‘It’s not morally right to keep borrowing at these levels’: Rishi Sunak’s plan to fix the UK economy

After ten months as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak has finally decided that it’s safe to settle into 11 Downing Street. When we meet, there’s a modern work of art depicting currency signs — €, $, £, Y — being hung in the sitting room, and a portrait of Disraeli being moved to another room.

He never had much time to get comfortable, thrust into his job after the surprise resignation of Sajid Javid in February and expected to deliver a Budget the following month. ‘I thought my most difficult professional thing would be to put a Budget together in three and a half weeks,’ Sunak says now. ‘But it turned out actually that that was probably the easiest thing we’ve had to do.’

The Chancellor has certainly been busy. The furlough scheme, the business loans, the suspension of tax collection — all a large part of the reason public debt now exceeds 100 per cent of GDP for the first time since 1961. At one point, a third of UK employees were having their salaries paid by his scheme. Over his ten months in the job, he has borrowed more than Gordon Brown did in nine years.

When we mention this to him, he appears taken aback. ‘It’s the first time someone has put it to me that way,’ he says, but adds that there are very different types of borrowers. And chancellors. He is unusually interested in finance, and worked in a hedge fund during the 2008 crash. ‘I kind of sat there, watching things evaporate in front of my screen on a daily basis with very large sums of money just disappearing,’ he says. The Covid crisis involved an element of déjà-vu. ‘It was like being back where I came from. Everyone was working night and day, around the clock.