WHAT PRICE RECOVERY

On the 1^st February I made the comment

“In the United Kingdom, even although there is a conservative and nationalist government of sorts, there is still the realisation that to survive as a Nation there must be consensus and public support for the activities of the population. That includes health, education, welfare and the economy. Never before has a British Conservative Government borrowed so much money and used the whole of its treasury of taxes in an attempt to support working people, businesses of all sizes, the social services and the national health service. It has not, because of the very size of the task, been entirely successful, and there are many opinions as to how and where to spend that money. But it is being procured by a Conservative Government in ways that would make the ordinary conservative politician throw their hands up in horror. I am sure that many of them are, and cannot imagine how they are going to crawl back from the national debt. The whole premiss of a conservative Government is a small frugal administration that allows the private sector to soar with as little interference as possible. We are a long way from making that happen any time soon, if ever.” (https://fbuffnstuff.blogspot.com/2021/02/an-after-thought.html)

We now have an indication from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, just how he plans to begin clawing back the current National Debt. There is a rather long but interesting (if you’re prepared to take in budgetary talk) analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Their zoom video is on You Tube (see below). It is well worth taking in. It is one of many views being expressed about the current budget, but it is from a purported independent research institute whose stated principal aim is better informing public debate on economics to promote the development of effective fiscal policy. The opening remarks are delivered by the IFS Director Paul Johnson, who concludes his opening remarks with the following:

“Mr Sunak had three challenges in this Budget – to ensure the right level of support for the economy over the next few months, to set about fixing the longer term public finances, and to deal with the longer term consequences of the pandemic, especially its unequal consequences.

He has done a decent job of the first, arguably erring on the side of generosity.

He has given us a sense of where he wants to go on the second, but he still has a lot of work to do and his spending plans in particular don’t look deliverable, at least not without considerable pain.

On the third he has been silent. No money to deal with post pandemic priorities. No policies to deal with the inequalities that have opened up over the last year between rich and poor, old and young, more and less well educated. This is a big hole in the chancellor’s and the government’s policies, a hole which needs to be filled and soon if we are not to suffer a much worse hangover from this crisis than need be the case.”

The highlighting of the last few remarks are mine as I think they are of  particular significance and show that Mr Rishi’s conservative roots are coming into focus.

It should be noted that the talk doesn’t get going until 4 min and 15 second in, so you might move the cursor along to that point to avoid watching 4 mins of title card