Saint Rishi’s budget mostly seemed sensible enough. A Hindu’s very Augustinian approach: “Grant us tax to pay this monstrous debt, but not yet”. There’ll be quibbles: taking away the paltry £20 surplus to our stingy dole at precisely when unemployment is expected to be worst is mean, but probably stupid rather than pernicious. His numbers seem optimistic, but aren’t they all? Corporation tax will make the UK a little less competitive, but not outrageously, and anyway everyone else will be putting theirs up too. Better to tax the money back than the Osbornian approach of starving the country into emaciated credit. It’s definitely a bit of a handbrake turn from the old Thatcheritive Party though.
But hang on, where did the climate go? Is it fixed? Has global warming gone away? Yippee if so, but…? I thought we needed to insulate all our houses, replace all our boilers, re-invent our transport infrastructure, rewire the national grid (and everything that connects to it), train all the people to do this, …and all the rest.
You mean he didn’t even mention it? Oh wait, he’s giving £12bn to an ‘infrastructure bank’. Pfft. PwC says we need to spend £40bn each year for the next decade just to reach net zero. You know Mr Chancellor a carbon tax could raise revenue and steer behaviour away from self-destruction. Or would that be thinking too far out of a box that’s so cosy with that elephant in here?
Sunak isn’t striking me as a man overloaded with strategy or imagination. “Grant us a survivable future, but not yet”.