[ad_1]
TThe government moves in mysterious ways. On Tuesday alone, he had been unable to find an additional £ 5 million to secure a deal with Andy Burnham and other local leaders to bring Greater Manchester to Level 3. And on Wednesday there was no money available for the poorest children, who will tire me out. wanting to eat when he’s not in school, to get free meals over the holidays until next Easter. But on Thursday, the Magic Money Tree was full of cash.
Rishi Sunak has only been chancellor for about eight months, but I have already lost count of how many budgets he has delivered since March. We should be in double figures by now. Its winter economy plan that was announced late last month hasn’t even survived until late fall, and is now in its third iteration.
Some may see this as a weakness in strategic planning. A failure to predict what was too obvious to most of the rest of the country. But Sunak prefers to give his policies a more positive spin. He likes to see himself as the informed man; someone who can react quickly to rapidly changing events. After all, who could have guessed that the UK, along with the rest of Europe, was heading for a second wave of coronavirus? Aside from the government scientists who had been saying that for months.
So Sunak returned to the Commons to provide another round of financial aid to businesses affected by Covid-19. Costs could wait another day, as Sunak prefers not to let the details of how he will ultimately pay for things (austerity or higher taxes) to detract from his moment in the limelight. First it was a bailout for all the companies affected by being at Tier 2. This was retroactive to August just to show that you not only cared about London and the West Midlands, but you really cared about the North West as well. If he had announced all this just a week ago, he could have saved the government a world of pain.
Then there would be more help for companies that would now only have to pay 5% of the salaries of employees who only worked one day a week. This would not improve the worker’s situation and they would be more likely to be able to pay the bills, but at least it would make it more likely that they would still have a job. That was something. And finally the government was going to double support for the self-employed from 20% to 40%, so they would also go bankrupt a little less quickly.
Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds was not as excited about the new proposals as Sunak seemed to hope. He called them “too few, too late” and noted that most of a million jobs had already been lost as a result of the government not acting sooner. Nor was the idea that the measures were not driven by London and the West Midlands and that the North West had been added as a convenient afterthought was not entirely believed.
What was required, he concluded, was not for the entire country to gradually make its way to level 3: it was a “circuit breaker” to stop the rise in infections. Rather, this meant that the government could introduce an effective test and trace system. Even as he spoke, the latest statistics were released showing that performance was going from bad to worse.
But Rishi wasn’t here to listen to any of the naysayers. He’s a man with the effortless self-confidence and thin-skinned vanity of a billionaire who probably never experiences financial hardship and just wanted to enjoy the applause of the crowd. He became unexpectedly irritable when accused of looking for a cheap photo opportunity in Wagamama (Sunak doesn’t do anything cheap) and instead chose to wallow in love for his own banks. This was his day. His moment in the sun and no one was going to spoil it. At times like this, he gives the impression that he believes his brand is bigger than his own party.
The adulation proved too much for Boris Johnson, who had appeared for the first half hour, and faded just as Andrew Mitchell was declaring his undying love for the Chancellor. There is only room for a narcissist in the room when Boris is around. In the same way that the prime minister had been lost, otherwise he would have had to listen to Tory Matt Vickers describe Rishi as “the man, the myth, the legend.” Sunak could only nod his head.
What no one mentioned, of course, was that we had been here countless times before. Every one of Sunak’s previous recent budget statements, which had proven desperately inadequate, had been greeted with nothing but adulation. But that was then and this is now. The past was not just a foreign country, it was a non-existent country. And when, within a month or so, Sunak arrived in the Commons to announce more measures, they too would be greeted with the excitement and shock of the new.
The battle of the egos resumed later in the afternoon when Johnson and Sunak combined to give a joint press conference in Downing Street. And although neither had anything new to say, it was Sunak who was the clear winner on points. Boris just repeated his incoherently muttering trick while casually mixing up the strange lie about anything that caught his eye (he seems increasingly fed up with work and is only capable of dealing with a reality that he wishes existed) while Rishi sounded totally sure. and at ease. Even when he has to explain why his previous measures have been inadequate, he manages to maintain the pretense that his mistakes were deliberate.
Still, Sunak shouldn’t be overly relaxed about being the best dog. Because the person who showed the most sincerity was Patrick Vallance, the government’s top science advisor and the third person in the room. And although he was doing his best to be optimistic, he didn’t have much encouragement to offer. The test and trace system was still a mess and that was really the only way out of the current situation. We were stuck with the virus, and we were stuck with a government committed to a tiered system that probably no region would escape down anytime soon. It was going to be a long winter.
