and i think one of the reasons for that is he goes into those meetings and he really knows about all the things that the other person wants to talk about, and that creates the ability to have a certain kind of bond. so he is absolutely on top. of course, if you're working for him, you really do need to know about that detail because no—one wants to think that their boss knows more than they do. but you know different things, don't you? i mean, we talked last time were on political thinking about your business background and before you were very successful

creating a business and selling it for a lot of money, you had a few failures. forgive me for reminding you. i think we talked about trying to sell marmalade to the japanese last time you were on. he, on the other hand, is not a businessman as such, is he? he's a markets guy. he moved vast sums of money in the financial markets. do you come at things in different ways? we do, and that is incredibly helpful when it comes to budgets because, of course, you've got to do both. and, you know, i have an entrepreneur's focus on, you know, how we can grow, i don't know our technology sector, which is my own background. what he has is enormous experience as to how all the numbers come together to bake the cake that you need at the end of the day. so that actually has been very helpful. and, you know, touch wood, i haven't had a budget that's gone wrong or a fiscal event that's gone wrong. and i would say that his advice

at crucial moments is what's made sure that i haven't made those kind of silly errors that, you know, have tripped up chancellors in the past. now, gordon brown's adviser once described how budgets were written some years back. and maybe it was at this very table that every single proposal was scribbled down on a card. sometimes it's the treasury official, sometimes it's the politician. sometimes it's a submission from someone else, with what's the idea? how much will it cost? and you move the cards around, you know, the ones you're going to do. go to one end of the table, the ones you're not going to do. is that how it works these days? it's got a bit more high tech than that. we basically have the weirdest spreadsheet you will ever see. it's an a3 double sided spreadsheet. and, roughly speaking, it has how we're planning to spend a trillion pounds of taxpayers�* money on one side and how we've been planning to raise usually, unfortunately, a bit less

than a trillion in tax receipts on the other side, and every number on there is a billion. so the numbers are huge and it's called a scorecard and it's kind of a running tally. and the lines that are highlighted are the ones that you've switched on. so you've decided you want to do those. and the lines that are not highlighted are the ones that you are considering. and so you're able to tot up the whole time. but it's a real moving feast because every measure you do has what's called an indirect effect. i'm sorry to go into the lingo, but, you know, as chancellor, you really have to understand this. so you might think, for example, that, you know, a penny cut in national insurance like we did in the autumn statement is going to cost four and a half billion. but then you find out that that is going to mean maybe 50,000 more people in work, which has an effect on gdp and has an effect on the taxes paid. so you then go through this process of working out the indirect effects.

now you have moved in this sense, as you say, you were appointed by liz truss and the time you were appointed, the feeling was you were the guy who'd been brought in notjust to steady the ship but to stop the titanic from sinking. i mean, britain's reputation was going down the plughole, to mix my metaphors. how did it feel? was it a bit of you thought, i don't really think i want to do this, thank you very much. i did hesitate for a totally selfish reason that i was chair of the health and social care select committee, and i actually had a very comfortable life and i was spending more time with my kids and i was enjoying my parliamentary duties. and i knew this would be like going right into the heart of some really difficult decisions. but, you know, i come from quite a traditional background. and, you know, my dad would have, i think, turned in his grave if he thought that i passed the opportunity to do

something that is potentially important for the country. so it didn't take long. your dad in the royal navy. yeah, exactly. an admiral. and i think those decisions, because there was a market crisis, the decisions were quite straightforward. i mean, we just you need to work out what is the right thing to do and then work out what your argument is going to be. and, you know, fundamentally, i had to take some horrible decisions, particularly for a conservative putting up taxes. and the key thing people wanted to know is, is he going to be fair about the way he did it? so i spent time on that bit of it. did you mind the way the conservatives in particular greeted you? because i was reading up sarah vine, notjust a mail columnist, but of course you used to be michael gove�*s wife said having jeremy take over as chancellor is a bit like ordering rump steak on your shop and finding they've substituted it with a tofu burger.

sarah is very funny and i did see that comment, it did make me laugh. but i think my weakness, nick, is that i'm just never been particularly sensitive about what's written or said about me. i, i sort of take the view that that's part of, of what happens in politics. but you were self—consciously lowkey and stressing the responsible up until september of last year. we're not in a position to talk about tax cuts. we can't possibly do it. we've got to get the finances right. yes, and i think a great irony for me is that i am probably seen as mr steady the ship, mr safe and sensible. and i've gone in every singlejob i've gone into, the question i've asked myself is what is going to be different when i leave thisjob compared to when i arrive? and what will people say about me in five years�* time in terms of what has actually changed? and so that sort of way that i'm viewed is probably

not how i view myself. when i was, you know, health secretary, for example, probably the thing i'm most proud of is the fact that we've put in place a plan to train more doctors, which concluded with a long term workforce plan that rishi sunak announced last year. i look at that and i think that is something that really changed. i genuinely don't think it would have happened without me. and i care far more about that than what. .. the fact thatjunior doctors were no great fans ofjeremy hunt. they certainly weren't. and, you know, and i'm sure there are lots of people aren't fans of me as chancellor, but what i want to do is, you know, when i'm out of it, i want to look back and say, can i really point to something that was different as a result of my time? but the puzzle, i think for some people who bought that image of you that sarah fain was mocking is they think you're clark kent. you've gone into a telephone box and you've emerged as tax—cutting superman. this guy who came into office saying, look, you can't have any of that. liz truss crashed the markets by promising to cut taxes, suddenly emerges in superman's outfit saying, no, no tax cuts, how much do you want? well, look, i'm a conservative,

and i really do believe when you look around the world that the countries that are most dynamic, that are growing the fastest and therefore have the ability to fund their schools and their hospitals and all the things that really matter are countries with lower taxes. and you look at the dynamism in north america and asia, and by and large, these are countries with lower tax burdens. so i think there is a big choice for us as a country. do we want to get closer to france and germany that have higher levels of tax, or do we want to have more productive public services with lower levels of tax and a more dynamic economy? that hasn't changed at all. i think that what was very clear when i, you know, inherited the difficult situation i did is that tax cuts that are funded through increases in borrowing won't work, the markets won't accept them, and they're not really credible with the public either. and so if you want to go on that

journey to lower taxes, you've got to do it in a in a measured, responsible way. but, yes, i have always been a conservative mp and i've always believed in lower taxes. you had some advice. this week, the international monetary fund said we would advise against further discretionary tax cuts, as envisaged and discussed. now, have you got some advice for your friends at the imf? what i would say to them is that, like the imf, i believe in properly funded public services. but if you look at what is happening and the pressures on the nhs and the social care system you and i have talked about many times in the today programme studio, we're only able to afford that if we have an economy that's really growing. what the imf were really saying, i think, is that when they use that word discretionary, is that a tax cut that isn't

going to help grow the economy over the long run wouldn't be the right thing to do. i will give them the benefit of the doubt. that's what i think they were saying and that's what i hope they were saying. and if they were, i would agree with it. i think the reason people are sceptical is they say for all the talk, the conservatives have been pretty hopeless at cutting spending. you cut things that we notice years later, which aren't visible at the time. capital spending, infrastructure spending. you cut the budgets for the courts, the pay packets ofjunior doctors. we all pay a price for all of this over a few years. but the really difficult choices, let's stop doing this in order to make the state smaller — the conservative no track record of doing nothing. well, i don't think, if i may say, nick, i think your memory is surprisingly short term on that. i mean, i entered government in 2010. we made a huge number of incredibly difficult decisions that actually were cuts in public spending. my departmental budget of the department of culture, media and sport was cut by 24%,

an actual cut of 24%. so i think we have made difficult decisions, but i think the opportunity you now have with technology is to is to spend more efficiently and more productively without reducing the services that the public experience. so you're saying not another era of austerity, despite the fact that the 0br, the office for budget responsibility, the guys who do the number crunching on behalf of the country said that the spending plans were, quote, a work of fiction, and then went on to say, that's probably being generous because someone writes down a work of fiction and the government hasn't even bothered to write down what its departmental spending plans are. well, those words are wrong and they shouldn't have been said. that was the head of the 0br. yeah, well, the government's decide

spending plans and spending reviews. the next spending review will start in april 25. and obviously until that point, when that spending review is done, we don't publish our spending plans, no government ever has. but what i would say is that we are absolutely committed to public services. but that doesn't mean that you have to always do things in the future the way you've done them in the past. and i think what we need to do... let me let me put it this way, if you're wanting to have a discussion about the credibility, if you look at the improvement in productivity in the nhs between 2010 up until the pandemic, if we can get that level of improvement back across the whole of the public sector, we're in a situation where we don't have to keep raising taxes. now we're around a table that feels rather like the cabinet table. it's quite a lot smaller. but the cabinet table is just down the corridorfrom number 11 where we're sitting in number 10. and you warned the cabinet, we're told this week that there was limited room

for tax cuts. and i think, you know, we don't yet know the final numbers because there's this kind of iterative process that happens with the office for budget responsibility. but it doesn't look to me like we will have the same scope for cutting taxes in the spring budget that we had in the autumn statement. and so i need to set people's expectations about the scale of what i'm doing, because people need to know that when a conservative government cuts taxes, we will do so in a responsible and sensible way. but we also want to be clear that the direction of travel we want to go in is to lighten the tax burden. and that is notjust about putting more money in people's pockets, although i do believe that you should put as much money as you can in people's pockets. it's a very conservative view. it's because in the end, that's how we'll grow the economy. we know that the right

sort of tax cuts help boost our growth. we know that the right sort of tax cuts help boost our growth. you know that there will be some conservatives hearing you who will despair at that and say the chancellor's got to go big. that's the phrase they use. he's got to have the confidence to cut taxes, to be a conservative, to do what is right. and they'll think that what you've just said means that doom for your party and a labour landslide is inevitable. well, it is not conservative to cut taxes by increasing borrowing, because all you're doing is cutting the taxes paid by people today in exchange for increasing the taxes paid by our children tomorrow. and that is not conservative. if you want to cut taxes, it has to be done in a sustainable way. and if i look at the tax cutting budget that most people remember, the nigel lawson's tax cutting budget in 1988, why was that so revolutionary? because when he cut the top rate of tax, when he cut the basic rate of tax, you knew that was a change

that was here to stay. that was a permanent change. so if you cut taxes by taking risks with borrowing, people worry that's not a permanent change because in the end, you know, you might not be able to continue at that level of tax. so it's a hard path to bring down the tax burden. but a conservative chancellor wants to do that. this one most certainly wants to do that. you can telljust talking to you, you've still got the enthusiasm for this. and yet you'll know that a lot of your colleagues just think it's over. i mean, theyjust look at their polls and they look at rishi sunak now being as unpopular as the conservative party used to be more popular. is there a bit of you having done as manyjobs as you have,

uust things, you know, come on, move on, you've had fun. no, let me tell you why the fight is in me. nick, first of all, just a personal thing. i set up my own tech business in 2000. never in a million years did i imagine that two decades later, i would be responsible for the third largest tech economy in the world. why do i say that? because irrespective of the challenges for the conservatives being behind in the polls, which i don't deny is a challenge, of course it is. we have fantastic prospects as a country, and that is because we have tremendous strengths in industry. like technology and life science, the industries that are going to grow the fastest. and i want to get that message across in the budget, because i think there's too much negativity about our longer term prospects. do you think we become gloomsters? i do. andrew neil wrote a column the other day in the mail saying britain has just been taken hold of beyond unnecessary gloom.

cheer up, britain. is that the chancellor's man? yes. i wish andrew would take a bit of his own medicine, though, because he can be one of the gloom and doom posters in self if you read some of his columns. but what i would say is absolutely and that's wrong. and i for the first time this year, i did something i never thought i would do is i went to davos and i spent time mixing with billionaires. but, you know, when you meet people like the chief executive of amazon or the boss at google or all these companies, they want to be in britain, they don'tjust want to be in britain. they need to be in britain because we have elon musk said, you know, london and san francisco are the two global centres for al. so we've got those tremendous prospects. we have that opportunity because over the last decade we have turned britain into europe's silicon valley and we've done it because we've made this the most competitive place in europe and one of the most competitive places in the world to grow one of these industries of the future. it's interesting, though, because when i last interviewed you and you'd stopped being foreign secretary, you'd run for leader

of the conservative party and been beaten and beaten pretty well by borisjohnson, you were starting to relish it time with a family, william hague had said to you, it's going to be like going from being in black and white to colour, so nice being normal. do you crave a bit of that normality again? i do crave it sometimes because it is just fantastic doing things with your kids and i, i, i miss sometimes not being able to spend as much time with them as i would like. but, you know, it is an incredible thing to have a position of responsibility in one of the most amazing countries in the world. and i just think we've got so much potential as a country, and that is important for my kids, too, because, you know, i want them to grow up in a country bursting with opportunity. and if i canjust do a little bit to help make theirfutures brighter in the future of all their friends brighter, then i'd be very proud. you mentioned the family a lot, and it's been a difficult year personally for you.

your brother charlie, a younger brother, died of a rare form of cancer, a sarcoma. there was a fundraiser here, wasn't there, that he helped to organise here at number 11 because he was passionate about getting more money and more care. that, too, i imagine, does with anybody who's been ill or knows someone who's been ill, let alone someone who's died, makes you think about what you're doing with your time. did it have that impact on you? it knocked me back. i still think about him every day, actually, because he was just so brave. he had this very rare cancer for over three years. and he decided that he was just going to live every single day as if it was his last. and he threw parties and he went travelling and he went kite surfing and he never allowed it to bring him down. and that courage is pretty humbling.

and you have lots of down days in politics and you think, what did he go through? and he always had a smile on his face. so i can't pretend that doesn't affect you, yes. of course. and then finally, you've had the old party. you occasionally have dinners here. i'm going to give you a dream dinner party. here we are. who would you have round this table if you could have anybody? well, look, i don't want any mawkish about this, but i would love i would really love to have my mum and dad because they weren't alive to see me become chancellor and i think they would have been so proud. so that's just a personal thing. i would love to meet william wilberforce because that guy was never in the cabinet, he was never a minister, and he persuaded mps after 19 years

of campaigning to abolish the slave trade. and, you know, we arejust minnows compared to a giant like that and i would just love to know what makes people like that tick. jeremy hunt, chancellor, thank you for talking to us here in the dining room at number 11. and i think you have to go to talk to tory mps. i do and i will remain upbeat. what drinks that will be. enjoy it. well, it certainly sounds like jeremy hunt is up for the fight. again, not planning what many people expected a little while ago for his retirement. he thinks there's a battle about economic policy to be had. he's got some strong words for advisers from outside, which in effect is to say, zip it, we're the ones fighting the election, not you. thanks for watching this edition of political thinking.

hello. cloudy, windy and mild pretty much covers sunday's weather forecast in most parts of the uk. we do have this wriggling weather front which will bring rain forsome, particularly in the western side of scotland. but with that front edging a little bit further northwards, it will introduce milder air for more of us. but with that extensive cloud cover, it will be quite misty and murky for some coasts and hills. a bit of rain across north—west england, parts of northern ireland, but more especially, this western side of scotland, the rain becoming heavy and persistent. eastern scotland with a bit of shelter from the winds, while here, we mayjust see a little bit of sunshine. but it is going to be a windy day for many of us. very windy in the far north. gusts of 60 miles per hour, for example, in shetland, where temperatures will only climb

to four degrees. but elsewhere, further south, highs of 13 or 1a degrees — well above the average for early—february. and then during sunday night, the rain keeps on coming in western scotland, hence this met office yellow weather warning. the wettest locations over higher ground could see 170 millimetres of rain. some snow mixing into the north of our weather front, where it engages some cold air. very mild, though, further south, as we start monday morning. through monday, we'll continue to see these outbreaks of heavy rain just waxing and waning across the north—west of scotland, with some snow across the far north. but to the south of that, it stays mild, it stays quite windy, it stays very cloudy, with some mist and murk and some spots of drizzle. temperatures up to around 13, maybe 1a degrees once again, but always colder to the north of our weather front. just two degrees there, in lerwick. and by tuesday, well, that frontal system looks set to push a little bit further southwards. so rain for northern ireland, northern england, perhaps into north wales. to the south of that, still cloudy, a bit murky, very mild. to the north of our weather front,

well, some sunny spells, a few wintry showers in the far north and something just a little bit chillier. now, this weather front just wriggles around through the middle part of the week. it will bring further outbreaks of rain. later in the week, it does look like these various frontal systems will eventually push southwards and that will allow some colder air to dig its way across more parts of the uk. it is going to take a while for that colder air to spread southwards, but it does look like, as we get through the end of the week and into the weekend, it will turn colder for all of us. yes, there'll be some rain, but for some, there may also be some snow.

live from washington. this is bbc news. the us and uk carry out more strikes on iran backed houthi positions in yemen — as washington continues its military response to the deaths of three us soldiers and houthi attacks on ships in the red sea. northern ireland's devolved government is restored after a two—year hiatus. sinn fein�*s michelle 0'neill makes history as stormont�*s first irish nationalist leader. polls close in an hour in the us state of south carolina where democrats are voting in their first primary of 202a. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda we start the programme in the middle east, where the us and uk have led fresh coalition strikes against the iran—backed houthis in yemen. according to us central command,

36 houthi targets have been struck.